Culture

We are proud of PGL’s culture. It has been unique to us since Ned and Will founded the company, and it continues to be a significant part of why so many of our people stay with us. A complete description of our culture would take many pages, so here are a few things that we think best illuminate it.

Our core values are:

  • We are all villagers
  • MacGyver it
  • Everyone paddles

This is more than just a job, but far from a cult. We are:

  • ambitious about being a really great place to work
  • very hard on ourselves when judging our success

Our ownership structure is important. While not everyone owns shares, more than 75% of our villagers do. But whether they own shares or not, most people around here behave as if they do. Our share succession plan is working well enough that we have no need or intention to sell out. We want to be an employee-owned specialty environmental consulting shop of not more than 200 people. We do profit share because it’s fair. We don’t do other kinds of bonuses.

Our management style is very open. This is sometimes hard on management, and that’s okay.

We have done layoffs once (in 2008). PGL prefers to manage downturns by broad temporary salary and hour reductions, and has done so about a half dozen times since we started in 1991.

We expect and train everyone to participate in getting work. We also routinely train people to write, to manage, to provide and receive feedback, and how the business works. Technical and regulatory lunch-and-learn events happen when we want them.

We invest resources in health and safety, and EDIB (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging). In BC, PGL holds a WorkSafe BC Certificate of Recognition, and we routinely exceed 95% in our annual audits (100% in 2021; 99% in 2022). In 2022 we commissioned an external EDIB review and are now working on recommendations from it.

Our interview process takes a lot of our time and a lot of candidate time because we want to make good decisions, and we keep it because it works well. We want people to be here for a long time.

We have annual brief retreats for the whole company, and people really regret when they can’t make it to them.

We have a sense of humour, it’s a bit quirky and often targeted at ourselves.