The local digital agency Scorpion has been named a “Best Company to Work For” by Utah Business Magazine. This notable award given Scorpion just relocated its headquarters from Southern California to Utah’s Silicon Slopes near Salt Lake City earlier this year.
According to the award announcement, the magazine’s process for picking the best employer is fairly rigorous. “Using Qualtrics survey technology, employees provided anonymous feedback about flexibility, pay equity, vacation, benefits, management, and more,” the announcement reads. The magazine took this data and ranked and compared the companies that entered to determine the winner.
Scorpion’s COO told us the award reflects Scorpion’s deliberate efforts to build a healthy work culture during the pandemic.
“While we, like others, have had to navigate recent changes in the workplace environment and employee expectations, Scorpion remains committed to listening to our employees while also aligning our team around the mission to always provide exceptional service to our customers,” said Raj Ramanan, COO of Scorpion. “We are proud and humbled to receive this feedback from our employees, and even more resolute in our mission to continue to build our talented team in the Utah tech community.”
The Utah Move Backstory
Back in May, we interviewed Scorpion CEO Dan Street. The conversation was in the wake of the company’s $100 million equity raise and the decision to relocate to the Silicon Slopes. He told us it largely came down to the quality of life for his employees.
“The number one reason is the cost of living. It makes our employees stressed out. It’s hard to live in California. The quality of life is becoming difficult,” Street said. “So that is reason number one, number two, and number three. But if you want a reason number four, the business environment in California is difficult to operate in. There are a lot of legal restrictions in California, which don’t exist in other parts of the country. And complying with them takes more lawyers than we have the ability to invest in.”
Street added that the decision had as much or more to do with moving to Utah as it did with leaving California.
“More importantly, Salt Lake was just a great fit,” Street said. “There’s a bunch of people in our space that are consolidating in the Salt Lake City area. So it’s about being able to partner with those people, and also have access to an employee base that knows the space.”
