Today’s Meet the Team blog features Beehive Group Director Marie Renckens, who joined our team nearly six years ago. We’ve been a smarter and more authentic organization since, thanks to Marie’s innate curiosity, keen ability to simplify complexity and solve business challenges. Her sense of humor is also second-to-none!

Marie talks in her Q&A about Beehive’s commitment to wage equity and salary transparency — something she helped kickstart at the agency. In addition to no longer asking employees about their salary history, we’ve also activated our commitment through listing salaries on job descriptions and sharing open salary bands with employees along with career path trajectory. We’re proud to be a voice for wage equity.

And we’re proud to have Marie on the Beehive team. Enjoy getting to know her — and Beehive — better through her Q&A below.

What do you like most about working at Beehive? 

This is a question I get whenever we interview job candidates, and I always find myself coming back to the same answer: the people. That goes for both the Beehive team I work with every day and the clients we have the joy of calling our partners. The only thing better than using the power of communication to build better businesses is doing it with such smart, creative and fun people.

What’s something you were able to do with your Beehive wellness dollars? How was that meaningful to you?

I’ve established an annual “staycation” made possible by wellness dollars. The dollars go to a night at a downtown hotel, typically The Hewing, where I unplug for 24 hours or so and do things that fill my cup. Typically, that means reading a whole book, sitting in the rooftop hot tub, going on long walks, eating great food and just doing whatever I feel like doing in the moment.

As a mom of two kids, it’s hard to find time for myself beyond a few hours here and there. Dedicating a full day and night to myself and my needs has been a game-changer. Each of these staycations directly supports my physical, mental and emotional health.

What’s your favorite place in the world to visit?

I bet a lot of my fellow Minnesotans would have a similar answer here: the cabin. I have always loved travel — spending time in Kenya, Thailand, the Alaskan back country, Europe — but if I could only return to one place, it would still be my family’s cabin up on the Whitefish Chain in northern Minnesota. It’s as old as I am, so it truly holds a lifetime of memories with family and friends. It will always be home.

Beehive has salary transparency / wage equity. What does that mean to you?

To me, salary transparency is a very tangible, impactful way to “walk the walk” when it comes to equity. It helps address pay gaps particularly among women and other historically underpaid populations, builds trust and fairness, and empowers workers.

It’s been interesting to watch Beehive constantly evolve in this area. I remember back in 2018 during my interview process, I was asked about my previous salary. This was a time when that question was still very normal, but people had started critiquing its use, acknowledging the ways it continues the cycle of wage inequities. I shared feedback about rethinking that question and Beehive made the change to the hiring process within the week.

Salary transparency is grounded in Beehive’s values of accountability, equity and a growth mindset — and one of many examples of Beehive acting in accordance with its values.

What are you doing right now to support your growth and development? 

I’m focusing heavily on AI and what it means for our team, our clients and our future. It’s an area I showed some interest in when ChatGPT first came out, and we immediately knew we had to jump in to understand its impact our work. It’s clearly going to change the way we do work, but also will change the work that needs to be done, especially as we think about content development and crisis and reputation management.

I’ve been supported and empowered to dive in and create Beehive’s policy, learning and development plans, and consult with clients. It’s certainly a stretch area (as it likely is for everyone, given how new it is) but it’s one I find really interesting, energizing and important.