A few blocks from the beach, consulting firm Dudek’s new 17,000-square-foot headquarters in the heart of Encinitas is low-key, California cool, a reflection of the employee-owned company’s attitude when it comes to work life.
Employees aren’t required to come into the office. But Dudek CEO Joe Monaco says that if he has done his job, they’ll want to.
“We’ve always been flexible,” Monaco said. “What we tried to do is make this place enticing, so that when people came in, they had a good experience. … The whole objective here is to create that energy where people just want to be here.”
There is an open-concept layout with unreserved desks, plus small nooks and rooms for private calls or meetings. The design is in stark contrast to two of the company’s previous leased spaces where individual offices were the norm.
The most inviting space, by design, is the office’s roomy kitchen area, which features free coffee and snacks, as well as sliding doors that open to an outdoor patio. The area doubles as an occasional happy hour spot, further incentivizing the firm’s engineers, planners and scientists to socialize with one another. There’s also surfboard storage for those who prefer to spend their lunch breaks in the Pacific Ocean.
The relaxed approach to buttoned-up environmental and planning work has, in part, helped earned Dudek recognition as one of San Diego’s Top Workplaces in the large company category.
Founded in Encinitas in 1980, Dudek started out as a small engineering consulting practice. Today, the firm employs roughly 800 people in offices around the world. Dudek specializes in working with developers to secure land-use entitlements, and preparing state- or federal-mandated environmental impact reports on behalf of government agencies. In San Diego, the company has 264 workers, most of whom are based out of the Encinitas office. Dudek has also has an office at Liberty Station.
Dudek performs the kind of consequential work that makes possible massive projects like the Carlsbad Desalination Plant or the Mid-Coast extension of the Blue Line trolley. Currently, Dudek is working on a number of environmental impact reports of local significance, including an analysis of the city of San Diego’s Ocean Beach Pier replacement project.
Dudek employees gather in the office’s roomy kitchen area, which features free coffee and snacks, as well as sliding doors that open to an outdoor patio. The area also doubles as an occasional happy hour spot. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“Our motto is, find good people and give them the right tools, and they’ll do the right thing,” Monaco said.
The maxim was reflected in statements by many Dudek employees, who participated in an anonymous survey.
“I love the people I work with. Dudek hires the right people who are motivated for the right reasons,” one person said. “We do not hire individuals with egos or (who) cannot work in a team environment.”
Others agreed and said that Dudek’s focus on hiring good people, when combined with the flexible office policy, creates a culture of happiness.
“I have never experienced micromanaging at Dudek because we trust one another to get the job done. I also feel like I get treated as an equal here. Even though I know I have supervisors, they never treat anyone like they are above them,” an employee said. “The flexibility to work from home has helped me create a perfect work-life balance (being able to cook at home and exercise before work). The work culture creates happy coworkers and everyone I work with has always been so nice to me.”
Although Dudek has grown substantially over the decades, Monaco earlier this year reorganized the firm around geography — as opposed to disciplines — to allow for additional expansion, particularly in markets outside of California. That means each office will focus on projects from surrounding areas, with local staff working together across their various specialties.
“What we were finding was, as we were growing, we did very well in the California market, but we were a victim of our own success. We had clients that brought us outside of California, and it was just difficult to staff projects from California,” Monaco said.
The growth comes as the company seeks to simultaneously empower workers to participate in its success.
In 2021, Dudek transitioned from partial to 100% employee ownership. The structure involves an employee stock ownership plan. Each year, Dudek contributes a portion of its profits to a separate retirement account for all eligible employees, with contributions based on hours worked, years of service and pay. The contributions vest incrementally over five years.
The end-goal of the employee stock ownership plan is to promote two of the company’s most important values: trust and autonomy. The structure also insulates Dudek from potential takeover bids from private equity firms.
“We can sustain this business model in perpetuity,” Monaco said. “So the employee stock ownership plan gives us a vehicle that we can regenerate ownership internally and not have to rely on selling out.”