One of the biggest challenges any company faces is keeping employees connected, engaged, and genuinely invested in their work. An issue that carries significant weight for law firms.
Employee engagement has become harder to maintain across the U.S. workforce. Gallup reported that just 31% of U.S. employees were actively engaged in 2025, continuing a decline from the 2020 peak. Making employee engagement a business must. In fact, Gallup’s workplace research found that highly engaged teams achieve higher profitability, greater productivity, stronger customer loyalty, and lower turnover than low-engagement teams.
Culture also plays a major role in whether people stay. Great Place To Work found that employees are 2.7 times more likely to stay when their work feels meaningful, 2.2 times more likely to stay when they feel proud of where they work, and 1.7 times more likely to stay when work feels fun. In other words, connection, purpose, and a little bit of joy are essential for any law firm looking to succeed.
For a fully remote digital marketing company like Hennessey Digital, that challenge comes with a few extra layers. With a team spanning across the United States and around the world, working across time zones, schedules, and screens. Connection does not happen by accident. It has to be intentional.
That is where Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) Week comes in.
Make it Fun; Don’t Be A Jerk
When our People Success team looked at ways to create a more connected workplace, they saw an opportunity to build something that could bring employees together while also making a positive impact beyond the company.
“At the time, we were hearing feedback from employees who did not always feel like they had opportunities to connect or participate in shared experiences. Some teams felt siloed or left out due to work hours or other factors,” said Greg Herrmann, Hennessey Digital’s Senior Manager of Learning & Development. “RAK Week was one of several initiatives we introduced to create a more inclusive and connected workplace that aligned with our core values.”
RAK Week is a company-wide initiative, started in 2021, built around daily acts of kindness. Each day includes a different prompt or activity that employees can complete in their own communities, with their coworkers, or even on their own. We designed it to be simple, accessible, and flexible enough for employees across departments and time zones to join in.
For every qualifying act of kindness shared, Hennessey Digital contributes $5 to that year’s selected nonprofit. In some cases, a single post can represent several donated items, allowing the impact to grow even more.
This year, team members donated essentials such as clothes and food to local organizations, supported coworkers by writing LinkedIn recommendations and endorsements, and celebrated small businesses through reviews and shoutouts. Ending the week with RAK Bingo, an interactive game where team members could complete multiple acts of kindness, with each completed row unlocking an additional company donation.
That spirit of intentionality also shaped one of the most meaningful additions to this year’s program.
A “kindness to yourself” day encouraged employees to take a moment to reset in whatever way worked best for them. For some, that meant going for a walk or doing breathing exercises. For others, it meant organizing their workspace, stepping away to recharge, or simply creating a little breathing room in their day.
For Kayla Harris, Hennessey Digital’s HR Generalist who spearheads this initiative, that addition felt especially important.
“Everyone’s always busy. Everyone always has a lot going on,” Harris said. “So just breathing exercises, going for a walk, doing a cleanup. My kindness to myself was cleaning out and organizing my office. So when I come into my office, I’m actually ready to work instead of scrambling.”
Many high-performing teams forget: kindness does not only count when it is outward-facing.
Do What’s Right Always
When the People Success team set out to build this initiative, the goal was not just to create another engagement program. It was to create something that made it easier for employees to take meaningful action beyond their day-to-day work.
As Greg Herrmann explained, “We asked ourselves: What are actual ways and what resources can we give to our employees to enable that action within their community?”
Those questions became the foundation of RAK Week.
Each year, team members nominate and vote on the nonprofit organization they want to support, reflecting what causes resonate most across the team.
This year, Hennessey Digital chose to support the National Immigrant Justice Center.
The organization provides advocacy and legal services to keep families together, protect asylum seekers, and defend individuals facing deportation based on unjust or unlawful actions. For a distributed team spanning the country and beyond, supporting an organization with national reach allows our impact to reflect the scale of our people.
Throughout the week, employees completed hundreds of acts of kindness, each one contributing to something larger than itself. Showcasing what makes RAK Week meaningful. Taking a simple idea, doing something kind, and turning it into a collective effort that extends far beyond the company.
How Culture Turns Into Results
Programs like RAK Week are more than just about doing something good. They are about building something sustainable.
Since launching RAK Week in 2021, Hennessey Digital has seen a measurable impact on employee retention. With rates increasing by 35%, reaching 91% as of 2025, well above the industry benchmark of approximately 75%.
It is the result of consistent investment in people, in culture, and in creating an environment where employees feel connected to their work and to each other. Research continues to show that engaged teams perform better, stay longer, and contribute more meaningfully to business outcomes.
For companies and law firms alike, the takeaway is clear. If you want to grow and scale, investing in your people is not optional. It is essential.
Many organizations spend millions of dollars trying to solve engagement through complex programs and systems.
Why not invest in a few acts of kindness?