Sprout Social
What's the Company Culture Like at Sprout Social?
Frequently Asked Questions
Sprout Social’s culture is high-performing, growth-oriented, collaborative and people-centered. The company emphasizes continuously improving its work while creating an environment where employees are expected to contribute ideas, take ownership and work closely across teams and says its culture combines “talent, humility, determination and kindness,” with flexibility intended to let employees do strong work without losing sight of their lives outside work.
- Four values set expectations for how employees work: Sprout’s current values are Be a Joy to Work With, Put Your Name on It, Change the Game, and All In, All Together. Together, they emphasize delivering value, owning outcomes, challenging existing approaches and succeeding through collaboration, trust and inclusion.
- Continuous improvement is a defining cultural theme: Sprout tells candidates that its “best is always in front of us” and describes greatness as an ongoing pursuit rather than a fixed achievement. Employees are encouraged to bring new perspectives and challenge existing ways of working, with Sprout explicitly telling employees that their expertise, experiences and opinions matter.
- Employees describe collaboration as unusually strong: A Customer Success Manager says, “I really enjoy solving hard problems in collaboration with peers.” She adds that employees are empowered not only to identify improvements but to act on them. Sprout also describes its teams as unusually helpful, supportive and transparent across organizational levels.
- Trust and autonomy are important parts of the employee experience: Sprout supports flexible and hybrid work for many roles and emphasizes outcomes rather than physical presence. Another employee describes the relationship as one of mutual trust, saying, “Sprout trusts me to manage my day and solve hard problems.”
- Employees are encouraged to have a voice: Sprout’s careers materials repeatedly emphasize that employees can influence the product, culture and their own careers. One employee says leadership is willing to engage in difficult conversations and that employee ideas “are truly valued here and carry weight.”
- There is visible pride in the company and its product: Sprout employees share a sense of pride during company gatherings around building a best-in-class product alongside a high-performing team. This connects the company’s performance culture with a broader sense of collective accomplishment rather than individual output alone.
- Remote work is supplemented with intentional connection: Sprout’s culture is said to invest in team gatherings and professional development to maintain connectivity, collaboration and career advancement in a remote environment. The company also characterizes its workplace as flexible hybrid, with employees combining remote and onsite work.
- External signals:
- Culture sentiment: A majority of Sprout Social employees rate the company positively for culture and values. (Glassdoor)
- Employee responsibility: 92% of employees say they are given significant responsibility, supporting Sprout’s emphasis on trust and ownership. (Great Place to Work)
- Welcoming culture: 96% of employees say people are made to feel welcome when they join Sprout. (Great Place to Work)
Bottom line: Sprout Social’s culture centers on high performance without losing collaboration, trust and employee voice. Employees are expected to own their work and continually improve it, but Sprout pairs those expectations with flexible work, supportive colleagues and an environment where employees say they can influence decisions and solve meaningful problems together.
Sprout Social's Candidate Tradeoffs
If you’re weighing whether Sprout Social is the right fit, these are the core tradeoffs to consider.
- Sprout Social places greater emphasis on cross-functional collaboration that drives stronger, more integrated outcomes than on siloed, team-by-team execution.
Sprout Social Employee Perspectives
A strong culture is essential to achieving our mission, and we have built resilient teams full of brilliant minds and top talent that foster a sense of purpose that fuels our collective efforts.
At Sprout, culture is more than just a buzzword. We heavily invest in it to maintain a healthy and cohesive team culture, regardless of location.
What sets Sprout Social’s product apart in terms of accessibility?
We’re lucky at Sprout to have support for product accessibility at every level, from our individual contributors to executive leadership. Employees have a deeply empathetic desire to build the best possible experience for all of our customers, our leaders want to support and advocate for the constant improvement of the product, and, universally, everyone demonstrates openness and a willingness to learn.
We are uniquely positioned to move the needle on accessibility in digital marketing overall. As a software company, it’s our responsibility to offer a foundational accessible user experience in our product. And as a leader in social media management, we’re uniquely positioned to encourage our customers to think about inclusive content — making it easier for them to manage their image alt tags or video SRT caption files.
How does Sprout Social seek feedback from users about accessibility?
Sprout’s Product Inclusion team actively seeks feedback from our users regarding accessibility through close collaboration with our success team. They serve as a valuable bridge between our customers and our product teams, gathering insights, relaying them to us and connecting us for real-time conversations with customers.
We recently partnered with customers to better understand their alt text management across media platforms, including Sprout Social. This research helped us recognize some quick wins to improve the usability of our alt text management experience in our calendar.
We’re also lucky to partner with customers like the Royal National Institute of the Blind, who has offered their own recommendations on potential accessibility improvements for screen reader users.
What advice do you have for companies hoping to improve product accessibility beyond baseline standards?
It's crucial to get buy-in from all levels of the organization. Executive-level advocates can amplify inclusive messaging and allocate resources for accessibility efforts. It's also important to empower and elevate individuals who are passionate about accessibility, highlighting their work and encouraging them to share ideas.
It's helpful to expand our understanding of disability beyond technology. Engaging with resources like books such as Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig, podcasts like Included by the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center and following social media influencers like Sinéad Burke or Alex Locust can provide insights and perspectives that reflect a rich myriad of disability experiences and build empathy for the diverse group of users we build for every day.
Describe your sales team culture in one word. Why did you choose that word?
Sprout Social has done phenomenal work in building a sales culture that is not only high performing but also extremely collaborative. If I had to boil our sales culture down to one word, “supportive” is what I’d choose. Not a day goes by where our team isn’t sharing best practices to help each other level-up or hopping on internal syncs to chat through tough scenarios.
At Sprout, we strive to embody our values every single day. Both internally and externally, our team aims to be a joy to work with, change the game and approach everything through an ‘all in, all together’ mentality. Weaving these values into our day-to-day sales roles allows all of us to put our best foot forward, both with each other and with our customers.
The best part? It’s not just the AEs, SDRs and BDRs that share this level of support and collaboration, but it’s something we experience heavily from all of our leaders, as well. Bringing leaders into our deals isn’t something we feel like we need to do; it’s something we truly want to do.
What are your team’s traditions or growth opportunities, and how do these traditions help team members connect, evolve and stay motivated?
One of my favorite traditions that has withstood the test of time here at Sprout is every new sales hire being paired with a peer mentor for their first two to three months of joining the team. Not only does this program help ensure new hires find success early in their Sprout career, it also allows for stronger individual and team collaboration to drive deeper connections with our colleagues.
Additionally, in the post-Covid world we’re all living in where many folks choose to work remotely, Sprout makes it a point for our teams to spend as much in-person time together as possible. From department meetups in both the first and second half of the year, combined with individual team events in between, our team gets so excited to spend time together at our Chicago headquarters.
As I mentioned above, everything at Sprout comes back to collaboration and support. From one-on-one partnerships to full team events, this level of teamwork allows all of us to bring our best selves to work day in and day out.
How does a strong team culture make you feel more connected to your day-to-day work?
There’s something to be said about organizations that foster a culture where folks feel accepted, heard and supported — and I’m so grateful to be a part of Sprout Social, where this rings true daily.
Having been at Sprout for six years, I’ve had the privilege of growing my career from the SMB team to the Large Enterprise team, where I’m currently a senior AE and team lead for our healthcare and life sciences vertical. Each team and leader that I’ve worked with at Sprout has made me more passionate about my day-to-day work, as we all want one another to be successful.
Whether you like to describe this iconic adage as ‘work-life balance’ or ‘work-life harmony,’ there’s a level of connectivity that exists at Sprout (thanks to our team) that drives motivation and happiness not often found in sales cultures. And the embodiment of being ‘all in, all together’ helps see this through.
Sprout Social’s culture is shaped by a strong sense of pride in both the company’s products and the people behind them. Employees describe a shared enthusiasm for delivering high-quality work, with company-wide moments reinforcing a sense of collective accomplishment and connection to the broader team.
“A strength of our culture is that we’re very proud to work here. When we do our annual all-company kickoff, there’s this shared sentiment that we’re proud to be shipping out a best-in-class product as part of such a bada** team.”
Sprout Social Employee Reviews
What People Are Saying About Sprout Social
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Collaborative & Supportive Culture: Colleagues are often seen as smart, welcoming and collaborative, fostering teamwork across functions. Day-to-day peer support is highlighted as a defining strength.
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Healthy Workload & Retention: Flexible and hybrid ways of working support balance, making it easier to manage life and work. Company practices around time off and flexibility contribute to a sustainable rhythm.
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People-First Culture: Ongoing DEI and belonging programs, including resource groups, are prominently emphasized. These efforts are described as integral to the culture story.
Sprout Social's Benefits
Company or teams have recognition rituals for individual work
Employee feedback used to shape policies and strategy
Encourages autonomy and ownership from employees
Established employee awards to honor work and contributions
Managers offer consistent feedback loops
Provides resources to build team camaraderie
Offers company-sponsored happy hours
Offers company-sponsored outings
Offers Employee Resource Groups
Offers fitness stipend
Offers wellness initiatives designed to combat burnout and mental fatigue
Offers wellness programs
Partners with nonprofits
Provides access to an onsite gym
Provides employees with ability to schedule focus-time blocks
Provides opportunities to volunteer in the local community
Works with employees to create a sustainable work pace
Defined values and mission statements
Engineering team utilizes pair programming
Hosts in-person revenue kickoff meetings
Implements team-based strategic planning
Leadership is transparent and communicative
Open office floor plan to encourage communication and collaboration
Uses an OKR operational model to clearly define goals and priorities
Utilizes an open door policy that encourages accessibility
Async-friendly policies, culture that encourage work flexibility
Defined boundaries around off-hours communication
Offers a remote work program
Utilizes a hybrid work model
