ZaneRay seems to have found a combination that works — keep employees happy and a successful business will follow.

Founded in 2000, the ZaneRay Group includes a team of web developers and designers who create work for a whole host of companies in the outdoor industry. ZaneRay was recently named for the fourth time to a spot on Outside magazine’s 50 Best Places to Work list highlighting its commitment to creating a culture that focuses on a work and life balance.

The company was started with the intention of being located close to areas that allow for employees to ski, bike and hike in the outdoors.

Kirk Cornelius, strategic director for ZaneRay, says companies like ZaneRay are often located in urban areas, but being in Whitefish has been the key to allowing employees to spend time outdoors and also as a recruiting tool for new employees.

“We take care of our employees,” he said. “We want to support them in building that best work life balance. This award is a testament to that.”

ZaneRay offers design and ecommerce technology for websites.

Reed Gregerson, president of the company, says ZaneRay has chosen to operate with a model of putting its employees first because it’s the right thing to do, but what has resulted in success for the company itself.

“We’ve found that it’s good for business,” he said. “We make a huge investment in time and training for employees so we want to keep people around. A lot of our employees have been with us over 10 years in an industry where most people change companies every two years.”

ZaneRay’s client list includes Skullcandy, Yeti Cycles, Orvis, Osprey, Carhartt and Patagonia.

Having continuity for who they’re working with at ZaneRay is important to those clients, Gregerson notes.

“Our customers appreciate when they call us that they can work with the same people year after year,” he said. “That has also meant that we’ve had very little turnover in our clients too. When we have employees who work for us for a long time it’s advantageous for us and them because it’s more efficient for everyone.”

ZaneRay landed at number 30 on the Outside magazine list that included two other Montana companies. Oboz Footwear based in Bozeman, and Mann Mortgage with offices across the state, also made the list.

“We believe that living our best lives will produce our best work, and we structure our working environment to support that balance, and we often turn down projects in order to maintain that stability,” says ZaneRay in the magazine write-up.

One of the perks of the job at ZaneRay is a flexible work schedule that allows employees to ski powder in the winter or hit the single track in the summer in the morning, and come into the office in the afternoon. Prior to the pandemic, group office outings included ski days, picnics and biking on the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park.

“We have a policy that while our employees are salaried, if they work over 40 hours per week they’re compensated for that,” Cornelius said. “We want to reward our employees that go above and beyond. We have a powder rule that if we get over a foot of snow in the morning you can go skiing and do your work later in the day. We do a lot of intense thinking and we know that also requires a much needed break to regroup.”

Already practiced in offering work from home and flexible schedules, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit this spring ZaneRay continued offering the same perks but it also added COVID-19 supplemental pay, and extended its typical employee donation match program allowing for donations to nonprofits and also small businesses.

“We have a business that’s perfectly suited to working at home,” Gregerson said. “But we didn’t want employees to worry about losing pay if they weren’t able to get their hours in because they had children or other people in their lives to take care of.”

The company includes 34 employees and is currently hiring.

Cornelius and Gregerson say ZaneRay has benefitted from having a client list that’s based in outdoor industry brands, which have seen an increase in purchases and in particular online purchases throughout the pandemic.

“We’re fortunate to be working with an industry that is thriving,” Cornelius said.

“We’re also fortunate that while in-person shopping has suffered, the demand for online ecommerce sites has increased,” Gergerson added.

Along with many of the brands it works with, ZaneRay has also made a commitment to assisting with causes that protect public lands and conservation. Doing so is the key to keeping the areas where its employees recreate, the company notes.

Both ZaneRay and Oboz Footwear, one of the other Montana companies on the Outside list, are both members of the Conservation Alliance.

Cornelius says Oboz creates high quality products and is also committed to sustainability and conservation efforts, so that makes them an ideal client for ZaneRay. “We love working with brands who are like-minded and extremely intentional about how they operate and why,” he said.

For more information, visit https://www.zaneray.com/.