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The 2026 iteration of Best Places to Work in TV marks the 10^th time Broadcast has run the scheme. The past decade could be characterised a series of seismic shifts in the TV industry, from the rise of the streamers and video sharing platforms to the pandemic – which saw the BPTW initiative put on hiatus for 2021 – and the subsequent boom, bust and tentative recovery. Amid all of that, just one company has appeared on the list of top employers in every survey since 2016: the Banijay-owned Dragonfly TV.

The indie behind long-running blue lights show Ambulance, and seminal obs-doc One Born Every Minute, as well as the Jack Thorne-penned Broadcast-award winning single drama Then Barbara Met Alan, has routinely ranked among the top 10 indies on the list, landing the top spot in 2019. This year is no exception, as it has come in 8^th place.

For much of the past decade, the company has been led by Richard Bond, who joined the company in 2017 and became managing director in 2019, before moving on to become director of factual drama across Banijay in May last year.

One thing he was explicit about from the start, he says, was that he wanted to run the company “with a ‘no arseholes’ policy”.

He tells Broadcast: “I’ve worked in other companies where, when something went wrong – and things always go wrong in television, because it’s unpredictable and difficult – the first question is ‘why did it go wrong and who’s to blame?’

“And [at Dragonfly], I’ve always tried to have the first question be ‘what can I do to help you?’ – really my job is to help you solve a problem and make the program you’re working on better.”

The idea has become “cascading mantra” for managers throughout the company he says, and he made a point of hiring people who clearly felt the same way.

Among them was Alison Seymour, who joined the company in 2018 and is now director of production and operations. There isn’t, Bond says, a “secret sauce” to Dragonfly’s consistent popularity with its employees – but if there were, it would probably be Seymour.

“She’s one of the earliest people I hired there, and she’s hugely responsible for putting a great production management team in place – that’s one of the things that really helped Dragonfly stand out over time,” he says.

The net result, he says, is that production management and editorial “work harmoniously and supportively” together.

When Bond left the company last May, he was succeeded by a trio of senior staffers, comprising Seymour, and co-creative directors Ros Ponder, who joined in 2018, and Will Rowson, who joined in 2023.

Ponder and Rowson agree that Seymour’s team of production managers is responsible for much of the positive atmosphere and working conditions within the company.

“The production managers are honestly responsible for every aspect of the welfare of our team,” Ponder says. “They do all the obvious stuff like ensure that everyone’s working reasonable hours, they’re working on the schedules and looking after the budget and making sure we don’t get to those awful points that sometimes happen, very rarely, where you’ve run out of money and everyone’s stressed.

“But on top of that, they are looking after health, safety and welfare of all of our teams, all the risk assessments.”

The net effect, she says, is that people “feel really well looked after throughout”.

Seymour credits the relationship between herself, Ponder and Rowson for the lack of division between production management and editorial.

“I’ve encountered situations previously where editorial think PMs are there to serve them, and they’re not on the same level,” she says. “But here we’re very much aligned and work very closely together.

“And that does come from us, because the three of us respect each other and ensure that we are working together well, and that filters down.”

Ponder agrees. “Members of the editorial team will sit in the production meetings and go through all the budgets.”

Flat hierarchy and open communication

In fact, she says, staff of all levels are invited to join key meetings, playing into the company’s flat management structure, which prioritises open communication and transparency.

Seymour picks up on the theme, adding: “If someone came to sit in on one of our meetings, I’m not sure they would be able to tell who is senior to who.”

Ensuring all staff have understand the company’s ethos and have the communication skills to fully participate in it is paramount, Ponder says – for the benefit of colleagues and contributors alike.

“A lot of the programmes we make are involve quite sensitive stories and vulnerable contributors,” she says. “So we are always, always looking for people who have really strong people skills and will place the welfare of our contributors right as a priority at the top. I think that ability to care is large part of [what we’re looking for].”

Rowson agrees – on the latest series of Ambulance, he says, there were several key people “who hadn’t worked in TV before, recruited from other industries, because they’ve demonstrated great interpersonal skills”.

This, and the sense of being looked after by the company, can make a huge difference when dealing with difficult subject matters, he says.

“When you’re working on quite upsetting, challenging things – I know from when I was freelance – you’d go back and maybe sit in a bad hotel room, and it would be awful, so having someone check in and say ‘How’s your hotel?’, small things like that just make you feel loved,” he says.

All of the company’s production managers have been trained as Mental Health First Aiders, and psychiatric support is also available on each production. On Ambulance in particular, which regularly covers distressing life-or-death situations, each of the 100-strong crew members are paired up with a buddy, who will check in with them across the series, Rowson says.

“We also have enough productions that we can also move people around if the strain becomes too much, which is invaluable,” he says.

The company’s returning series, Ambulance and Surgeons: At the Edge of Life (running since 2016 and 2018 respectively) give it a distinct advantage when it comes to supporting workers, the trio acknowledge, including being able to offer longer contracts to freelancers.

The company’s annual turnover has fluctuated in recent years, dropping from £12.46m in 2019 to £7.60m in 2020, then rising to £15.3m in 2021 and falling to £12.3m and £9.9m in subsequent years, it is now almost level with where it was pre-pandemic at £12.01m. 

But amid that uncertainty, the returning series have stood the company in good stead, leaving it relatively sheltered from the boom (although, Seymour and Ponder point out, the PM teams shouldered much of the burden of the additional work during the talent crunch) and the commissioning slowdown.

When the pandemic struck, Seymour says: “We were lucky that we had couple of productions, include one in the edit during the strictest lockdowns, which meant we were able to continue working remotely. We all just mucked in and did jobs we didn’t normally do.”

The company was able to avoid redundancies and laying off freelances in large part, she says, because it took the decision to furlough staff and instead keep on freelancers.

“That was tricky,” she says. “Because it’s hard to tell someone with a staff job that they’re getting a reduction in pay and not going to come to work for the benefit of someone who’s freelance. But they did understand – in the end, it wasn’t for long, although of course you don’t know that at the time.”

In some ways, Rowson says, Dragonfly is still trying to find an equilibrium for remote working vs being in the office. Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the standard days to come into the office, but the trio has recently begun asking staff to come in on the first Monday of every month (with the offer of a free breakfast). The response, it seems, has been mixed, but the company’s watchword remains flexibility.

“We’re mindful of people’s situations,” Seymour says. “And it’s not that we didn’t allow [flexible working] before the pandemic, but now’s it’s the natural mindset.”

“One thing we do roughly monthly, is to all get together as one company – including freelancers – and share what’s been going on and what we’re working on. There’s a lot to be said for deliberately spending time in each other’s company”
Will Rowson

Remote working can pose challenges to the company’s sense of cohesion – as can working across multiple locations. With offices in London, Manchester and Glasgow, Dragonfly has had to think carefully about ensuring all parts of the organisation feel connected.

“It can be difficult,” Rowson acknowledges. “One thing we do roughly monthly, is to all get together as one company – including freelancers – and share what’s been going on and what we’re working on. There’s a lot to be said for deliberately spending time in each other’s company.”

The top trio also try to travel between offices – although Ponder admits it’s something they could probably do more of.

There’s also a humorous company newsletter, spontaneously started several years ago by two staffers, which features, among other things, interviews with new starters to introduce them to the company. “It’s warm, it’s funny, and it sets a tone,” Rowson says.

Recent surveys of staff have revealed that staff want more opportunities to socialise – and not just by going to the pub.

“And so our brilliant office manager has been ingenious in coming up with all kinds of different ways to do that, and then replicating those around the offices, so that people don’t feel left out,” Rowson says. ‘Paint and Sip’ evenings have been a particular success, he says (although he declines to share any of his paintings with Broadcast).

Bond, for his part, swears by the company’s traditional Christmas karaoke (where his song of choice was a bold one: Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart) as having had a key role in bringing the company together and crucially, making management seem approachable during his tenure.

More prosaically, surveys also highlighted that tech problems were causing staff to feel isolated – an easy fix with a big impact, Rowson says.

Career progression

Aside from uniting staff across geographical distances, one of the biggest challenges for the company, according to Seymour, is offering the right career progression (something that was a key factor in this year’s Best Places to Work survey).

“Because obviously we’re a small company, so we have to look to Banijay if people want to really progress,” she says. “It becomes difficult to sustain people in a role which doesn’t stop their career progressing.”

But Ponder is sanguine about it. “If we train people up and they get their break with us and end up with good credits which allow their careers to progress, and they go and do something else, well, that’s brilliant,” she says. “And they do come back!”

Bond, Ponder, Seymour and Rowson all point to securing a place on all 10 of Broadcast’s Best Places to Work lists as being among their biggest achievements with the company – but dig a little deeper and they each say they’re truly proudest of the sense of common purpose within the organisation.

This is driven, in no small part, by the content the company prioritises – Bond describes its editorial policy as “making programmes that matter to the audience and society”.

Ponder elaborates: “The types of programs that we make are one of the reasons why people love working for us.

“All of our programs have heart and real purpose, and that’s what gives you job satisfaction. Working on a show like Ambulance is hard, but I would hope that people feel really proud of working on them, and that they are meaningful.”

Rowson, the newest recruit of the current management trio, had heard about the company’s reputation before arriving.

“I don’t know what I was expecting – people floating around on beanbags maybe,” he jokes. “But really it’s just that people feel really close to their colleagues, and that’s an atmosphere that everyone’s contributed to – and that’s something to be proud to be part of.”