Introducing HYPEE, Muck Rack’s answer to the question: ‘What’s in it for me?’ as an employee

Muck Rack has always been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to our customers, so it comes as no surprise that the company’s Talent team is busy making sure Muck Rack is the very best place to work for high performers.

Earlier this year, the company launched HYPEE—the Hyper-Personalized Employee Experience—a new way to think about growth, performance and rewards at Muck Rack.

“It’s Muck Rack’s approach to building a high-performance culture by moving away from one-size-fits-all employee programs and instead creating more individualized experiences around performance, growth, recognition and engagement,” said Amber Russell, VP, Talent Management.

Where did HYPEE originate?

After joining Muck Rack in 2025, Amber attended a conference where she learned about an emerging trend in the people and talent space: bringing hyper-personalization to the team member experience.

“It was this abstract, novel idea at that point, but it was focused on not treating people how you want to be treated, but instead treating them how they want to be treated in the workforce,” Amber said. “Diversifying the [employee] experience enough that you ask managers to truly understand their employees and what motivates them.”

Companies like IBM and Meta were experimenting with personalizing the team member experience, and Amber thought: Why not us? She left the session inspired, and knew she wanted to bring a version of this philosophy back to Muck Rack.

Together, Amber and her colleagues on Muck Rack’s Talent team spent the next few months brainstorming, plotting, getting buy-in from company leadership and developing the HYPEE brand.

The first version of HYPEE, designed to create clearer pathways for employee development and performance, launched at Muck Rack’s company retreat in Mexico in early 2026.

We checked in with Amber and two of her colleagues on the Talent team—Molly Dircksen, Senior Director, Talent Management and Katie Selman-Green, Talent Partner, Technology & Business Operations—to learn more about HYPEE and what it means for the Muck Rack team and future team members.

What HYPEE is all about

The core idea of HYPEE is simple: people may be held to a consistent performance standard, but they do not all need the same path, motivation, feedback style or development experience to succeed.

The program is grounded in the Platinum Rule: treat people the way they want to be treated.

Rather than assuming everyone wants the same promotion path, recognition, reward or learning opportunity, HYPEE is designed to create multiple meaningful ways for teammates to develop and make an impact.

“It's giving team members the opportunity to choose their own adventure,” said Molly. “Some things motivate some employees that wouldn't motivate others.

HYPEE has quickly become the company’s core employer branding strategy since its launch.

“Your career isn't one size fits all. Why should the way we reward or do learning and development here at Muck Rack be one size fits all either?” said Katie.

Rolling out HYPEE at Muck Rack

After HYPEE was announced, the People team launched a career satisfaction survey, asking Muck Rack team members questions like:

• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• What motivates you the most?
• What rewards are meaningful to you?
• What would keep you at Muck Rack?
• What wouldn't keep you here?

“We asked team members to be ruthlessly honest and to give us as much information as possible to help build the program,” Amber said.

The responses from the survey helped shape the program.

One interesting finding: Total rewards matter equally (or more) in some instances to team members than just cash compensation i.e. things like the costs of benefits, leave policies and work-life balance flexibility emerged as equal or weighted more than cash compensation.

Plus, at an organization, the Talent team only controls 30% of the employee experience. The other 70% comes from managers and the experience they enable for their team members.

“We knew that leadership enablement was incredibly important, and empowering managers and giving them the right toolkit was going to actually drive this experience more than anything that we rolled out,” Amber said.

This statistic helped form HYPEE Labs, manager enablement training pushing regular content out to leaders on topics, including: effective one-on-ones, how to set goals with employees and more. The team also focused heavily on equitable performance ratings and standardizing the performance review process to ensure everyone knows what “good” looks like.

Plus, managers get first access to HYPEE’s other initiatives.

“Programs like Bar Raiser and Gigs all launch to managers first, so that they can absorb them, become experts and cascade that down to their teams as well,” Amber shared.

What hyper-personalization at Muck Rack looks like

HYPEE focuses on three pillars:

• Performance defines the impact expected.
• Rewards recognize that impact.
• Growth helps employees build toward what comes next.

In addition to HYPEE Labs mentioned above, the program currently includes a handful of different programs and opportunities for high-performing team members.

The Bar Raiser program

The Bar Raiser program invites high-performing teammates who exemplify Muck Rack’s values to be part of the interview process for new team members to build a hiring process that consistently raises the talent bar.

“Bar Raiser has been instrumental in our interviewing success,” Amber said. “We now have 25 additional interviewers across the organization who have learned skills on behavioral interviewing.”

Katie pointed out how prestigious it is to become a Bar Raiser at Muck Rack—it’s not something team members can apply for. They must be nominated, and it’s a chance to shape the future of Muck Rack’s workforce.

Growth Gigs

Growth Gigs are paid, short-term opportunities designed to help Muck Rackers build new skills, work on meaningful business projects and gain experience outside their day-to-day roles.

Instead of hiring an external service or a new team member to assist on specific special projects, Growth Gigs invites high-performers to take on a paid “side gig.”

For example, an editorial team member recently had the opportunity to work with our event marketing manager on the Generative Pulse Summit.

“That is an experience that this employee would not have gotten in their current role alone,” Katie shared. “This gives cross team opportunities that team members would not be able to normally get in their current role that they can later use to advance or build towards something else in their career.”

Why personalizing the employee experience is important even at a company with an already strong culture

Muck Rack has always been proud of its strong company culture. So why roll out a program like this one?

Muck Rack wants to retain—and reward—high performers.

“We noticed a trend at Muck Rack in surveying employees: the higher of a performer you are here, the less of a future you saw,” Amber explained. “So the lower your performance score, the more you thought career growth was sort of an inherent, sure thing.”

Amber said HYPEE is one way to address those themes, and ensure that team members have clear expectations, diversified plans and not a one-size-fits-all rewards model.

It’s also a way to reward those high performers so they know there is a path forward for them at Muck Rack.

Looking ahead at what’s next for HYPEE

As Muck Rack as a product innovates in the AI space and beyond, Amber said it felt disingenuous to be a pioneer for our customers, but not to also be thinking about the employee experience.

“I strongly believe in this idea of not infantilizing a workplace. We're all adults, we're all doing this for our careers. We spend a ton of time here,” she said. “At work, you want to feel valued, like you matter.”

Muck Rack wants to give team members an experience that’s actually meaningful to them.

“Every Muck Rack team member should be able to clearly answer the question: what’s in it for me?” Amber said.

But more than that, she wants that answer to accurately reflect what they actually want out of their experience.

The team has big plans for what’s next for HYPEE.

“In an ideal state next year, we would go through cash compensation planning for all employees, and then we would have an in lieu of cash rewards that are tied to level and dollar amount that you can choose or you can recommend something that's more meaningful to you than just a traditional straight [pay] increase,” Amber said.

Examples include extended time off to welcome a new family member or additional funding to an HSA in a lump sum amount or even access to a learning and development opportunity.

One thing is clear: the Talent team can’t make HYPEE a success without clear partnership and feedback from individual team members.

“The whole basis of hyper-personalization and treating others how they want to be treated is you have to communicate with us what that means to you,” she said. “We want to feel like we are in partnership, supporting our employees.”

Interested in joining our team? Learn more about who we are and explore our open roles.