Fleishman-Hillard

Background

Fleishman-Hillard Fishburn is one of the UK’s Top 10 PR and Marketing communications agencies and has a strategic focus on growth both in the UK and across Europe. In a highly competitive talent market, where employer differentiation is challenging, FHF were looking for a way of developing their unique culture as a method for driving growth, as well as better attracting and retaining talent.

FHF approached Strengthscope as a potential partner who could help them create a plan to improve employee engagement, communication and management approach by introducing a strengths-based philosophy through all its people activities.

Our solution

We worked with the FHF HR and Talent Development team across the UK and Europe to create a route map for introducing the strengths-based approach across the talent lifecycle. This involved a series of discrete stages:

• Engaging the Executive team to determine measures of success and to ensure full and vocal participation from the top
• Designing and delivering two development ‘pathways’ for employees and managers, to provide a common language, and the knowledge and skills required for discussing day-to-day performance and future career development
• Weaving in strengths language and philosophy to HR processes such as appraisal and career conversations
• Upskilling the HR and Talent Development team, as well as self-nominated managers, to become ‘strengths coaches’, providing Strengthscope® feedback to all employees and championing the approach through their teams and employee forums
• Developing self-serve e-learning content for new starters and some European colleagues which could also help embed the approach by providing ‘on demand’ guidance for crucial conversations
• Designing and running strengths-based team development sessions for all teams across the business to improve team communication, cohesion and performance
• Strengths-based coaching for senior executives on a needs basis
• Ongoing review and embedding of the approach in a variety of areas, e.g. recruitment, client teaming and so on

Summary: FHF introduced a range of new approaches to help grow employee attraction, engagement and retention, including training pathways, team development, career/performance management conversations, ‘passion projects’, ‘side hustles’, family first policies, gender-neutral parental policies, school-holiday sabbaticals and flexible working.

Outcome

• Pitch win rate has risen to 70%
• Staff churn has now fallen to 20%
• The company won large agency of the year at the PW Awards in 2018, with the judging panel citing their ‘organisational culture’ as a major factor in their decision.