MediaCom – Culture + Recruit Case Study

INTRODUCTION

MediaCom is one of the world’s leading media agencies, they employ 12,000 people across 125 offices in 100 countries and are part of the WPP media Group. Their clients come from a wide variety of industries, from automotive to consumer goods, from retail and pharmaceutical to telecommunications, entertainment, and fashion. They offer specialist services in digital, ROI and direct response, consumer insights and research, business science, sponsorship, and sports marketing.

As an organisation, they invest in people first – It’s their mission to foster a culture where people feel they belong, can be themselves, and where diversity of thought is valued.

MediaCom were in the market for a solution that challenged their conventional team compositions to help match, optimise and drive their clients’ businesses forward at scale in addition to enhancing internal productivity and innovation.

OBJECTIVES

• Better align their onsite teams with each of their client’s culture
• Undertake a scientific approach to building client teams
• Hire a diverse range of people from differing backgrounds who share similar values 
• Model team compositions and evaluate which individuals work best together
• Recognise the talent and cost effects of adding or removing individuals to/from different groups
• Effectively match team capabilities to their client’s culture and requirements 
• Build client teams not just on skills but on culture

WHY MEDIACOM CHOSE HIREGAINS

HireGains were selected from a number of vendors due to:

Easy deployment

HireGains did not have a complicated set-up or training approaches. It could be implemented quickly, and we had access to the results and insights immediately. It was not taxing on our employees or candidates in the hiring process to join MediaCom.

Unparalleled experience in supporting, selecting and building teams that win

HireGains has a 20-year history of working with some of Britain’s greatest sporting elite teams. Their heritage gave us confidence they not only had the science to win but had practically tested their approaches in some of the harshest performance environments – this validity provided assurance that their technology and approach were robust.

Tested scientific approach and model, which has enabled teams to be built in sustainable ways 

The HireGains software has been tested over a long period of time, across many different elite sporting teams and business verticals. This was an important factor to consider when selecting a partner to work with, as the solution we chose needed to be userfriendly and not overwhelming for our HR and creative teams.

Culture first approach that fits with the values of MediaCom

HireGains are specialists in measuring culture. We have a people-first mantra and the HireGains approach, science, and software matched our needs perfectly.

SOLUTION

Using the HireGains Recruit platform to measure…

• Current employees and how compatible they are with a client’s team culture
• The right composition of teams
• Employee commitment to the values and strategy of the business and their clients
• How culture is driving/hindering performance
• Levels of focus and effort together with fatigue and burnout risks

HOW MEDIACOM USE THE CULTURE HEALTH CHECKS + RECRUIT SOLUTIONS

Andy Campbell Critchley, HR lead commented “The HireGains software is used to assess the personality, behaviours, and values of our people first to understand their shared values. This feeds into team behaviours and helps us continuously improve our culture.

To add an extra dimension, we then use this insight with our clients, to identify which Account Managers and teams are best suited to them based on their values and culture, as well as skills. That way we serve our clients better and enhance our client relationships, as our teams are more aligned with the clients they are working with.

RESULTS

Andy Campbell-Critchley commented: “The results were better than we expected, we were surprised by how clear the insights from the HireGains software were. It was easy to adopt into our standard operating practices with clients, who loved the fact we were thinking about their culture and using the results to partner more closely with them and build a team to service them based on science.

The approach has been seen as highly innovative by clients such as Mars Confectionary and supports the MediaCom innovation values and brand.

The adoption of the software has been seamless and teams in general have higher engagement. It’s also proven popular with employees, enabling them to understand which clients they are most likely to succeed with, based on their cultural preferences.

The result overall is happy clients, who are partnering with MediaCom for the long term.