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Illustrating success: how strategic HR helped ensure a Bright future
With offices in London and New York, The Bright Agency, represents a diverse array of children’s illustrators, animators, and authors. Vicki Willden-Lebrecht, the entrepreneurial founder and CEO, has guided the agency through two decades of growth and transformation, taking a forward-thinking approach to managing and empowering her team, such as embracing hybrid working well before the pandemic. However, the extra challenges brought on by Covid and the recognition that they needed true “people expertise” to manage their growth from a people perspective led to Vicki bringing in a people partner to ensure sustainable future growth for her agency.
A Canvas of challenges
By July 2021, the company had grown to 35 people, but there was no formal HR function in place. There was a recognition that Bright would benefit from an HR professional – there were some negative reviews on Glassdoor which the team felt was having a detrimental impact on attracting new staff and was affecting morale. Understanding the need to have time to focus on her main priority of growing the business, Vicki brought in People Director, Michelle Lustig from People Puzzles to lead the whole People function at the agency.
Michelle was thrown in at the deep end and was set to task dealing with various People matters and several key challenges emerged:
1. Management issues: the agency was inexperienced in managing people and having difficult conversations, leading to low morale, poor performance management processes which resulted in negative reviews on platforms like Glassdoor
2. Drive for productivity: The organisational structure was complex and cumbersome, resulting in high overhead costs and inefficiencies
3. No in-house HR: there was no formal HR function in place, leading to uncertainty in handling people matters
Drawing up big dreams
Michelle was delighted to find a ‘change-ready organisation’ and she has supported Vicki and Global MD, James Burns, to align the people strategy to the business strategy by implementing a number of strategic interventions. These included:
1. Leadership restructure: the leadership team was streamlined, with roles clarified to ensure accountability and efficiency. Although that meant some difficult goodbyes, it has helped clarify role purposes and has led to a culture of accountability, now cascaded through the organisation using quarterly and half-yearly reviews, performance management, and clear expectations to support and develop employees, as well as recognise when changes were needed.
2. Operational simplification: the business structure was simplified over time, resulting in significant savings, in excess of £200,000 annually and a reduction in headcount from 37 to 28 without an impact on productivity or growth. Michelle ensured that the people’s abilities and talents were fully developed, by upskilling the best people through a series of management training workshops and conducting DISC profiling of the team, so that everyone understood each other’s working styles. She set up clear career pathways and ensured that the right people were in the right role. This helped in reducing operational costs and improving overall efficiency.
3. Business strategy: Michelle provided Vicki and the Leadership team with coaching to harness her entrepreneurial ambitions. By taking a strategic approach, they looked at which areas were profitable and took the commercial decision to focus attention on high-value activities.
4. Professional HR system: Michelle established a professional HR system in both the UK and the US, bringing clarity and confidence in managing all people-related matters. This included setting up clear processes for dealing with performance issues, regular quarterly reviews, targets and ensuring compliance. She put in a more robust interview process, so that values are communicated to new people from day one and everyone joining had a more consistent experience.
Outlining success
As a result of the changes that have taken place since Michelle started to support Vicki and James, Bright Agency now has a nimble, lean team of people committed to the agency and there have been no further negative reviews on Glassdoor. The efficiencies in headcount have led to significant savings in excess of £200,000, which has increased profitability, created a happier place to work, and taken a significant management challenge away from the senior leaders
“Having Michelle advising the board has taken a weight off my shoulders” said Global MD, James Burns. “People issues take up less of my time as Michelle is able to help us have difficult conversations in an effective manner that leads to better performance from the team and enables me to focus on driving the business forwards.”
“I draw energy from working with such a dynamic business that is so responsive to change. It is rewarding to see the impact that I have been able to have on the growth of the business and the individual people that I’m supporting. Vicki and James are great to work with – not only are they really lovely people with a smart eye for business they are also kind and compassionate employers” Fractional People Director, Michelle Lustig
Could your business benefit from some expert guidance on structure, culture and performance? Whatever stage of the journey you’re at, if you can see the benefit of keeping people at the heart of your business and creating a future-ready strategy for growth, we’d love to have a chat. For a free 30-minute consultation with an HR Director local to you, please contact us on 0345 646 5201, or email hello@peoplepuzzles for a call back.
