Ogilvy is one of the world’s leading advertising agencies. It is a talent-driven business that values its people.
According to Ogilvy AUNZ chief strategy officer Toby Harrison, yearning for growth is the single most important currency for young people.
“For a communications industry, we communicate a lot externally, but we also do a lot internally,” he said at the Professional Planner Advice Practitioner Summit last Wednesday.
“To be a really good communicator, you have to be a bloody good listener, and we listen a lot to our business.”
Harrison said Ogilvy does numerous surveys, holds discussions with its staff, and has one-on-ones with others.
“You’ve got to have your finger on the pulse of what’s happening and what people want; we thought we were doing a good job on personal and development growth,” Harrison said.
“When we heard this, we went, wow, we’ve got to double down on this. This is the most critical component of what we can do to drive and excite our staff and make them feel amazing about the place that they work in.”
Ogilvy’s commitment to that has paid dividends over the past couple of years because staff satisfaction, capability, and skill set have grown significantly.
“What’s weird about that is, when you raise the bar, it’s hard for a lot of people to reach it,” Harrison said.
“But when you raise the floor, suddenly everyone’s capability grows. In their community, where everyone’s developing and getting better, suddenly, you get this sort of turbo charge effect.”
A journey for growth
Harrison studied theology in the hope of joining the church as a minister, but he ultimately a career pursued premiership football.
An apprenticeship at Sky Sports led him to watch sports for a living. He quickly rose through the ranks of Sky Sports, and in 2004, he decided to give it a go down under.
After a brief stint in film production and visual effects, Harrison went into advertising. He worked on a number of projects with National Australia bank’s direct division, Fox Sports, Cancer Council Australia, and several other companies.
After 10 years in Australia, Harrison went back to the United Kingdom and worked for Sony Mobile and Virgin Atlantic. In 2016, he returned to Australia and became Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy.
Not just young people
Although it may be youth are hungry, Harrison said it is not just young people who can benefit from personal and professional growth.
“We knew we were onto something when we realised that we were getting a broad canvas of people from within our organisation turning up and getting excited and invigorated about our learning program and development program,” Harrison said.
“It was really wonderful to see that even old dogs like me could come into stuff, have their mind blown, expand that, learn about it, and then deploy it the next day in a working environment.”
Ogilvy offers a structured program of personal development and growth, which Harrison said was designed holistically.
“It’s quite diverse and broad, which means we have to be helping educate and develop and nurture talent across a huge plethora of stuff,” Harrison said.
One part of the program is educating people on strategy and how they can use it daily.
“There’s also technological capability, relationship, management of people capability, personal development into nurturing and balancing well-being in your life with working,” he said.
Personal and professional development is important for everyone, and keeping employees happy and engaged is vital to the success of any business, he added.
