Creating a strong culture is very important to us all at NOVOS. It helps create a positive working environment and boosts morale. As the agency grows, we want to maintain an environment where everyone feels heard and recognised and create opportunities for colleagues to connect. So here are a few culture updates for this quarter.
Culture Activities
We have created an online Culture Hub to update everyone at NOVOS on new activities and projects. This includes a suggestions submission box for new culture ideas and a calendar to lay out the monthly agenda.
Although we use a hybrid working approach at the agency, we still want to encourage coming into the office to integrate teams and build relationships. We host monthly culture afternoons on the last Thursday of each month, which has included a variety of different themes, including celebrating Pride month, Jubilee afternoon tea celebrations, and a NOVOS sports day.
We have also introduced mid-month culture afternoons (which usually involve going to the pub) to encourage connecting with each other outside of the working environment. In July, NOVOS also participated in an inter-agency football tournament, competing against other agencies from the digital marketing industry. Although we were knocked out in the Semi-Finals, the NOVOS football team gave a blinding performance – raising £170 for charity!
Not only that, but each quarter, we send our teams on a team lunch together to celebrate their achievements and connect outside of the office, home or otherwise. The lunches of choice for Q2 included giant cheesecakes from Gloria in Covent Garden and gourmet burgers from Honest Kitchen!
New Starters
We’ve been onboarding a few new starters to the agency this quarter, with more to come in the following months, so creating social opportunities to integrate everyone into the agency has been a keen focus.
We’ve updated our onboarding process to create more touch points, even before the new starters’ first day, and developed a buddy system for their first three months to establish extra layers of support and communication. Creating a comfortable working environment right from the get-go helps to establish confidence and promote personal development within the agency and has, therefore, been an important area to implement into our culture strategy at NOVOS.
How We’ve Been Continuously Developing Our Culture
Keeping on top of our culture and listening to feedback is really important to us. We’ve been using Pulse surveys and Think Tank sessions to generate ideas and hear feedback from the teams about what they would like included in their working environment, and reviewing the effectiveness of existing systems. This has helped us create new culture activities and training opportunities and promote our business goals alongside the culture of NOVOS.
Our July Think Tank generated a list of fantastic ideas to implement into our culture. Language lessons were highly requested, so, starting from August, every lunchtime, some lucky Novae’s will be learning Italian! And there are still plenty more culture ideas in the pipeline!
Another suggestion about managing increasing living costs has inspired a financial wellbeing training session which will also commence in August and that we aim to repeat once a quarter. We have partnered with a financial coaching company that has developed an app around budgeting, setting and tracking financial goals and offering 1-1 coaching support.
Finally, we have introduced weekly Friday catch-up meetings for the whole agency to share recognition and achievements from the week. It’s a great way for the teams to share what they have been working on and end the week with a positive discussion!
Charity Starts at Home
NOVOS pledges to donate a portion of money to charity each year as part of our business aim. However, our Think Tank sessions have inspired us to create a charity initiative that involves everyone at NOVOS.
We have created a monthly charity draw in which one Novi will be selected each month to choose a meaningful charity to them. NOVOS will then donate to the nominated charity, allowing us to show our support to individual causes people are passionate about while still keeping up with our charitable donations. We will be expanding this initiative over the following quarter, partaking in more charity events as well as fundraisers, both individually and as a team.
Throughout the second quarter, we have implemented changes to the agency which support our values, develop our culture and promote some of the many reasons that make us unique here at NOVOS. Continuing to strengthen our culture at NOVOS strengthens our daily teamwork and collaboration skills as well as improving engagement to support new initiatives such as charity fundraising events as a team and helping our new starters settle in comfortably. We are excited to continue developing our culture and processes throughout the year with some activities and events already lined up for Q3