Our client, The Marketing Eye, is the UK’s foremost marketing agency supporting lenders and other leading players in the Alternative Finance and broader FinTech niches.

The company operates in an ever expanding, ever more complex environment in which staff need to be multi-skilled and able to converse with their clients on many levels.

The firm identified that it needed to improve the overall skills of its staff. The Marketing Eye identified that it needed to have its staff identify their own development paths. It needed to have its staff think about their future careers and to take personal responsibility for development action.

The project started with TimelessTime and The Marketing Eye management developing a competency and behaviours framework – a global statement of all the skills, knowledge and behaviours needed across the firm. In essence this defined the competencies and behaviours that the firm needed for the coming years – to be achieved by a mix of training and development and by recruitment.

A TimelessTime consultant then met every couple of months with each member of staff in the firm. The consultant discussed and agreed with each staff member their personal career objectives and shared the desired competencies and behaviours. A gap between the individual’s competencies and behaviours and those desired was developed for each person. From that, a personal action plan was developed.

All managers want their people to develop. The issue is how and in what direction. Neil Edwards from The Marketing Eye identified that a catalyst was required – specialist skills were needed to guide and spur his people on. He also identified that , he was not the one to do this. An external agent was needed.

As Neil Edwards commented, “When running a busy marketing agency, it’s important that ample attention is given to the team’s personal development. By contracting career coaching to TimelessTime, each person has grown their skills and knowledge to meet both company and personal aspirations.”

Huge progress was made.

One marketing consultant talked to industry colleagues and read widely to enhance his understanding of social media and how social media would likely develop in the future. Another developed an electronic library to store and retrieve material used day to day, then launched the facility centrally.

Another identified several improvements in the processes for controlling projects leading to enhance client satisfaction and rolled out the change across the firm. And a further marketer developed her interest in management, completing several leadership courses.

But the most significant outcome was the extensive discussion about careers across the agency. Members of staff realised that management were interested in them and their future with the firm – to the extent that The Marketing Eye was prepared to fund career coaching and potentially skills and knowledge development.

The result was a heightened staff commitment and significant shifts in staff skills, knowledge and thinking.