Southpaw Communications Limited

The Senior Management Team always look to lead with excellence in delivering against the company's BOB values across everything they do. They do this through initiatives like Curiosity Week, quarterly forums and acting as coaches for all of their talent. Tom is an inspirational and engaging leader of Southpaw. He fully promotes a flat structure and encourages people of all levels to be honest and open on what's working and what's not so they can drive positive change. He fully integrates with all staff and sits amongst the client service team. He is fiercely passionate about the BOB values and ensures that all of the talent within the agency are making them their own and leveraging them for career growth, contributing to the culture as well as delivering original creative thinking for clients. On a day to day basis you will see Tom being one of the team by making the odd cup of tea, asking people how their day is going and running from one meeting to another just like everyone else!

At Southpaw personal development is at the heart of the agency and in April 2016 the company won their industry body's gold standard in all things related to personal development. Southpaw take a unique approach to performance management by tailoring training to individual needs rather than a one size fits all method. They see inspiration as critical to people's development and as such run internal inspiration sessions alongside a platform where people can share thoughts, ideas or stuff they have found inspirational. Southpaw also encourage learning to be shared across the agency, as everyone has a talent or knowledge that can be shared to help develop others. Everyone commits to at least 24 hours of development per year, which can be learning something new themselves or helping to develop other people.

Part of the Southpaw culture is to be open and honest with every member of staff. As part of this ideology the company hold a quarterly company meeting that welcomes new joiners to the agency, celebrates the best strategic and creative work, rewards individuals who have represented their BOB values most consistently and also explains how the business is performing commercially. Southpaw celebrate the highs and lows together in order to stay united as a pack and to progress forward. They are very transparent on gross income generated, performance against budget, profit generated to date and forecasted profit. They feel this transparency gives their talent a real sense of ownership and empowers them to make a significant difference to their commercial, creative and cultural development. All employees are also given laptops, which allows them to work collaboratively and to not be tied to a specific spot within the building, which really helps promote team interaction for effective working and relationship building.