About Flamingo

This summer Flamingo embarked on their annual Expo; following last year’s three-day trip to Lake Como in Italy, this year’s chosen location was Istanbul. Expos act as a ‘thank you’ to their employees for the work they carry out throughout the year, bringing everyone together in a cultural setting far away from the office to socialise and unwind. These meetings communicate the company vision, and the values that help maintain Flamingo’s success, both in terms of the work they do for clients, and the company culture they work so hard to nurture and develop. The trips allow employees from across their offices to develop team spirit and lasting business relationships and brings people together as one united group. Their Co-CEOs deliver many of the sessions personally, and this has had a significant impact in enshrining excellence in their daily business, and making this available to all employees at all times. 

Staff development takes many forms at Flamingo: They believe learning and development should be broad, encompassing, and tailored to the needs of each individual. They deliberately use the language of ‘learning’ rather than ‘training’, to communicate that staff development should be ongoing, self-directed, and participatory. The core of their business lies in understanding people, culture and brands, and their learning programme encourages staff to develop their understanding of these pillars in the broadest way possible. So, naturally, Flamingo senior staff run regular sessions on core skills internally, and they encourage staff to attend external sessions, but they also encourage a wide range of activities which, though they may not look like ‘training’ as such, are hugely beneficial for staff development. Flamingo encourage staff secondments to both their own and their clients offices, all over the world. They encourage staff to write for their blogs, and present internally on subjects of interest to them in informal, lunchtime sessions. Flamingo encourage staff to learn languages, to read about the industry, to mentor other staff, internally and externally, to attend conferences, and museum exhibitions. Crucially, they acknowledge these as great learning experiences, ensuring their staff feel they have both individual freedom, and a wide range of resources to help their development in a way that is right for them. Flamingo share all of their learning resources on their intranet (which also provides a space for discussion and commentary), and discuss staff development at each review, ensuring open and continuous discussion and guidance

The most high-profile initiative for fostering their values is their annual team–building and strategy Expo: In 2014, all 235 staff from across Flamingo’s 7 offices came together for their global Expo, themed around Intersections (in Istanbul, the City of Intersections). This is by far the most unique and innovative way to reward and recognize employees and the most anticipated event in the Flamingo company calendar. It brings together their global team to share knowledge and achievements, foster relationships between offices and strengthen their distinctive culture. It strongly reflects their company values of connecting culturally providing a common sense of purpose, community and inspiration. Flamingo’s key to success in reward and recognition also lies in their focus on the career paths of team members and the creation of a sense of community. Flamingo continue to achieve staff retention rates of 90%+. Employees value the reward of learning including time off to attend inspiring internal talks, overseas learning exchanges as well as budgets to pursue language and learning goals which tie into commercial aims. Flamingo's secondments programme include overseas exchanges as well as to client organisations, marketing communication agencies and charities. A recent innovation has been a quarterly Promotions Board which brings the senior team together to ensure that promotions are timely, fair and well considered . There is a new quarterly Salary Board which ensures consistent and equitable decision making.  In September 2014, they launched Total Reward Statements which have had very positive feedback across the whole company.