About Limelight Sports Group Ltd

As the leader of the Limelights Sports, Craig has a very dynamic and consultative style of leadership. He continually projects an openness and connection with his team across every level, whilst still providing decisive decision making and thought leadership in order to drive the business forward. Craig recognised that for a team to excel it needs to be made up of different people with different skills and encourages diverse and broad team structures in order to deliver high performing teams. He operates an open door policy at all times and actively seeks the feedback of junior members of the team, as well as that of senior colleagues. He takes the time to engage with the team, at every level at company meetings, Friday drinks and during ad hoc opportunities in the office.

An example of how Limelight support employee development was demonstrated with Alice. Alice was working as a co-ordinator in the CRM team and in the middle of 2013 she expressed an interest to develop her technology skills and asked that if there was an opportunity to work in the Technology Department, could she be considered. Following conversations between Department Heads it was decided that Alice should be given the opportunity, as she demonstrated passion, commitment and a desire for excellence and was transferred to that department at a co-ordination level. Whilst working in that team it was soon recognised that Alice had an aptitude for UX Designing and therefore, an opportunity was created to allow Alice to become a UX designer. She was put on a 5 day intense UX designing training course, which resulted in her achieving 88% in her final exams. Supporting staff who have a desire to develop in other areas is a key part of their talent management strategy and they will openly support and encourage employees who wish to develop their skills in other areas of the business. This was also seen with Rachel, now a Project Manager in their experience team who had expressed her desire to develop her live event management skills whilst working in the Marketing team. As a result she attended a CIPD course that introduced her to management and helped her to develop the skills she would require to manage a team.

Every quarter Limelights hold company wide meetings that take place during the working day. The purpose of these meetings are to act as a knowledge sharing platform, provide an opportunity to celebrate success and create a platform to ensure the team are aligned to their strategy. The format of these meetings vary according to the content but are always interactive, participative and provide a unique platform for the team to input into wider strategies or projects as well as share ideas. Many of the sessions will have an element of sport built into the day, for example in March they held a session for the team at Fitness First’s Fusion gym. As sport is what they do, the team are passionate about sport and physical activity and therefore, they use as many opportunities as they can to allow the team to take part in sport and try new fitness or sporting opportunities. Once a year they also hold an annual summit, which across three days and has previously been held at Watergate Bay, Cornwall. This provides an opportunity for team bonding, sharing of new strategies and the team to input new initiatives as well as a chance for them to celebrate success and reward employees for their hard work throughout the year. These quarterly meetings have proven invaluable over the past three years that they been in place in terms of team building, cross department integration and celebrating success.