Havas Lynx Group was recently listed as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces in 2023 – congrats to the team! Read more from Claire Knapp, CEO, and Aimee Stapleton, People Director at Havas Lynx Group, about their win, the process for receiving the certification, and what’s next for the agency.
Havas Lynx Group was recently listed as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces in 2023, what do you think were its key success factors?
We’re absolutely thrilled with our ranking; it’s a true reflection of everybody’s passion and talent. I don’t think there’s any secret sauce to a good culture – it’s just doing the basics well and having a decent drop of empathy in every decision. It’s impossible to be perfect, so we just do our best to get better as an employer day by day. Ask us again in 12 months and I’d like to think we’ll be doing even better when it comes to our culture. We put as much focus and investment on our people and environment as possible. We do our best to champion well-being, health and happiness, performance/progression, ED&I, and our collaboration. Probably one of our cornerstone initiatives is the LX Academy, which houses all our learning and development, from huge keynote thought leaders, down to the very basics. We also pride ourselves on the ability to support an individual at every step of their career and personally too – from starting as a graduate through to senior leadership. It helps that the work we do can have such a meaningful impact on the lives of patients and HCPs, and the world too when you look at our pro bono projects. So overall, everything we do is about impact that matters, and that’s equally as true internally for our people as it is externally for our clients.
Why is it so important / meaningful to be named a Great Place to Work?
It’s no secret that our people are what make us so special. We’re thrilled to have ranked 38th on the list among the official Top 100 large organisations – it’s a testament to the wonderful individuals who make up the Havas Lynx Group and their tireless passion and ideas that ultimately create an impact that matters. This one is particularly meaningful to us because it’s so easy to talk about culture but much harder to really measure that – this gives us a tangible gauge of how we’re doing right now. It feels pretty special to rank in the top 40.
Can you tell us more about the work that goes into receiving a GPTW certification?
The whole process is pretty thorough. First, we asked all our employees to take an anonymous survey. This was all about getting a sense of how they feel about our culture, leadership, trust, and camaraderie at work. If you get a high score on the survey, you receive accreditation from Great Place to Work. But we didn’t stop there. We wanted to get on a list of top employers too, so we also wrote up a detailed report about our culture, policies, and practices. Great Place to Work took all that info, looked at how we compared against other companies of our size and in our industry, and decided whether we made it on to their UK Top 100 Large Employers list.
What do you hope to benefit from this certification?
Firstly, this is a massive thank you to everyone at Lynx – they are what makes us a Great Place to Work; so it’s a great opportunity to just pause and recognise the mammoth efforts that everyone puts in. But equally, we hope to continue to learn and grow. So, the certification and scores give us guidance on where and how we should be spending our time and what our next steps should be.
Can you share some of the results from this year’s survey?
We’re so pleased that our highest scoring results all revolved around ED&I (Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion). We achieved scores over 92% on questions related to being treated fairly, irrespective of one’s sexual orientation or race, as well as feeling welcomed when joining our company. Additionally, we scored high on other cultural elements such as intimacy (86%), community (84%), and justice (87%).