Pink Squid
Supporting the growth and culture of this award-winning creative agency by providing an outsourced HR team.
Pink Squid
Pink Squid is a multiple award-winning creative agency that delivers beautifully intelligent employer brand and education marketing communications. They work with a number of well-known clients from Just Eat to Vodafone.
Pink Squid started working with us as one of our first clients in 2015. Since then we have helped the agency grow from a small team of 10 to 65 employees who are based across the UK and US.
Why did Pink Squid approach us?
Over the course of our collaboration with Pink Squid, our role has been to support their long-term vision of sustainable growth. The Founding Directors were not just leaders but were also at the forefront of innovation, client relations, and cultivating a thriving creative culture. As the agency headcount grew, it was important to embed and support a wider management structure which would ensure the agency continued to deliver work aligned with their core values and high-quality standards.
How we worked with Pink Squid?
Alongside providing ongoing support for the people matters that rose, We supported the team in introducing a competency framework. This set clear definitions of the skills and experience required at each level for every department. While the teams themselves were the experts defining those competencies, our role was to ensure the framework was cohesive and followed a structure that would allow it to become a cornerstone for performance and career management for the team.
With the foundation of the competency framework in place, we developed a succession planning tool and training framework. This approach allowed the Pink Squid team to have objective conversations about team performance, using feedback to spot and bridge skill gaps. This paved the way for both current and aspiring leaders in the team.
In tandem, as new leaders began to play a more pivotal role in team management, we worked in partnership with them to design HR policies and procedures, ensuring they aligned with Pink Squid’s creative culture and positioned them as an employer of choice.
The Result
Today, Pink Squid boasts robust, fit-for-purpose HR policies, a comprehensive competency framework, and well-established performance and development processes. The company has a resilient management team and a culture that champions growth and creativity. We are privileged to continue to support Pink Squid in all aspects of their HR needs.
We continue to work with Pink Squid on an HR Partner basis, each year focusing the priorities that support the changing needs of the business.
“Creative businesses focus on being creative first, then rely on personality skills to manage people. There was nothing wrong with that initially, but with our growing teams, we needed to create a consistent approach. Their knowledge and expertise allowed us to evolve some best practices, and form disciplines that fits with our agency culture.”
Tsz Wu, Founder and Technical Director