What’s the Reality of Hiring a Diverse Team?

⏰ 10am, Tuesday 1st November 2022

• Are you struggling to build a diverse team?
• Meet agencies who know the genuine blockers and obstacles – as well as the lame excuses.

Paul David, CEO and co-founder at Literal Humans, has built a small yet diverse team. How has he achieved this, when others say they’re struggling to find diverse candidates? Paul suggests treating diversity like a product.

“We build products and services for clients all the time, we set timelines and targets and benchmarks, but people don’t do this for diversity and inclusion – and I think you just produce better, more creative, more interesting work for clients with a diverse team.”

Join this panel and take part in the discussion.

We’ll be joined by Paul alongside Heena Mistry, director at WYK Digital and Emily Banks, founder and CEO of Enna.

How Should You Approach Mental Health?

⏰ 1pm, Tuesday 1st November 2022

• What should you really have in place to protect your employee’s mental health?
• Are wellbeing apps and helplines just ‘barnacles on the boat’?
• Does taking an ‘employee benefits’ approach to protecting your staff do more harm than good?

When it comes to mental health, where does your responsibility as an employer start and end?

“Mindfulness app discounts, helplines and coaching aren’t always helpful. You’re trying to steer them towards something – when the problem might be to do with the work environment,” says Alistair Dornan, director of people experience consulting at Gallagher.

Join us and discuss:

1. What are your responsibilities as an employer?
2. How can you protect yourself and your team?
3. What role do line managers play in safeguarding people in your business?

Is Flexibility Key for Promoting Inclusivity?

⏰ 3:30pm, Tuesday 1st November 2022

• Flexibility means lots of different things – how is YOUR agency defining it in 2022?
• What do employees expect and what are other agencies like yours offering?
• Hear real stories from other agencies – and share your experience too.

It’s almost 2023! Has anybody figured out flexible working yet?

Agencies are trying to encourage people to come in for as little as one day a week. And when they do come in, they are often disappointed to find only a few lonely souls in the office.

Who is succeeding with flexibility? What are they doing – and what are they not doing?

Hear from agencies who are happy that their approach is paying off.

We’ll be hearing from by Emma Simkiss, MD of Freestyle, Christopher Robin, director at We Are Monumental, and Kelly Gilmour-Grassam, director of Making You Content.

So You Want to Be
a B Corp?

⏰ 11:15am, Wednesday 2nd November 2022

• What’s it really like to be a B Corp agency?
• How much work does it take – and what are the benefits?
• Meet agencies that have trodden the hard yards and hear what it’s really like.

In this session, you can meet other B Corp agencies and find out what achieving certification took – and whether it’s worth it.

If you are considering B Corp, you can get honest appraisals of whether you’re ready for it – and how much work it will be.

And if you are already a B Corp, you can find out whether you are making the most of it – from attracting talent to leveraging it to attract clients you want to work with. You can compare notes with other seasoned B Corp-ers!

We’ll be hearing from Alex Holliman, MD at Climbing Trees, Gail Hoban, co-founder of GAS Brand Studio, and Tom Wilford, founder of Futureproof.

The ‘Guerrilla’ Approach to Sustainability

⏰ 2:15pm, Wednesday 2nd November 2022

• Can you make a difference to sustainability without big programmes and initiatives?
• Gavin Shinfield co-founded technology agency Kyan. Now he’s its chief sustainability officer.
• In this session he’ll talk about the idea of a ‘guerrilla’ approach to sustainability.

When you think about making your agency more sustainable, is it a discreet project – or an ongoing journey?

“Sustainability is not a quick fix. It’s a continuous process,” says Gavin Shinfield, co-founder and chief sustainability officer of Kyan.

“We created the Sustainability Squad, an internal team open for all, which acts as a kind of forum. There are no stupid questions. There are no wrong answers. Just a shared passion for growing Kyan in a respectful and responsible way.”

In this session we’ll talk about how you can see sustainability as a path to follow – rather than a project to complete.

How Are You Demonstrating
Your Purpose?

⏰ 10am, Thursday 3rd November 2022

• A more ‘purpose-driven’ mentality is pushing more and more clients to review the values, approach and transparency of their supplier network.
• So how can you ensure your agency’s strategy and culture is purposeful enough to make a difference, AND keep clients on board?
• Good Innovation’s Ryan Bromley dedicates this workshop to helping you on your purpose journey.

Clients are putting purpose and impact into more briefs than ever – and knowing how to respond genuinely and credibly is getting harder.

To help agencies and businesses alike with this conundrum, social impact innovation agency Good Innovation has created an ‘Impact Maturity Scale’ – a framework to help you measure where you are on your purpose journey, and how far you need and want to go.

“It’s a scale of one to five,” says Good Innovation’s Yvonne Filler. “Often, organisations know they need to do something in the ‘purpose’ space – but don’t know where to begin.”

Level one is ‘curious yet confused’, and five is the kind of altitude of Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s. It allows companies to plot where they are, but also see what they need to do in order to move up the scale to the next level.

“So many companies will now only use agencies who are demonstrating purposeful impact. So purpose can be a real marketing tool too.”

Join this workshop hosted by Ryan Bromley if you’re looking for ideas to put some robust structure around your ‘for good’ offerings.

What’s It Like Working With Charities?

⏰ 1pm, Thursday 3rd November 2022

• Want to work with more charities?
• They are a significant focus for a lot of ‘for good’ agencies.
• But how much of your client base should be made up by non-profits?

What’s it really like to work with charity clients?

One Agency Hackers member agency specialises in working with ‘fourth sector’ clients. In the past five years, briefs have gone from demanding outputs to asking for outcomes.

“Clients used to want a video, a website and a pop up banner. Now they come to us and say, ‘We need to raise £20m by Christmas… can you help us?’”

In this fascinating session we speak to several agencies that work with charities – join us and hear the pros and cons of working with these curious creatures.

We’ll be discussing all of this with Matt Collins, MD at Platypus Digital, Suzanne Begley, product director at Torchbox, and Yasmin Georgiou, strategy lead at William Joseph.

Balancing Purpose
with Profitability

⏰ 3:30pm, Thursday 3rd November 2022

• You can do good and still make a profit…
• But there are all kinds of culture, mindset and positioning challenges when you’re trying to impact the world AND be commercial.

In this session we’ve lined up several agencies who are making a dent in the world – but are doing it with serious commercial chops.

Join this session and meet other agencies trying to do good and make the profit they deserve.

Our panellists for this session are Jen Swain, MD at Beatfreeks, Moh Al-Haifi, founder and ethical growth director at Zebra Growth, and Ray Clarke, chief design officer at hedgehog lab.