Sphere 5 Year Strategy

5Defining our future Sphere Digital Recruitment Five Year Strategy 2016–2021

04 | A View from the Bridge

06 | Digital Recruitment Outlook

08 | SphereDNA

10 | Our People

12 | Growth

14 | Our Customers

16 | Brand and Marketing

18 | Investing in our Future

20 | Some Final Thoughts as we Make our Plan Happen

23 | Key Goals

Contents

A View from the Bridge

Before launching Sphere in October 2012 we had a three year plan for the business with a clear emphasis on providing a specialist quality recruitment service in the burgeoning digital market. To become successful in such a competitive arena we recognised the need to build a motivated and committed team who believed in our approach and our values, and who had the desire to travel with us at a rapid pace.

To stand out from the crowd is challenging for any recruitment business and it depends very heavily on the people you employ, the training and development they receive, and the leadership from the directors and managers. The creation of this five year strategic plan involved input from the entire company and it is now up to us to deliver it. Its purpose is to put down in black and white our objectives and goals for the next five years and to provide a road map for the direction in which we want to travel, as well as our likely destination in 2021. But that destination will simply be the first step on a much longer journey that will provide our people with opportunity and our customers with outstanding service.

At the Davos conference in 2016 the President and CEO of Hewlett Packard, Meg Whitman said “You can always go faster than you think you can”. And that is our credo going forward into the next five years.

Ed SteerCEO

Sphere – Defining our Future 5

A View from the Bridge

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Digital Recruitment Outlook


As digital technology has grown so too has the demand for talented people. Marketing departments are moving further towards digital, now over one third of all marketing roles are digitally focused. This trend is likely to accelerate quickly over the coming years as Ecommerce booms and ad and marketing technology plays an ever greater role in how brands communicate with their audiences. The growth in this sector has created a huge number of jobs globally and recruitment is playing an more vital role in the development of the digital world.

In the last two years the digital sector has grown rapidly. By 2020 it is expected to add $1.3 trillion to the global economy. The use of smartphones has played a key part in this; in the UK people access data on their phones nearly 200 times a day. Advancements in technology and consumer habits have resulted in 90% of total data production taking place in the last two years. Furthermore, it has allowed the emergence of companies such as Uber, who are an app company; they own no vehicles and do not directly hire or pay drivers. It exists only through the growth of technology.

The UK has been at the forefront of digital growth. Online spending in the UK is the highest amongst major economies at an average of £2,000 per person per year. A report by the International Communications Market Report states that the UK has one of the strongest digital economies, driven by advertising, online spending and entertainment.

What does this mean for the digital recruitment market? Quite simply, more demand, more candidates, and expanding businesses and teams. In recent years, the developments in “big data” and programmatic and real time buying have led to targeted online advertising, creating the need for experts in these fields. This is one of a number of niche digital recruitment sectors where Sphere have established ourselves as a leading recruitment company. The digital recruitment sector has outperformed the overall recruitment market in the UK and is expected to again with double digit growth projected in the foreseeable future.

Ben SteerFinance Director

Digital Recruitment Outlook

1

SphereDNA

Tony Hsieh, CEO of billion $ ecommerce business Zappos, said “Our number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own.” And this is very much a view we share at Sphere. Our vision, values, mission, culture and our “SphereDNA” are of critical importance in our plan to build an enduring business.

Since we launched Sphere in 2012 the company’s DNA has been an important part of our success and we want to continue to harness an ambitious, friendly and high performing culture while maintaining a strong work ethic. By doing simple things brilliantly, by being positive in our approach and always aiming to achieve exceptional results for our customers we will continue to grow and develop.

Our strategy team that looked into Culture, Vision, Values and Community made a number of recommendations and set some key objectives for the business during the next five years.

• Put a big emphasis on recruiting quality people who share our work ethic and ambition.

• Use workshops and peer-to-peer learning to create a culture of excellence and high performance throughout the business.

• Ensure leadership is visible and motivating.• Provide and recognise that outstanding communications and

transparency, as the business grows, is an important element to our future success.

• Improve our induction and training programmes and use mentoring and buddies to help new people fit in from day one.

• Use Progress* to ensure that everyone in the business is focussed on their career and their career development.

• Get involved in corporate social responsibility by supporting a designated charity each year and play an active role in our local communities.

Our ValuesEXPERTISE – Know our markets and know our customers. Be specialist, be an expert.

PARTNERSHIP – Work together, listen, add value. Build long lasting relationships with customer and peers. Be a partner.

PURPOSE – Start projects with an end in mind. Have reason behind our action. Focus on a result. Be solutions driven. Be purposeful.

RESPONSIBILITY – Work with integrity. Understand our responsibility in everything that we do. Look first at ourselves. Be an example to others. Be responsible.

SIMPLICITY – Do small and basic things brilliantly all the time. Be clear and concise. Keep things simple.

AMBITION – Go above and beyond. Never settle for mediocrity. Expect and strive for excellence in everything we do. Be ambitious.

ADAPTABILITY – Be prepared. Embrace and drive change. Be opportunistic. Be adaptable.


SphereDNA

* Progress is a simple career development plan. Employees can follow two routes to our board of directors: “Consulting” – a billing figure head role with no man management responsibility or “Managing” – a managerial role. Staff are reviewed quarterly, six monthly or annually, depending on their level of experience. Progress reviews happen in all areas of our business for both fee earning and non-fee earning members of the team.

Our VisionA specialist digital media, marketing and technology recruitment business that will achieve great results for our people and our customers by having meaningful and engaging experiences with them that enable growth and get results.

2

Our People

Our business is all about people, so we have a great deal to consider in this area to help ensure we grow and develop as a business in the next five years. We want to continually improve our service to our customers and provide our people with opportunity, development and challenge. We wholeheartedly agree with the Head of Investors in People, Paul Devoy when he said “Put your people at the heart of your vision and they’ll use their talents to achieve it”. At Sphere we recognise that it’s about more than just words; it’s about some practical actions that help us achieve our goals, and our strategy team that looked at HR made the following suggestions about our goals and objectives in the period up to 2021.

Recruitment • We will improve our sales collateral and our presence in the

marketplace in order to be noticed and recognised as one of the very best recruiters in the digital landscape.

• Our reward and incentive programme must remain innovative and highly competitive.

• We will retain a strong Director contribution to all aspects of our recruitment.

Training• We will improve our induction training as well as ensuring our

training at every level is more consistent, highly visible and completely transparent.

• We intend to hire an in-house trainer to strengthen our recruitment skills and use external trainers for management training and development.

Retention• Retention of people is fundamental to providing our customers

with a high standard of service and is the cornerstone of our HR strategy and our understanding of what makes good organisations great.

• We recognise that our business benefits from the passion shown by our Directors and the culture that has been created since 2012. We will work hard to retain this unique aspect.

• We will look for continual improvement in a number of ways including our buddy and mentoring schemes, innovative, recognition and reward schemes and career progression that is both well-defined and, where needed, flexible.

• We agree with the old proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” and we will develop the “Fun Squad” to help keep this a reality at Sphere. Furthermore, we will create an environment that encourages people to engage in projects outside of the day job like corporate social responsibility and supporting our chosen charity.


£

Our People

Progress• We will make Progress highly visible to people from their first

day in the business and throughout their career with Sphere.• Progress will play a key role in developing people and

providing everyone at Sphere with a clear and simple plan to continually progress and develop into new and exciting roles within our business.

HR• We plan to appoint a full time HR professional to manage

and develop all aspects of our recruitment, training and retention strategies.

• We will introduce the Intranet to make our HR policy and processes clear and accessible.

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to. If you look after your staff, they’ll look after your customers. It’s that simple. Richard Branson, Virgin

Our team each bring unique skills and knowledge to deliver a world-class company.

3

Growth

The UK recruitment industry is valued at £31.5bn and currently employs some 100,000 people. It is anticipated to grow by 20% over the next three years and the digital marketplace is confidently expected to outperform most other sectors in percentage terms. Contract recruitment, in particular, grew by almost 10% in 2015 and is a key growth area in the years ahead.

At Sphere our desire for growth is based on the principles that have guided us from day one; proper research and planning, infrastructure and finance firmly in place, and the people and determination to succeed. Above all, our growth will be built around our customers and their needs to recruit the very best. It was Bill Gates who said “The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead”. We think that’s exactly right particularly looking ahead to the next five years.

We have identified six areas of growth during the lifetime of this strategic plan:• Grow in all our existing teams and markets in London. • Develop our Graduate Recruitment arm – important for

Sphere (attracting the best graduate talent for ourselves) and for our customers.

• Establish and grow a contract recruitment division to complement our permanent teams.

• Open one or more regional offices to service customers in the North West or Midlands.

• Establish an international division leading to an overseas office.• Diversify into a specialist financial recruitment area under the

Harrison Willis brand.


Growth

By 2020 the digital sector is expected to add $1.3 trillion to the global economy.

Online spending in the UK is the highest amongst major economies at an average

of £2,000 per person per year.

Over 1/3 of all marketing roles are now digitally focused.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself. Henry Ford, Ford

4

Our Customers

Our aim is to be the best and most consistent supplier of talent to the majority of businesses in all of our markets. And we want to build an enduring and valuable recruitment business through developing deep relationships with our customers where we are a valued and trusted partner. That’s something we have done since we started and something we continue to strive to do every day.

The President of Harley Davidson, John Russell, summed it up for us when he said “The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing for them.”

Our strategy team that considered Customer Experience highlighted a number of actions and goals for the business over the next five years:

Key Account Management• We plan to create greater transparency around who our key

accounts are.• We will create a set of values and guidelines that define key

accounts and set standards and expectations with them.

Data and Analysis• We want to use data to analyse our performance with

our customers and share this data and insight with them in order to further develop our relationships and drive improved performance.

• We must use data internally to create greater transparency around key customer performance.

Communications • We will use an Intranet to create greater and clearer visibility

around key accounts and who is in each key account team.• We will communicate new customer wins, hires made and

client meetings that take place on a weekly basis to the whole business.

Marketing • Improve our sales collateral for individuals, teams and the

business, that will better communicate to our customers our strengths and capabilities.

• Ensure we provide appropriate and timely feedback to our customers in whatever format they require.

• Review our key customer performance on a regular and systematic way to ensure we provide to customers what we say we will.

Rewards • Consider a reward system for new business wins and

especially cross selling and driving performance with existing customers.

New Roles• Use Progress to develop Executive and Principal Consultants

who play a leading role with significant customers across teams and offices and at every level of our customer’s business.


Our Customers

Since the 1st October 2012 when we first opened our doors for business, Sphere has been a customer centric business and we foresaw from the outset that we would grow with and around our customers and their expansion plans. And as the demand for digital talent intensifies over the next few years we are committed to finding the very best people for our growing customer base.

Since our inception2012–2015

customers repeat customers customers that have recruited 5 or more people through Sphere

350 287 165

5

Brand and Marketing


There are two fundamental objectives of the Marketing Department at Sphere. Firstly, to identify, generate and engage with the best possible pool of candidates working in each of our specialist markets. Secondly, to raise the profile of Sphere with our customers – from start-ups to multinationals – and to make them aware of our offering. We will communicate our ability to provide a specialist and knowledgeable recruitment consultancy service that identifies the best possible talent for any given hiring assignment.

In order to achieve our marketing objectives, we will work to a simple seven-point marketing plan over the next five years:

1. THE WEBSITE. Recruitment websites are the starting point for career orientated individuals seeking a new role, and our website needs to be continually improved to ensure it is the best it can possibly be. Specifically we will create a new website during 2016/2017, adding new features and improving SEO.

2. EVENTS AND THOUGHT-LEADERSHIP. We recognise that as a young company we need to raise our profile over the next five years in each of our specialist sectors. We want to gain instant recognition from both candidates and customers. Holding innovative and noteworthy industry relevant events, lunches and seminars, will help do this whilst providing our customers with useful information and opportunities to connect with one another. We are a data led marketing business, we have brilliant data and we want to use this to create useful ongoing surveys and analysis that we can share with all of our communities – increasing our brand presence and awareness.

3. THE BRAND. Our brand represents all that we stand for in terms of our culture, our style, our approach and our professionalism, and we plan to strengthen it during the period of the strategic plan, both in terms of being recognised as a premier player in the digital recruitment arena but also as one that is trusted and respected. We think that the best way to build our brand is for our customers to experience us, so hosting events and providing “real” engagements between Sphere and our customers is critical to our strategy.

Brand and Marketing

4. INTRANET AND INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS. We regard our internal communications as vitally important; not only to ensure our employees are up to date and fully aware of all aspects of the company, our performance and what’s being planned in the future but also, critically, to ensure each specialist Sphere team is aware of what work other Sphere teams are doing with our key customers. Our company wide knowledge and awareness of our customer’s businesses and their needs must be as comprehensive as it is possible to be. To help achieve this we will introduce an Intranet.

5. THE TEAM. As Sphere grows and develops over the next five years we are committed to building a marketing team that is well resourced and able to support our recruitment specialists. A multi-disciplined and talented team will be put in place to ensure that we support our consultants and they in turn can support our customers.

6. COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCING. As the business grows and the shortage of digital talent increases Sphere is committed to ensuring we increase our network, in all its forms. Building candidate and customer communities to identify and make available the best roles in the market and best and most engaged pool of available talent, is critical to our success and that of our customers. Increasingly, some of the best candidates are those that are not actively seeking a career move – we need to continue to identify and engage with those people on an ongoing basis.

7. ADVERTISING. We are committed to a significant advertising spend in order to ensure we are always able to supply our recruitment consultants, and in turn our customers, with quality candidates for each of our specialist divisions. Our marketing team will be tasked with improving the effectiveness of our advertising and analysing the results we achieve.

If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about it. Word of mouth is very powerful.Jeff Bezos, Amazon

6

Investing in our Future

Welcome to Sphere’s Intranet!

Timeline KPIs


Warren Buffet once said “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” And that is something that we have been aware of since we launched Sphere. We think that to arrive at the destination we want to in five years’ time we need to start “planting the trees for tomorrow”.

Much of our strategy is about enabling growth, whether that’s through our customers, our core teams, or branching out to new areas. We want to grow a robust and enduring business by investing in our future. Be that an exceptional “business operations team”, finance department, marketing team, technology or office space. Investing in our future and investing in our business is what will allow us to do this and getting this right over the next five years enables us to grow with speed and agility. To do this we will need to continue on the same track we have since launching; this means having excess office space to grow into, having the right team and people in place, and the right IT systems and technology and processes that are scalable and capable of supporting a bigger business.

We have identified 7 areas where we can continue to invest in our future:1. THE “BACK OFFICE”: Have 3 teams: Finance, HR and Office

Management.

2. IT AND TECHNOLOGY: Get the right IT infrastructure and support – hosted cloud solution.

3. OUR DATABASE: Own our database – to reduce costs and give greater capability.

4. “HR PROCESSES”: Build our HR, training documents and induction material.

5. ATTRACTING, TRAINING AND RETAINING TALENT: Have an in-house team responsible for HR, including training and recruitment.

6. INTERNAL COMMUNICATION: Have an Intranet to support internal communications.

7. OFFICE SPACE: Either take another floor in Imperial House or move to a bigger office.

Investing in our Future

Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.Kenichi Ohmae, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

We are investing time and money in our Sphere Intranet to ensure better results

for our customers.

6The Directors (L–R)

Laurence Smith, Ed Steer, Niall Phelan, Ben Steer

Some Final Thoughts as we Make our Plan Happen

Putting our strategic plan together for the next five years has been great fun and has involved the whole company – some 37 people, and now that it is complete we need to set about doing what we have talked about over the last six months! The next five years will be a really exciting time at Sphere and we will all need to be adaptable and forward thinking as the company grows and is transformed from a small niche recruitment player to a bigger and far more professional organisation.

As always we only want the very best. Over achievement, high performance and high performers create great and winning teams. All that we do must be underpinned by a desire to be successful. Sphere will continue to provide people with amazing tools and support to achieve outstanding results and we must all work hard every second of every day to achieve great results individually, collectively, and for our customers. Positivity, focus, keeping things simple and good old fashioned hard work will remain integral to our “way of being”. Adapting and embracing positive change in an ever changing business will be a critical part of our success.

I tend to find the harder I work the luckier I get.Winston Churchill

Some Final Thoughts as we Make our Plan Happen


1. Grow in all our existing teams and markets in London.

2. Establish and grow a contract recruitment division to complement our permanent teams.

3. Develop our Graduate Recruitment arm – important for ourselves (attracting the best graduate talent to Sphere) and for our customers.

4. Identify and research further areas of expansion including a regional and international office.

5. Diversify into a specialist financial recruitment business under the Harrison Willis brand.

6. Put a big emphasis on recruiting quality people who share our work ethic and ambition.

7. Improve induction and training at every level of our business and use workshops and peer to peer learning to create a culture of excellence and high performance throughout the business.

8. Use Progress to create a clear career path for people and create different roles to suit the needs of the business.

9. Improve and invest in a “flexible” benefits scheme for all of our employees.

10. Invest in and develop our Finance, HR and Internal Recruitment and Training, Marketing and Office Management teams.

11. Ensure leadership is visible and motivating.

12. Focus on developing and growing significant “key customer accounts”, providing multiple services to our customers by hiring for them in different areas of their business.

13. Position ourselves at the “heart” of each of our specialist markets. Do this through hosting industry events, through surveying and listening to our customers and through sharing valuable and useful data and relevant market insight.

14. Use “best in class” data and analytics to provide useful insight to our customers that improve their ability to hire better people faster.

15. Invest in and use an Intranet that will help our business by sharing information about our customers more clearly as well as also important company information.

16. Invest in technology and the best tools to do our job and run and scale the business.

17. Ensure we always have more than enough office space – to avoid disruption and make growing easy.

18. Build a new website.

19. Continue to make a significant investment in building our brand and in advertising across multiple platforms.

20. Get more involved in corporate social responsibility by supporting a designated charity each year and play an active role in our local communities.

Key Goals

Media/Technology/Marketing/CreativeContact us:020 3728 [email protected]@SphereDigRec

www.spherelondon.co.uk

Imperial House, 15–19 Kingsway, London WC2B 6UN

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RECRUITMENT AWARDS

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RECRUITMENT AWARDS

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Recruiting & HR

Sphere 5 Year Strategy