Ballyhoo PR has successfully grown and developed over the last five years, moving from a single business owner to a team of four. When the Coronavirus pandemic hit, the company was working out of an office in Corby and the team comprised of two people. After a successful recruitment drive, Ballyhoo PR had just offered a job to a third member of staff and wanted some support with team engagement.

Overnight the team had to move to working remotely and carrying out an induction process and welcome a new team member virtually.

As the need for PR and marketing services grew during the pandemic, the company’s client portfolio grew too, and a fourth member of staff was recruited.

With an eye on the future and further growth potential, the business owner Emma Speirs wanted to ensure her team felt connected, supported, motivated, and engaged throughout the remote working period and beyond.

The Challenge:

As some team members had joined during the pandemic period, they had only met each other on screen. And, although the team had naturally developed ways of working together, Emma wanted to create a more ‘team’ feel and invest time and money in team engagement and bringing everyone together to learn new skills. The team also shared that they collectively felt a lack of personal confidence which was amplified by working in such challenging circumstances, with all the team also having had to juggle work and home-schooling throughout Covid. The organisational structure had not had a chance to embed and needed to be revisited – all very understandable aspects of a small growing business navigating through an unprecedented time.

The Impact:

Needing to implement remote working had made the process of engagement and service that Ballyhoo clients would usually receive more challenging. The team needed to communicate more effectively with their clients and each other than ever before. With business obstacles heightened across the nation, the need for great PR for clients was increased and the decisions they were making about their PR providers were changing. The team needed to adapt quickly.

Undoubtedly, the team had formed well given the difficult circumstances, but relationships were made from the ‘head and shoulders up’ and it was evident that processes, procedures, understanding and regular team engagement opportunities were lacking. All this led to a need for a team morale boost.

Solution:

Emma, the business MD took a very proactive leadership approach by engaging the Specific Learning & Coaching team, and together they co-created a 12-month employee engagement, training, and development plan, supported with a 1-1 senior leadership coaching and mentoring schedule.

During the first half of our development series with the Ballyhoo team, Specific Learning & Coaching delivered 5 x 2-hour bite sized workshops using a blend of virtual and face-to-face methods. The first half of the programme has been designed to strengthen personal skills and resilience, while the second half of the programme is more focused towards business development.

The first half of the programme saw Specific Learning & Coaching deliver the following workshops:

Improve your bounce back ability – Emotional Resilience
Increase your communication skills by understanding others
Managing the office overwhelm, all things time management
Service recovery and managing conflict
Confidence, assertiveness, and work/life balance review (a team favourite)
The second half of the programme will be focused on:

Mission, vision, and values and how to use these attributes across the business
Customer experience feedback audit
Mapping the customer journey and responding to customer needs
Business focus day to plan for 2022 with a strengthened, engaged, and focused team
The result so far…
The team has really got to know each other well over the last few months as they have shared their insecurities and anxieties.

They have implemented tips and tricks to be more assertive and better manage their time and have realised their combined strengths and value alignment which has increased their confidence.

Customer and employee feedback is the Specific Learning & Coaching heart-blood and the workshops and learning have widened the business and team perspective. This has allowed longer-term strategy and planning improvements and enabled the team to manage conflict internally and externally should it arise, using effective communication and tailored service recovery solutions.

We are really looking forward to embedding the learning so far and supporting this exceptional team to turn their focus from individual learning to business development over the coming months.

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Lindsey & Charlotte

Info@specificlc.com

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