We sat down with our Head of People and Culture, Sarah Pettinger, to celebrate her 6 month milestone and learn about her journey to and with StrategiQ.
“My move to StrategiQ came out of a period of reflection where I was thinking really carefully about what I wanted to do moving forward. I knew that I wanted to be part of a business that had big plans, was doing something interesting and cared about its people. For me, it was important that my next move was to somewhere I could make a fundamental difference. When StrategiQ came along it ticked all of those boxes and more.
Independent agencies are magical places, especially those that are founder-led. They attract an array of diverse personalities and skills doing fascinating things, navigating interesting challenges. That dynamic creates a really interesting place to work for ‘people professionals’ like me.
StrategiQ don’t just have big plans to do interesting things, they actually do them! They’re an agency that’s moving with the market. I joined at the point at which the centralisation of our four regional offices into one central London office was in motion. So it’s been a big change to navigate the business and its people through, one that’s brought challenges and created opportunities. I enjoy change and supporting people through it. It’s a journey that provides loads of opportunity to build meaningful relationships, and at StrategiQ the people team actually make time for people!
One of the many things that attracted me to working with the People team at StrategiQ is how committed the founders are to understanding their people. They invest in insights to understand peoples characters and motivators, so that they can support them and help to build a cohesive team where everybody can grow. Working with the leadership team and HOD’s to use these insights to create opportunity and build our culture in a scalable way is something I’m excited to progress.
I have also been impressed by how much they invest in facilitating the team being able to optimise their capabilities through training and pursuing opportunities. They set performance plans not as a paper exercise, but as something that genuinely cultivates talent. It’s really lovely when they take a moment in weekly meetings to acknowledge and celebrate team members’ achievements against those plans. It’s proof that everybody wins when building high performance teams.
I’m somebody that’s highly motivated by a desire to make a difference, and I thrive in environments where I feel productive. I’ve enjoyed being able to focus on foundational projects like role descriptions that are fundamental to growth, development and performance. Projects like these help to define what career paths might look like and what capabilities we might need moving forwards, so they’re really important.
I always like to think about the role the company I’m working for plays as a stepping stone in people’s careers. My personal vision is for people to look back on their time at StrategiQ as a career highlight, and a time that informed the rest of their careers. For StrategiQ as a whole, I’m determined that we live up to our goal of being a ‘Destination for Talent’.”
What colleagues say about Sarah:
“ I could say lots of things about her knowledge and skills, but what’s really stuck with me this week in particular, is the Miro board she’s been quietly working on in the background. It’s literally a masterpiece, and it’s not even finished yet. It maps out everything the people team are juggling – all the moving parts, all the things we want to fix and improve, the direction we want to grow in as a team but also an agency… and it still finds space to celebrate the many things we absolutely smash out the park week in, week out. It’s like an explosion of mine, Sarah’s and her brain all on one page – a genuine ‘step back and see the big picture’ moment. It’s the skeleton of a ‘beasty’ People Team strategy and also so perfectly colour-coordinated it makes my soul happy. Sarah has such an eye for order in the chaos, and I’m genuinely buzzing to see where this all goes next!”
“Sarah has made a huge impact since she started just a couple of months ago. She has had a baptism of fire as we have stepped up the level of recruitment significantly but she has handled it like a boss. I love her attitude and sunny disposition. The people team are rocking it!!!”
“You’d think Sarah has been here for months…her impact on talent and recruitment has been exceptional. And she gets things done with charm, grace and ruthless efficiency. So grateful to have you on the team.”
“Only a few months in and Sarah is making a huge impact. She’s got stuck into multiple projects and has completely evolved our recruitment process. I don’t know where we’d be without her. If the first few months are anything to go by then I’m very excited about the future and how the people team will continue to grow and support the rest of the team and business become the destination agency…..”
“Sarah may have only been with us for a few months, but she’s already made a huge impact! From updating the handbook to driving OS improvements and refining our recruitment process – making it more robust and thorough for all the right reasons – she’s efficiently tackling key People projects. On top of that, she’s been thrown in at the deep end with a packed diary, juggling multiple projects while continuously finding ways to improve how we work. Her contributions have been invaluable, and I can’t wait to see what else the People team achieves with her influence!”
“It’s early doors in the team for this person, but they’ve been making a lot of impact behind the scenes already! I have massively appreciated Sarah P’s help with recruitment this month, from restructuring the process to be much clearer and more efficient, through to creating decks that explain each stage of the process to candidates – I’m excited about the impact it will have on getting brilliant talent into the team. Great work getting us closer to being THE destination agency, thank you Sarah.”
