Publicis Media UK

When I took on the top job here in 2017, I was determined to see greater diversity in gender and ethnicity at all levels. Our media agencies were about to embark on some big changes, including moving everyone together under one roof from multiple sites across town, to the iconic Television Centre in White City.

There were also some structural changes to be made in the way we organised ourselves, and knowing how these things can often play out, I made it my priority to focus on succession planning for our most senior roles including agency CEOs.

What was also clear, mostly from past experience, was how unlikely it would be that these amazing women would put themselves forward without a lot of encouragement and support. Another big challenge was to try and make our move to Television Centre as positive as possible, to maximise retention and create opportunities for a more progressive approach to work that would benefit everyone.

Our first major breakthrough was in appointing our Next Generation Board (NGB), a cohort of up-and-coming talent to help advise and challenge us, and ultimately help to transform our business.

This diverse group set about devising a progressive plan following research into new ways of working, and conducted a staff survey, which revealed an overwhelming 93% of employees backed the move towards greater flexibility.

We launched the new Publicis Media Ways of Working, or PMWOW as it is affectionately known, to coincide with our office move. It focussed around key behaviours of trust, empowerment, communication and outputs, as opposed to the deep-rooted ‘presenteeism’ and the ‘9-5’.

This helped massively in our overall retention and staff happiness, but I still had the challenge of convincing several women to put themselves forward and tackle their own selfdoubt about taking on roles such as agency CEO. My conversations ranged from women worrying about balancing being a CEO with a family, to simply not feeling good enough for the job. These are traits that I’ve been determined to help many women overcome.

Building self confidence and fighting imposter syndrome is hard, especially for many women that work in a very male-dominated world. I’ve personally found that having senior female allies around me has given me the confidence to take risks throughout my career, so being a strong ally myself to those coming up the ranks has been important and quite powerful.

We now have a 50:50 gender balanced board, have women leading two of our three agencies as CEO, and 53% of our agency leadership teams are women.

Our progressive ways of working, which continues to evolve, saw an immediate uptick on our retention rates and employee engagement, not to mention setting us up well for when Covid hit.

I’m a strong believer that flexibility is one of the most impactful ways to support women in their career progression, but also that it goes beyond just the flexibility of where and when you work Monday to Friday.

People are often surprised to hear that two of our CEOs work part-time. It’s a complete myth that you can’t do this as CEO, likewise that part-time CEOs are only ever women, as one of our male agency CEOs proves.

We recently appointed a woman in a media buying role after a 17-year career break. It’s an area we’re really focussed on and proud of. Our #flexiblefirst approach is one of the main reasons why we’ve managed to attract so many smart and experienced women back to work, and retained many more.

46%

46%

Ethnic diversity has also improved, with those from minority ethnic groups now making up over a quarter of our workforce, and over 21% of our agency management teams. We are relentlessly focussed on building a more diverse pipeline of talent which continues to go from strength to strength. Over the past year, 46% of entrylevel recruits were people of colour, rising to over 65% in our latest apprenticeship cohort.

I’ve had many heartening comments from clients and staff about our progress when it comes to gender diversity. None of this has happened by chance of course, and getting to this point hasn’t always been easy. However, none of Publicis Media’s CEOs, including me, were chosen because of our gender – they were simply the right people for the job.

Over the past few years, we have seen a huge amount of commercial success, having won some highly fought-after accounts, and topping many of our industry league tables. It goes without saying that our success isn’t solely down to women, but there’s little doubt that better diversity of all kinds, and at all levels, can bring big advantages for everyone.