How to create an award-winning EO culture – by a business that's done it
Hayes Davidson was thrilled to win the EOA’s Outstanding EO Culture title at 2022’s EO Stories Awards. Here, its Joint Managing Partner Neil Hughes reveals how the team developed its award-winning culture – and offers practical tips for others looking to do the same…
‘Emotional!’ That’s how Neil Hughes, Joint Managing Partner at Hayes Davidson, admits he felt when he heard that the business had won Outstanding EO Culture in the EOA’s EO Stories 2022 Awards.
And who can blame him? Like many other companies, Hayes Davidson, a leading architectural visualisation studio for more than 30 years, has been on a journey to bring its EO to life since it transitioned in 2015.
Add in a pandemic that’s permanently changed the workplace landscape and it’s no surprise Neil felt so excited about the result.
As he explains: ‘After all the challenges of the pandemic and remote working, entering our own EO story was a way of recognising what our team had achieved and the incredible collaborative effort needed to not only keep our culture intact, but to make it even stronger.
‘To be recognised by the EOA judging panel and collect our award at the EOA Conference in Liverpool (pictured right) meant a lot.’
Nurturing a collaborative culture
Culture can be hard to define, so what makes Hayes Davidson’s outstanding? ‘We are genuinely collaborative not only with our clients, but also with each other. Everybody knows they have a role to play in our ongoing success and that their individual contribution matters. There’s a real enthusiasm for wanting to do the best for our client – to explore what they want to achieve and be as creative and innovative as possible in telling their story,’ says Neil.
‘Collaboration has always been in our DNA, long before we became EO, driven by our incredible founder Alan Davidson. We feel it and hopefully our clients do too.
‘And there are no real ceilings here,’ he adds. ‘If you’re good at what you do, enthusiastic and embrace our guiding principles, you’ll go far.’
Drawing on your guiding principles to find the way
In fact, Neil says Hayes Davidson’s five guiding principles are integral to everything the studio does. He kindly recognises our MD Jeremy Gadd’s role in supporting Hayes Davidson to help define them back in 2018.
‘Our guiding principles have given us a strong basis for how we do business,’ he confirms. ‘We use them every day. They’re not on the wall, they’re in our everyday working behaviours.
‘We still have a strong organisational structure and a degree of hierarchy in that, but we work in a way that reflects our ethos. The team know they can ask questions, so they feel informed, engaged and have a voice. Feedback is central to what we offer – we value the process of listening and responding.’
Learning from others what it means to be EO
Hayes Davidson became EO in 2015. As Neil (pictured right) recalls: ‘Sadly, our founder Alan became very ill and knew he needed a succession plan for the business – we did it all in nine months.’
The government’s Finance Act 2014 had just made selling your business to an EOT a tax-efficient option for founder/owners, but in 2015 EO still felt ‘quite new’.
‘We had to figure it out – it felt like a great responsibility,’ says Neil. ‘Alan had already had to take a step back. So I was travelling around the country, meeting wonderful people like Baxendales, J Gadd Associates and Postlethwaite and trying to absorb what good EO practice looked like.
‘It’s different now,’ he agrees, ‘because any business becoming EO has so many people they can talk to as they transition. For us, a lot of things really started to come together in 2018/19 when we worked with Jeremy Gadd on our guiding principles, recognising that everybody in the business is an employee owner as well as how helpful our Trust Board can be.’
Enabling people to develop their own good ideas
In fact, two well-established initiatives that reflect Hayes Davidson’s culture have come directly from encouraging the team to share and take responsibility for developing good ideas. These are the annual HD5K run – which has now raised £250k for the Motor Neurone Disease Association in memory of Alan – and the eight-week HD Summer Placement. ‘I’m really proud of both,’ says Neil.
Drawing on his own experience since 2015, Neil would now recommend that any company becoming EO ‘gets a good accountant, a good solicitor and a good people person’ to support them from the start.
‘We had the first two – the financial and legal support – but we didn’t have a JGA around in 2015.’
Emerging stronger from the pandemic
‘It’s a bit of ‘push and pull’ but a strong organisational culture really comes into its own during tough times. It’s a mistake to put your company ethos ‘on hold’; it’s culture that will help you navigate difficult times. Consistency is everything’
Neil Hughes, Joint Managing Partner, Hayes Davidson
Some businesses have (perhaps unsurprisingly) put nurturing their ‘culture’ on the backburner in today’s challenging economic climate. Yet others have done the opposite, convinced of the link between a company’s culture and its commercial resilience.
What has Neil’s experience at Hayes Davidson been?
‘If anything, we ramped our culture up and became more EO during the pandemic because it was really important for us to still feel part of a team,’ he explains. ‘Online meetings can feel a challenge but we probably gathered more feedback from our team during the pandemic than before.
‘The two main issues we picked up early were IT (so we invested money in getting people the right kit for remote working) and the mental health impact of working from home. Now, with the cost of living crisis, we’re continuing to listen and, because of these things, we’ve talked more about the future of work, what’s working and what’s not, which has shaped the hybrid working arrangements we now have.’
Indeed, since Covid, Hayes Davidson’s culture has had to work even harder because some of the team are now permanently based overseas.
‘It’s a bit of ‘push and pull’ but a strong organisational culture really comes into its own during tough times,’ he confirms. ‘It’s a mistake to put your company ethos ‘on hold’; it’s culture that will help you navigate difficult times. Consistency is everything.’
Creating an outstanding EO culture – practical tips
So, having helped to create an award-winning EO culture at Hayes Davidson, what practical tips would Neil offer other leaders looking to do the same?
1. Be consistent with whatever you’re delivering and don’t be afraid of engaging the wider team. You might be surprised at their brilliant ideas. We’ve had some incredible insights around the future of work, while our D&I Steering Group is helping us to properly address a very complex subject.
2. Keep your people up to date on business performance and strategy. Take them with you, so they know where you’re struggling as well as what you’re working towards.
3. Encourage them to be inquisitive about the business. It’s a good sign your EO is working if they’re asking questions about the company.
4. Involve all levels in initiatives and key projects. If you have a working group and there’s an enthusiasm to be involved, bring them in.
5. Recap on achievements and the progress you’ve made together. All our client feedback comes to the team, we host end of year and values awards and we celebrate good artwork. This kind of sharing is important.
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