Havas Group’s seasonal perspectives: Fall for the culture

This post is sponsored by Havas Media Group Singapore.

Change is a principle of life. Like the four seasons, we go through stages of renewal, zeal, comfort, and perseverance over the course of a year. At Havas Media Group Singapore, we’ve evolved with the winds of change only to emerge stronger on every front.

In this four-part series aptly titled Seasons, we sit down with a couple of key members who were instrumental in helping to chart our success within the past year’s climate.

Fall for the culture

In an increasingly talent-scarce environment, the need for an abundance of new ideas surrounding talent recruitment and retention was brought to the front lines.

This talent war demanded a new art. Leading this charge has been Dawn Teo, talent engagement lead for Havas Group Singapore. She breezes through her point-of-view on Havas’ agency culture: how to make it warm and welcoming for new talent; her engagement and retention approaches; and her take on career opportunities in an integrated agency structure.

Left to right: Havas Group Singapore’s talent and culture team – Dawn Teo, talent engagement lead; Cheryl Chen, senior HR executive; and Annie Teo, director of talent and culture.

For a media and communications agency, asking “why” is of paramount importance. It encourages us to uncover client motivations, tap into cultural trends, and bring fresh insights to the surface.

Doing a good job of asking “why” quite simply is good for our coffers. As an accounts director turned talent engagement lead, Dawn knows this too well. Today, however, she’s taking this principle to build a stronger agency culture instead.

Receiving consistently high staff retention rates from our headcount sheets and positive sentiments from our annual survey, it’s easy to forget we were not spared from the global talent reshuffle, and more recently, “Quiet Quitting”.

From a growing movement that encourages you to re-prioritise your life, to merely working your wage, Dawn, alongside the wider HR team, had to re-evaluate their talent strategy priorities.

“Our focus in 2022 was to ramp up on talent attraction activities – exploring every possible avenue to better understand what the current talent market looks like, and what we need to do to stay competitive as an employer. It’s been quite a journey working with a landscape that’s constantly evolving,” she said.

While she is happy to admit it’s a “constant work in progress”, the progress she’s made is clearly working.

For new prospects, it was a case of “don’t tell them we are funny, instead tell them a joke”. It wasn’t until the team started showcasing snippets of its uniquely local and fun-loving agency culture at play over our social channels and career fairs, that we began receiving requests to be part of the Havas Village.

When it came to retaining talent, a slew of initiatives and activities sprang into action. To begin with, we lifted spirits with the best office party yet, with our CFO signing off on a back-to-office party that had the entire village jiving to a night of headbanging music and endless booze.

Next, we were greeted with a newly renovated office with more communal spaces and a pantry democratically stocked with snacks and drinks elected by our “villagers”. In addition, we continued with the hybrid working arrangement post-pandemic, providing our villagers with more flexibility in planning their own time.

Above: Havas’ back-to-office party.

The resumption of group gatherings also brought about the return of #HavasKakis, our bimonthly cross-team bonding half day outing set during office hours, with the most recent session seeing our villagers getting crafty with candle-making.

From Chinese New Year “Huat” packs to a massive National Day party, we celebrated special occasions that were nationwide or uniquely relevant to our villagers, just like we would with our families. This also meant that we celebrated shared values as a family and respected our individual beliefs and preferences. 

Left: The #HavasKakis terrarium workshop. Right: The Havas Green Nudge beach clean-up session #2.

Pledging our support to climate change, we partnered with Green Nudge and cleared up over 150 kilos of trash along the Sembawang shoreline, and also launched a village initiative called #OneDabaoATime, by providing common-use reusable containers for our villagers to use them to pack their lunches, instead of opting for disposables.

In keeping our village a safe and inclusive haven that embraces individuality, diversity and love of all kinds, we leveraged on Pride Month to feature some of our villagers and their thoughts on what pride and allyship means to them, and celebrated International Women’s Day with inspirational stories of our female villagers on how they #BreakTheBias in their personal and professional lives.

Creating a better environment was wholly good. But for Dawn, championing greater empowerment was the Holy Grail.

“Giving our employees a voice and ensuring they’re heard through formal or informal means is the first step. It’s what comes after in the way we act on their asks, suggestions and grievances alike that makes the difference,” she said.

“Beyond the depth of knowledge, Havas also offers a wide breadth of opportunities, proving time and again to support the many different pursuits of our employees – both within and outside of the workplace.”

This is particularly important in a growing world of hyphenated careers outside, and an increasingly integrated agency structure on the inside.

“Talent to us, therefore, is not just about aptitude. It’s the culmination of good work ethics, the right attitude, and willingness to continuously push boundaries.”

This, she contends, “ensures that we can offer the promise of an equitable workplace that’s in tandem with our people’s ability to grow and contribute to the agency”.

Ultimately, while we sell the idea of Meaningful Media to our clients, it’s Havas’ leadership team that readily buys into the concept of a meaningful workplace – “one that questions the purpose of everything we do, stays grounded to their beliefs and values, and truly cares about their employees in the workplace, and beyond” – which proves to Dawn “why” Havas will succeed for its people.