ELEVATOR PITCH
We’re an award-winning employee engagement agency that helps large organisations to communicate with their people. It’s our mission to make sure every employee understands the company they work for and the vital part they play in its success. Doing this helps create cultures that energise, inspire and transform and makes every employee feel right at home.
OUR STORY
Home was founded by Carol Whitworth in Bristol in 1981. Back then we were known as ‘Bi-Design’, an all-singing, all-dancing creative agency, creating brands for some of the largest companies in the UK. Our approach was from the inside out. Getting under the skin of the businesses, really understanding what the employees thought of the company – why they liked it, what it means to them, how excited they were coming to work every day… this was key to us creating a brand that galvanised the workforce and reflected the people within it.
We found that our clients went from strength to strength and that their employees consistently went above and beyond, delivering excellence along the way. Obviously, the beautiful creative was the focal point, but the real magic was the engagement that had been created. We realised that having employees with a sense of ownership, of belonging, of value and true purpose is what really shapes a brand. Achieving that is vital to any organisation.
The varied experience of our early years made us who we are today, and by the early 2000s Home had evolved and we were fulfilling our true calling. We began to specialise in achieving outstanding employee engagement with some of the biggest brands in the world. We brought in great business strategists and meticulous account managers to support our established (and wonderful) creative team. We’ve never looked back.
Today, employee engagement is key to every organisation and we’ve seen a growing awareness of it, particularly over the last decade. Customers are nowhere near as brand loyal as they once were – the internet has made the world far smaller with much more choice and to top that, we all want exceptional customer service too. It’s only now that organisations are realising that great customer service needs a truly engaged workforce.
We’ve been specialising in employee engagement for quite some time now. We’ve become leaders in our field both here in the UK and the US. Those words and phrases that we built our business on in the eighties still remain the same. How do we create a purpose? How do we make employees feel valued and take ownership? We understand what makes people tick and we offer the real deal so our clients can too. We deliver engaging strategies and powerful creatives straight from the heart, with a real sense of pride and authenticity in everything we produce. We’re brave too – we’re not in business to blindly give clients what they ask for, we give them what they need. We pride ourselves on our relationships, those we’ve kept and those we’ve walked away from.
Our own culture is one of collaboration and creativity and that’s what makes us innovative. We encourage bravery, we question everything and we constantly look for better ways to help our clients. We believe Home should be a place where people feel valued and trusted with the freedom to develop their career creatively and strategically with purpose and pride. If a team member has an idea, whether it’s a tool, a technique or a red-hot thought leadership piece, we back them 100%. In fact, it was one such idea that spurred us on to set up a sister business. We’re now collaborating with some of the top positive psychologists across the globe on a suite of enterprise tools that will transform the world of work forever.
For us, innovation means not being afraid of change – it’s what made us who we are. At the time, creating an agency that specialises in employee engagement seemed crazy to our peers, but we started a whole new genre, a different kind of agency that nobody else was offering. We’ve had many imitators since. Six years ago, we took another leap, this time into the US market. Our tiny Bristol-based creative force of nature took on the gigantic PR machines in America and showed them the way. The US now makes up 60% of our business.
But Bristol is still the centre of our world. It’s a fabulous city and we’re proud to call it our home. In recent years we’ve been able to give back to the place we love, working on some amazing passion projects. We created an exciting fundraising film for the refurbishment of the iconic Colston Hall, helping to generate the funds to make it into a world-class venue for the future. We also created the brand identity for The Wave – an amazing inland surfing lake, it’s the first of its kind in the UK and it’s due to open in autumn 2019.
Over the years we’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the largest organisations in the world, helping them with their biggest business challenges and transformations. We’ve been recognised too, receiving ‘Consultancy of the Year’ from EE, a haul of Global Trend Awards for our film work, and the ‘Best Brand Campaign Award’ from both Design Week and The Drum. But we’re most proud of our very own ‘Happiest Workplace Award’ because of all the things we do, that’s the most important. Home is a place where we find joy, in what we do and how we do it. We’ve built our very own vision of what a business should look like and we aim to help other companies all over the world to achieve it too.
