MEET OUR PEOPLE AND TALENT DIRECTOR

1. Describe your career in 5 words

Diverse, fun, stretching, great teams, energising (ok that’s technically six words but I don’t like to follow too many rules)

2. At CSM, we are lucky to have access to programmes such as Stretch and Perform for all employees. How does this make CSM stand out from other agencies? 

Stretch is our home grown global learning and development solution, which was inspired by the Ralph Emerson quote “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” Stretch has three pillars, the Core (what makes us brilliant at our jobs), the Team (building innovative and diverse, high performing teams) and the Self (creating a healthy and resilient, culturally adaptable workforce). These pillars are stocked with a range of modules aimed at developing our 1,000 people worldwide, across a variety of media from live events through to podcasts, Stretch Snippets (15 minute bursts of learning on topics like social media) to longer workshops, with the vast majority available on a cloud based platform so people can access the content whenever and wherever they are in the world.

Perform is our new real-time approach to performance evaluation, aimed at linking personal development, performance and ongoing feedback. We have moved away from outdated paper based annual appraisals to help our people be more in touch with their performance and provide a clearer link to their own development and career aims. Perform links directly into Stretch to help people access learning solutions with their development needs.

We have a brilliant group of people around the world in a whole range of different roles and ultimately, with Stretch and Perform, we wanted to create something that is more reflective of our people, globally connective, helps people access the fantastic talent we have internally and externally and ultimately is a useful collaboration tool.

Intext Yoga

3. As part of Stretch we have had a variety of guest speakers, such as Alex Goode Saracens Rugby player, former 400m Olympian sprinter Roger Black, and racing driver Susie Wolff come in to share their experiences about life in the sports industry. How do these events aid the purpose of Stretch within CSM? 

We call this the stardust element of Stretch – we are so lucky to have a brilliant external network and access to incredible speakers who come and talk to us about our latest element of the People Plan. Alex and Roger spoke to us about instilling a winning culture, Simon Amor, the England Sevens coach gave an inspiring session on Goal Setting and Susie Wolff kicked off our Diversity and Inclusion programme with Great Minds Don’t Always Think Alike. We are so fortunate that these incredible people talk about being successful in sport and how we apply those principles to our work. The filmed highlights are shared with our global teams.

Stretch with Charlotte Macartney

4. What’s your most memorable moment in your career and why has it stood out?

My 5 years at lastminute.com which had an outstanding entrepreneurial culture and absolute first-class people. I joined when it was a start up and left after 15 acquisitions and it had grown to 1,500 people. It was my first People role and I was given a huge opportunity to jump into all sorts of amazing activity around integration, culture and talent acquisition. It was like going to work with your friends on a career superdrive.

Intext Stretch event

 5. When not at work, where might we find you?

Firstly, playing with my two amazing girls, looking at the world through the eyes of small children and trying not to step barefoot on Lego. Secondly, reminding myself how to run further than 5k without turning into a tomato, and thirdly, attending music gigs – The Killers are a favourite!