Introduction
For all of us here at WSA, 2019 has been a busy year! With over 120,000 emails sent out, 30,000 cups of tea and coffee consumed and 1,000 biscuits (although probably more!) eaten over the last year, it has certainly been an exciting year of growth and prosperity at the agency.
Staff promotions
This year, we have had the pleasure of promoting several staff members within the team including Louise Young, who was promoted to Account Director and Grace Weight, who was promoted to Digital Lead.
I am extremely grateful to WSA for providing me with the opportunity to enhance my skillset and grow my career ambitions within the agency. It’s a really exciting time to be part of WSA and I am proud to be a part of it.
Grace Weight – Digital Lead
New starters
Along with staff promotions, we have hired 9 new team members this year to strengthen our offering to our clients, including a PR and Marketing Apprentice, a Digital Marketing Executive, an Account Executive and two Business Development Executives.
I’m really enjoying my time here at WSA. From my first day here, everyone has been warm and welcoming and very approachable. Overall a great bunch of people to work with! I’m looking forward to seeing what my future here at WSA will bring!
Gemma Wong – Account Executive
Learning never ends
As an agency, we ensure employees across the business undertake continuous professional development. Through consistent learning and idea sharing with like-minded professionals across the industry, the WSA team ensure they are at the forefront of latest developments and can offer clients insight into emerging markets, trends and best practice techniques. We started running Learning Diaries in June of this year, this was a chance for our staff to share their industry knowledge with other members of the team who work within different departments. In total, we have run 24 Learning Diaries this year, and there are many more on the horizon for 2020.
Social events
We had the pleasure of hosting 4 team outings, including a summer BBQ, Wii tournament and a Christmas quiz. The quiz and Wii tournament saw some staff members show a bit more of a competitive side than others, but a great time was had by all.
Turn up the good
Internally this year, we decided to launch a new initiative, Turn Up the Good. This initiative was to create a work environment where people were praised for their hard work and efforts, even down to just making their team a cup of tea. We gave out TUTG vouchers every week, to staff who had gone above and beyond, and these nominations often came from within their team.
Charity of the year – YMCA MK
As part of our charity fundraising for WSA, we are delighted to announce that YMCA MK have been chosen as our nominated charity for 2020. YMCA MK is a charity close to many people’s hearts and is the only charity in Milton Keynes dedicated to helping young people with housing and employment opportunities. We have already been doing lots of things to aid the cause of youth homelessness, and have a fair few things planned for 2020, including a sponsored skydive!
Austin’s turn down the food, turn up the good
In September, our Operations Director, Austin Walters, went a whopping 7 days without food, surviving on water alone to raise funds for YMCA MK. He decided to do this because not everyone has access to food and water every day, and he wanted to try and understand what homeless people suffer through every day. We are so proud of Austin who raised £745 which can help buy 149 breakfasts for YMCA residents.
CEO sleepout
Along with Austin’s fundraising efforts, our MD Jerry Taylor joined fellow business associates to spend a night sleeping rough as part of the CEO Sleepout on 7th November 2019. Everyone at WSA is incredibly proud of Jerry, who individually raised £2,700 towards the overall group contribution. To put these numbers into perspective, YMCA MK will be able to use their allocation of funds to furnish 10 rooms at their brand-new Milton Keynes campus, launching in early 2020.
A word from our MD
“Over the year, the team have constantly found new and innovative ways to assist our clients address their particular issues, I only wish I could bottle this ‘can do’ attitude. On top of the day job getting done we have also successfully implemented a large scale change project through 2019 that delivered significant benefits in terms of our processes, our systems but more importantly our people. A bottom up hiring policy coupled with a defined career path for anybody that joins the agency has delivered some fantastic home grown success stories already. WSA is in great health and I personally look forward to what 2020 brings, if it is anything like 2019 it will bring opportunities a plenty, with the odd bump in the road for good measure.
I must also finally say a huge thank you to all of our loyal clients, I regularly sit in on client meetings and seek out feedback wherever possible. It is obvious the team here is highly respected and the work that they produce delivers the goods time and time again. Your feedback is invaluable to us, we learn from it and without it we fail to move forward.”
A word from our CEO
“Sitting in the office is a great opportunity for me to look inwards to the company, watching the daily activity going on and feeling the vibe that resonates across the office. With external forces influencing business, it is never easy to predict how things are going to go but it seems that ‘business as usual’ is actually ‘business above the norm’.
Successful businesses rely on each person playing their part and at WSA this has been evident throughout the year, with each department working collaboratively together and a buzz around the bigger projects that bring us all together. It’s like a big family that just love being together and making projects come alive through strategy, creative design and delivery. I’m personally very excited about 2020 as we have new people on board, fresh thinking and new clients to impress. I know we can do it and can’t wait to see what the brilliant minds at WSA will produce for our clients.”
In conclusion, we would like to say a huge thank you to all our clients that we have worked with this year, we are looking forward to working with you in 2020. To all of staff members, thank you for the hard work that you have given to the company in 2019, it is greatly appreciated.
