A day of value at Harris

At Harris Creative, we’ve been growing in size and scope for several years, but increasingly so since our MBO in 2021. And as we’re connecting with more clients than ever across the construction industry, we’re finding new clients approaching us through Google searches and our social media channels. Because of this, we’re realising the importance of establishing clearly who we are and what we do across all of our services, from web design, SEO and PPC to PR, copywriting and social media. In addition, as our team and services grow, it’s important for us to have an identity on which we all agree and which sets us apart from other construction marketing agencies.

Which is why, at the end of January the full Harris Creative team took a day away from the office to participate in a mission and values workshop. Delivered by James and Jane from the World of Work Project, our session was designed to help us brainstorm key values words or phrases and create a draft mission statement which reflects working at Harris, and the creative marketing work we deliver.

We first had a brief introduction to the session and an explanation on how establishing a set of a values and a mission statement can help both internally and externally, followed by some encouraging words from our joint MD Kirsty. Then in mixed teams, we got to work understanding which types of values words and accompanying behaviours align with how we work at Harris. To tackle the mission statements, we drew inspiration from other companies’ statements from a range of sectors and our own pre-work, deciding what we did and didn’t like about each, and using this to inform our new drafts.

After a full day of collaboration, we ended the workshop with a short speech from our other joint MD, Neil, and with two draft mission statements and a range of values words. As of now, it’s up to our volunteer ‘values champions’, Lucy and Estelle, to progress our work further and finalise a mission statement and a set of values with accompanying explanations and behaviours. Once presented to the full team and with input of course from our joint MDs, we’ll have a set of principles that will not only help to guide us and our work internally, but also provide clarity to our clients in the construction industry, new starters, or other external parties, on the personality and way of working at Harris Creative.