When I first joined NABS nearly seven years ago, I was thrilled to discover a talented, hard-working and tight-knit team and masses of love for the organisation from its industry supporters. NABS was focusing on ‘supporting people through the good times and the bad, to make working life a bit easier in such a dynamic and volatile industry’, providing help, advice and career guidance. With this fantastic foundation in place, it was clear that NABS was now ready to do more and to help more people. 

It struck us how often so many organisations in our industry were citing their talent as their number one asset or their key differentiator. Messages about fantastic staff, and how well they were treated, abounded on industry websites.  But we knew at NABS that for many individuals these statements felt skin-deep, especially for working parents.  

Here was our chance to make an even bigger difference to the working lives of our industry’s talent. We wanted to encourage more organisations to look after their proclaimed most valuable assets, whilst ensuring NABS was still the place people knew they could turn to for heartfelt, expert and confidential support and advice. We wanted to help change the culture from the top. 

This led us to create a vision for the world of advertising we wanted to see: a UK advertising and media industry which truly believes and demonstrates that vital to its own success is the wellbeing of its people. Not one which treats its people as a disposable asset. 

How things have changed. Back in 2015, the term wellbeing was fairly new.  For many, the word was interpreted as wellness - eating healthily, doing yoga, taking regular exercise. We challenged ourselves as to whether wellbeing was a strong enough vision for us. Would the industry care enough to make a difference?  Fast forward a few years and wellbeing has become a vital factor in supporting any individual or group of people to thrive at work.  

To make this vital culture change, we needed to talk about wellbeing – to explain what it meant to us and why it was our focus.  It became our reason to be and our north star and we still passionately believe in it.  We created our bespoke model for wellbeing, SHEPARD, which explained wellbeing by showing the components that make it up: satisfaction, health, emotions, perceptions, awareness, research, and diversity – on the last point, acknowledging already the importance of a diverse industry and having a diverse network. We did this using an evidence-based approach, leaning heavily into neuroscience research to create a tangible and credible way of examining wellbeing. 

SHEPARD demonstrates that no-one exists in a steady state of wellbeing. We all move up and down a spectrum driven by a multitude of factors in our lives and work. You need to tools to understand your emotions, to support your, physical and mental health. Equity and a diverse network are two other important factors here.  

We continued our wellbeing mission by launching new initiatives designed to embed the concept widely across our industry. We introduced wellbeing coaching to sit alongside our career coaching services, offering people the chance to reflect, in a safe and supportive space, on how they were feeling and how they could improve their wellbeing, guided by the SHEPARD model. In 2019, we organised Wellfest, a one-day conference for industry leaders exploring wellbeing at work.  

Since then, things have only helped to reinforce the importance of looking after one’s wellbeing. More than 30% of calls to NABS are for emotional support, and around half of these relate to mental health. So many adland leaders are open about their mental health, modelling the way for conversation about wellbeing and its associated factors.  

We were a long way from that spirit of empathy and openness when I started. 

One of our first actions was to build up our support for working parents into our working parents programme. Enlisting the support of Karen Blackett OBE and the talented NABS team we created our working parents’ campaign to lead the way on helping those who were raising childrenWe could see how working parents were stressed trying to do the famous juggle, while often trying to hide or apologise for their family commitments to their bosses. Many found it just too difficult and left the industry altogether. We were losing good talent, and unnecessarily so.  

We designed the working parents programme to give those caring for and raising children more visibility in the industry, as well as much-needed support and bespoke guidance. Starting with a working parents’ white paper, we branched out into specific masterclasses (group coaching sessions) supporting working parents to build up their confidence and resilience. The growth in this area at NABS has been remarkable. This year, we’ve been able to reach 136% more working parents than usual thanks to our digital delivery methods, introduced with great agility at the start of the pandemic. That’s a real success. 

I’m also very proud to have overseen the founding of the timeTo campaign to end sexual harassment in adland, together with our partners the AA and WACL. We launched the campaign in October 2018 following a WACL event, at which many attendees shared their experiences of sexual harassment at work. It was clear that we needed cross-industry action to end this scourge. Four years and four campaigns later (launch, Cannes, Christmas 2019 and return to offices 2021) timeTo has developed remarkably, with brilliant training on offer from its experts to everyone in adland while increasing its efforts to change culture for the better. 

I’ve always been passionate about the NABS’ vision we created. NABS believes in wellbeing for all and our working parents’ initiative and timeTo are two excellent examples of how we’re helping to create an industry in which everybody feels welcome and can feel safe and able to thrive. What’s also become clear over the past couple of years is that D,E&I has to be central to wellbeing. 

As a result of the murder of George Floyd and the BLM movement, the NABS that exists now is one that views all of its work through the D,E&I lens. It’s been a journey for us too, and we are not there yet. We want to see an equitable and diverse industry and an equitable and diverse NABS. We want to be equipped to support a diverse range of people with our support services. That’s why the NABS team now benefits from training focusing on issues around anti-racism and anti-discrimination, so that we can better understand and serve people from all backgrounds. 

Looking forward to the next few years, after I have left NABS for my next chapter, I feel very hopeful for the organisation and for the industry. Conversations around wellbeing and diversity have opened up. Underrepresented voices are being heard more, and for NABS’ part we’re collaborating with groups including MEFA, Outvertising and Brixton Finishing School in order to give those voices a platform as well as our support and allyship. There’s so much work to do, but we’ve made an encouraging start. 

NABS was knocked by the pandemic to the tune of a £1.6m loss. The number of people coming to us for help has trebled during my time. I’m proud to say that we’ve been able to help everybody who has approached us, despite our dramatic reduction in resources. I’m looking forward to seeing what will come next for the industry, as well as for the organisation that I’ve called home for the past seven years. 

I was passed a good baton by my predecessor nearly seven years ago, and I hope my successor feels the same about me.  

Call NABS for support on 0800 707 6607 between 9am – 5.30pm (weekdays) or email [email protected] for tailored advice and guidance, whatever your level or experience