Celebrating 15 Years Of Northern Media Part Two

2016 to today

In my previous article about the last 15 years of Northern Media, I mentioned that 2016 saw us move to a new office that essentially earmarked the next phase of growth for the business. 

We were excited about the future and we started off by redefining who Northern Media was as an agency in terms of vision, values and culture. This has provided us with an identity ever since and everything we now do, from how we deal with clients to how we manage people, is underpinned by our core values of enjoyment, passion, quality, results and teamwork. 

However, looking back, we also made some mistakes especially around recruitment….I think we just got a bit giddy with our new big shiny building! We identified roles that we probably didn’t need at that point, we recruited too quickly and we probably didn’t have the right processes and structure in place to bring in the right people to suit our culture.  

I’m a firm believer in things happening for a reason and that experience lead us to make some key changes that ultimately shaped the future of Northern Media. 

We decided to restructure the business as we felt we needed to focus on specialist areas and ensure that everyone in the team was passionate about their role. It wasn’t massive radically in terms of how a typical agency runs but it was a big shift for us. Each member of the team purely focused on a role that showcased their passion, knowledge and skills. 

Surviving The Pandemic

We implemented the restructure at the very start of 2020 and, on hindsight, the timing was perfect as 3 months later Covid 19 struck.

We followed the work from home message and I certainly think we were (and are) fortunate to be in the digital industry and be able to work from anywhere.  

We spoke with all clients to see how everything was and whether they needed any support from us.  We found that each client had their own take on the situation. Some paused or reduced marketing activity, some asked us to carry on as normal and some even increased their spend on digital work. 

As a team we adjusted pretty well to working from home. We all had a crash course on how to use Microsoft Teams and made sure everyone had what they needed to work from home effectively. We set up weekly team catch ups every Friday morning (which we still do) and encouraged everyone to keep talking to each other. Weekly quizzes also kept the team entertained especially with some of the questions! 

Although there was no guide or manual called “How to deal with a Pandemic”, overall I think we managed the situation reasonably well and the working from home experiment led us to evaluating how we worked in the long term.  

We are very much a team centred business and our focus is always based around trying to create a working environment that enables the team to be comfortable and happy in order to perform. With this in mind, we made the decision to move to a permanent working from home policy, with the office being open to those who wanted to go in or as a place for internal/ external meetings, team get togethers’ and socials as well as being a space where the team can work individually or collectively. We feel it is still very important to promote the social and collaborative benefits of an office environment so arrange various team activities every month.  

We then reviewed our office facilities and spoke with the team about what they would want from the workplace. The feedback led to the decision to move office as it was clear that we needed somewhere different that suited our new way of working so the next stage was to identify an office that matched our needs. We are proud of our Wakefield heritage having been based in the city since 2010 so finding somewhere within Wakefield was always a key focus.  

In January 2022, having identified a few locations, we decided that The Junction, based in Horbury, was a great base. The Junction’s focus of workplace wellbeing really suits our culture and the team have certainly embraced some of the amenities and facilities as have some of the clients who have visited. 

In addition, we moved to core hours which allows more flexibility to the team’s working day. The versatility for staff is definitely one of the advantages of flexible working. Ultimately, we want everyone at Northern Media to enjoy working for the agency and we feel that this will only be enhanced by creating a working environment that promotes wellbeing.  

Since the move to The Junction the business has continued to grow and we’ve seen a number of landmark events. The last 2 years has seen us celebrating Anthony and Jess’10-year anniversary at Northern Media. 10 years at the same agency is very rare and we are very grateful to them for putting their faith in us and trusting our plans all of those years ago.  

In addition, we have also won a couple of We Are Wakefield Business awards recently and there’s always a sense of pride when you win something.   

The last few years have seen us develop a really good relationship with the public health team at Wakefield Council and we have worked on a number of exciting projects including a new E-Learning platform that supported the Referral Team in the promotion of a healthy lifestyle across the region.  

We’ve also won some large website projects that showcase the skills and capabilities of our website development team. 

2024 saw us introduce the NM Design brand which is purely focused on design and print such as brochures, stationary etc. Although we are a digital agency, we believe there are opportunities out there for design-based work still and we will look to develop the brand over the next year.  

Looking Forward

Finally, the team has also undergone some strategic changes over the last 18 months, and I can honestly say that the current team is the strongest we’ve ever had in terms of skills, expertise and attitude.

That seems to be a nice way to wrap up the summary and I’d like to thank everyone involved with Northern Media over the last 15 years from clients to the team and suppliers.

It hasn’t always been easy and we have certainly had to overcome challenges during this period but that’s the same with any business. Challenges are inevitable and, it maybe a cliché, but it’s how you overcome these challenges that is the key. I certainly know we’ve learned from every single challenge that we’ve faced and we will continue to do so over the next 15 years.

The business is in a good place at the moment in terms of the team we have, the clients we work with and the culture we have created so, along with the exciting plans we have, I’m looking forward to seeing how we evolve over the coming years and to the continued growth and development of Northern Media.