Making TEAM the best place to develop a career in sports marketing

TEAM’s CEO, Simon Crouch, explains how TEAM balances supporting and stretching staff

As with many successful organisations, we have ambitious targets, financially-driven objectives and a commitment to delivering exceptional client services. But our first priority relates to staff wellbeing and their development. This focus exists partly for its own sake, because we truly care about TEAM staff, who have entrusted us with their career development. But it also exists because we believe that delivering outstanding, industry-leading sales results and services for our client requires a community that allows all staff to thrive, a culture of open and transparent communication and a collective commitment to constantly raise the standards we set for ourselves and those around us.

Support

When I took over as CEO in April 2022 (after ten years as COO), I wanted to shift the strategic focus to our people. This wasn’t necessarily new for TEAM — attracting and retaining the best talent has always been a priority, but now “making TEAM the best place to develop a career in sports marketing” has become the overarching vision of our corporate strategy. Our staff truly are our foundation, our pride and our USP.

From that vision, we identified three strategic priorities:

Cultivate a TEAM community that allows all staff to thrive
Promote clear and transparent communication throughout the business
Focus on the development of individuals and ensure everyone has a fulfilling career

These priorities drive every decision and they inform our culture and the values we want to emphasise.

In practice this means that we offer as much flexibility to our staff as we can, recognising that we are a highly international organisation with staff from all corners of the world. We trust our people to find the right balance between personal preferences and the needs of the business, whether this relates to working remotely, or identifying which of our two offices acts as their working base. We invest significant time and resources in staff training and development, taking account of individual needs, alongside the company-wide training that serves to draw us together as an effective and coherent team.

As a community, it’s our job to support each other to do our best work. And it is TEAM’s responsibility to allow each staff member to bring the best version of themselves to work every day. In fact it is more than that – it is to provide the platform that allows TEAM staff to be better than they ever thought they could be.

Stretch

But we also recognise that we can’t stand still. We dream big for TEAM, and when we set objectives that are slightly daunting we also make a commitment to achieving them. And so, all Leadership Team objectives are published at the beginning of the year for all staff to see. We are accountable for results and we are all in this together, jointly. We expect everyone to stretch themselves and to push themselves but also to deliver against the commitments they make. This doesn’t just positively impact our business and our clients, but it also helps each individual to develop and grow.

It is important that our staff continue to feel pride in what they do and where they work – and you can see this reflected in the long average tenure of our people (colleagues with more than 15 years’ service represent 14% of the staff). But we also recognize that not everyone will stay at TEAM for their entire career. Our hope is that if they do leave, they leave as a more sought-after and knowledgeable candidate for their next role. We hope they leave with more confidence, with greater expertise and experience and that they look back at their time at TEAM as incredibly formative in developing their career.

Are you interested in experiencing TEAM’s unique culture first-hand? Check out our Careers page to learn more about Life at TEAM and our open roles.