A Premiership Winning Team - Hays and Manchester City Football Club Viewpoint careers advice blog

A Premiership Winning Team - Hays and Manchester City Football Club As any sports fan knows, the climax to this season’s English Premier League last Sunday has been as intriguing as ever. But this year’s was of particular importance for me because it was the first time Hays has been involved with sponsorship and the first time we have been able to celebrate the Club’s success as one of their community of partners that includes Etihad, Nike, LG and others. The decision to engage in this investment was not an easy one and I’ll admit that I was initially sceptical that an investment of this nature would work for a FTSE 250 company in the professional services space. At the time we were looking at ways to accelerate the international awareness of Hays as the leading global recruitment firm, and had been investigating a range of options over number of months. Those options evolved into our becoming Manchester City FC’s Official Recruitment Partner last July, and we are now celebrating their Premier League triumph. After all, theres nothing so invigorating as winning! But more importantly for Hays, our brand has been exposed to vast numbers of people worldwide â€" estimates put the global audience for English Premier League games during a season at close to a billion viewers. And there has also been the added bonus of the morale boost that it’s given our employees who’ve been excited and proud to be associated with the best team in the land. As to the synergies between Hays and Manchester City FC, they were far greater than I first imagined. We all know the qualities that are critical to achievement in elite sport â€" skills, determination, leadership, a winning mentality, as well as recruiting and retaining the best talent â€" these are all strikingly similar to those that exist in any business wanting to succeed in its sector. Football clubs, of course, exist primarily to play the beautiful game, thrilling and entertaining their fans â€" and, yes, sometimes dashing their hopes. But they’re also businesses, and at the top echelons, they are more akin to global corporations and brands than they ever were in the past. One can clearly see in the Club many of the HR-related disciplines that you expect to find in a business â€" such as talent management and succession planning â€" and we’ve been able to offer some of our own expertise by helping the Club recruit for a number of key roles off the pitch. Building a winning team and the recruitment of the right players is essential to Manchester City’s success, and I’ve been impressed at the structures that the club has put in place to look after its home-grown talent pipeline. I’m incredibly proud that Hays can call itself a partner of 2013-2014 Barclays Premier League champions, Manchester City, and I would recommend that any company, of any size, thinks about how sponsorship might work to help them achieve their strategic aims. The experience has taught me and my team a great deal, benefitted the business in more ways that I could have imagined at the outset, and, on a simple level, it’s been tremendously exciting for everyone involved. The value of that energy and excitement in a business should never be under-estimated. //