In July, OMD UK held its all agency meeting at the Curzon cinema in Mayfair. One of the big initiatives announced by Chief People Officer, Clare Alger, was the introduction of a four week secondment programme to another OMD market. Clare revealed this to the audience of 300+ OMDers, which was received with an audible gasp.
What’s more is that the location of the secondment would be OMD Sydney at the start of their summer – what’s not to love?!
The announcement kick-started the application process across the agency, which asked employees to demonstrate what they have done in their careers to date against OMD UK’s core company values (Care, Curiosity, Collaboration and Challenge), as well as provide a business case for what they can take over to Sydney, and importantly what they learn from the experience and bring back to OMD UK.
After two rounds of judging I’m extremely proud, excited and slightly anxious to be the successful applicant in OMD UK’s first-ever official secondment programme.
In November, I’ll aim to use my experience as a Strategist to help embed our new Global planning process, OMD Design, into the ways of working of OMD Sydney by running a number of bespoke training sessions for those down under. We’ve recently launched OMD Design across the UK and EMEA, and this is something I have been heavily involved in, so it makes sense to apply this to the advantage of OMD Sydney.
I’ll also be looking at ways that we can share our brilliant OMD culture across opposite sides of the world. I’ll be telling OMD Sydney about all of our recent internal initiatives – from our Eastside Academy partnership to our industry-leading benefits – and looking to find out what OMD Sydney is doing to drive a fantastic culture too. This will help both OMD UK and OMD Sydney to develop new and exciting ways to make both offices an even better place to work. So as you can tell, I’ll be doing more than getting a sun tan!
I’ll be reporting back to the agency in December when I return to share my experience, and importantly encourage others to apply next year!
