As we celebrate our 13th anniversary as the creative communication sector’s dedicated recruitment
partner and training provider, we’re thrilled to announce that we are now an employee-owned business!

We have transferred 100% of the shareholding to an Employee Ownership Trust, equitably benefitting all the staff now, and into the future. Managing Director, Melissa Smith, says “We made this decision primarily to protect the future of the business, ensuring that our culture and values remain in the hands of our team, and to provide opportunities for them and future employees to grow into confident owners and managers and spearhead the next chapter of The Industry Club’s life. “I’m tremendously proud of what we’ve achieved over the last 13 years, and I can see no better way to celebrate those achievements than by transferring the shareholding and championing the people who have contributed to our success so far.

”Employee Ownership Trusts are becoming an increasingly popular model for founders and business owners to exit their businesses. But they also offer a whole host of benefits to their employee-owners including greater productivity, more investment in R&D, and more attention to D,E&I.

Reasons for the transition
Typically, transitioning to an EOT is seen as a means to manage a smooth and structured succession for
business owners. “Working as we do, as a closely knit team of recruitment specialists with defined desks and
responsibilities, this decision doesn’t overly affect business as usual,” Melissa comments. “In fact, our
transition to employee ownership represents a real and very exciting opportunity to deepen our
collaborative approach.”

But there are no plans for an immediate exit. In time, Melissa will step away from the role of MD, but for
the time being, she’ll stay in post to run the business and its training arm, The Industry School.

What we’ve done so far
Since the official documents were signed we’ve invested time to get together and discuss plans moving forward.
“We really have engaged with the task ahead of us. We’ve invested time and effort into understanding and
defining who we are as a team, looking at our culture and our values, determining how we make this
succession plan as successful as we can,” says Smith.

Mandy Daniel, our Finance Manager, says of the process, “It’s been eye-opening to see how
employee-owned trusts run, and the work we’ve done has made us really think about who we are, where
we want to be and the tools we’ll need along the way. But more than that, it’s made us realise what a great
team we are, and I feel very lucky to be a part of that, and I’m excited for the future.”

Zoe Edwards, an ex-Publicis business director, who has run our strategy & senior client services desk for
the last 7 years, echoed some of Mandy’s comments, “we’ve had a chance to start to imagine the exciting
future ahead of us as an employee-owned business, as well as a chance to reinforce what makes us
different as a recruiter in the creative industry.”

Future plans
For the time being, it will continue to be business as usual, whilst in the background we’ll be making plans
for Melissa’s succession and forming a leadership team to help shape accountability and responsibility
moving forward “I’m not ready to go quite yet, I will be in the business for at least another five years,” says Melissa, “there’s a lot of work to do. It’s tough out there at the moment, and it’s an increasingly competitive market. Thankfully we know which direction we’re travelling in, I have confidence in our team, and believe that our collective ownership gives us the best possible platform to get to where we need to as a business, and to deliver for our clients of both The Industry Club
and The Industry School.”