Crofts

THE NEED

Crofts Chartered Accountants has a powerful competitive advantage: an engaged and committed culture. This has been at the core of how the business operates, by focusing on the importance of soft skills.

As a result, Crofts culture is humanist, differentiated, attractive to staff, and clients.

Accordingly, management recognised that with expansion, the essential character of the culture must also be maintained; lived and owned by all staff.

And it needed to be consistently experienced by all internal and external stakeholders.

Knowing that sustaining this competitive advantage would drive business growth, the brief was: “Document and Sustain it”.

To achieve this, the key elements of the Crofts culture needed to be identified, codified and communicated. And the brand needed to modernise and stand for something; that resonated with new audiences and matched market expectations.

During the culture discovery process, it was clear the business lacked a clear Customer Value Proposition and positioning. This was impacting business development and growth, including recruitment. With no, ‘Why Crofts’ story, recruiters struggled to engage with and communicate to potential candidates on the merits in joining Crofts.

The brand identity and communications were also dated and conservative, lacking energy or distinction. So this needed to be enhanced to match the intent and energy the brand actually projects.

THE SOLUTION

Working closely with the client, we identified the key attributes of the culture. Then we developed a simple and highly effective framework for employee engagement: context, vision, values, plus employee rights and responsibilities. These were succinctly communicated through the Crofts Culture Book, which is both inspiring and unequivocal about ‘the way we do things around here’. Now there is a clear, culturally aligned blueprint that guides the behaviours that drives the business’ ongoing success.

Next, the existing brand identity was refined to better reflect the Crofts ethos and deliver on the proactive vision for the business.

By developing a flexible messaging matrix, the brand could communicate to every audience in relevant and brand aligned ways. As a port of this process, all day-to-day business collateral was refreshed to consistently highlight the Crofts point of difference and value.

Now the refreshed brand represents the active, shared and entrepreneurial nature of the business, positively differentiating it from competitors in the sector.

This sets Crofts up for the next phase of not just business growth, but maintains its status as a leader in organisational culture.