Power Up Your Game Studio: The Essential Role of Ops and HR Support for Studio Success

Um, so yes, we're going to kick it off because I think we have kept you waiting long enough. Um, so welcome. This is the Power Up Your Game Studio. Um, we're going to be talking about the essential role of Ops and HR to studio success. Um, before we kind of get started, want to do a little bit of an introduction on who we are, where we've been, what we do. So I'm Rebecca Samson. I have been working in the games industry for the past 16 years. I started my career as a receptionist, so entry level. Um, it wasn't my I was rubbish. So, I decided to follow my strengths um which was organizing and planning and helping people. And that's where I fell in love with the world of operations and ops. Um, so I've worked with three major game studios throughout

that time uh from receptionist and grew my way um in those roles and grew with the companies that I worked with. Um, I was at Blackhawk Studio for four years before I moved on to Creative Assembly which is where I met the lovely Emma Smith. Um, so I was there for seven years um, working within their operations, working with the team, helping them grow. They had around 160 people when I joined. We when I left there was around 500. So that was multiple office fit outs and floor fit outs, multiple building fit outs, building a team and and working very closely with all of the departments um that kind of go up to making a game studio. Um it was after seven years that I moved on to hanger 13 to help them with their Brighton studio. So there was 13 people there grew I think um to over a hundred um during my time. So I came in and helped put the processes in place, helped them build the team, helped them build the culture. And it

was, I think, the sort of last couple of years of being there that I really loved doing a lot more outreach within the industry. I loved um being more involved with not for-p profofit partners. Uh so I worked alongside Yuki um for a bit supporting them. I worked with women in games as an advisory board member and an ambassador into games special effects. And I think it was this element that I really enjoyed doing a much wider outreach within the industry which is where MoxyOps formed. Um so at MoxyOps I offer operations, consultancy and contracted services to multiple studios who are in need and maybe at that sort of transitional stage in their life cycle. Um and for me it's just being able to work with a lot of people and doing the things that I love and I enjoy. So, I'm going to pass over to Emma um who has been an amazing mentor to me and a role model and a fabulous leader.
Thank you so much and say similar to Becky um my company HIA talent partners

um is about partnering with companies and sharing my knowledge, skills and experience over mass over um um and pretty much seen it all. There is pretty much nothing that you can say to me that will shock me now. Uh I have been a 999 operator. Um I've worked for the National Health Service. I worked in charity and citizens advice and then I joined creative assembly in 2009. There were around about 80 90 people there at that time. Um and my role was to do everything apart from making the game. Um so it works with with a very small IT department at the time. um and an operations manager and we really worked hard to make sure that we got all of the things out of the way so that the developers could just get on with it and just make the game and and do the thing that you really really love and that's why you came there. Uh I stayed there for 15 years and I've seen it evolve and change from yeah the company name stayed

the same but it evolved and changed so many different times and moved into different buildings and I could see how that all became something different. Um and as my career pivoted and changed all the way through that I went through the full cycle of HR talent acquisition and social impact and I wanted to do something more. I wanted to give something back and help people through those growth periods or the changes that you might see in your studios and companies. The little bit of a step change. I know that the industry is in a slightly peculiar position at the moment. However, what we are seeing is the growth of smaller companies and people being able to take some of that money and those ideas and really run with it. Um, and we're totally here for it. And that's why we're delivering this talk today to try and give a little bit of a flicker of hope back out there that uh, yeah, it it doesn't have to be the

way that it has been. There's a new way of doing these things.
So, the aims of today's session, we want to give everybody a better understanding of what ops and HR can do for your studio and can help the studio succeed. We also want to um show that there is value um that we can add to your studio and the games that you produce as well as your your leadership and your team. Um also when the right time to implement ops and HR might be as well as what that might look like for your studio. And we also want to hopefully give you some kind of key considerations that you can take away today and and think about implementing them in your company or at least getting you thinking about how you can maybe make those changes that will will help you in the future.
Yeah. So we're going to set the scene set the scene for yourself there. So you starting your own studio is really exciting. You've got an idea. You've got to all come together. got the excitement. I called it I talking about

earlier the the brain it you've got the idea, you're fizzing, you're bubbling, you just want to do the thing. Uh you've got your funding, so you've got the money to be able to do it. Uh you launch a company, you've come up with some funky name like Exploding Frog Games or whatever. Uh you've got a few people working for you now. You're really loving it. It's great. Except it's not quite what you thought it was going to be. not what you thought it was going to be at all.
No, there's all of this stress, all of this headache that can come about. And you know, we've spoken to a lot of company directors and a lot of company founders over the years and more recently as well. And they've highlighted that, you know, some of the most big the biggest kind of stresses to them can be things like compliance to do with legal and um you know, making sure that you've got the right NDAs in place, the right policies and contracts.
Is there an NDA in place?
Yeah. Is there an NDA in place? It's also the cash flow and the finance and the budgets. You know, knowing how much

you've got to spend on your company's team um celebrations for the latest milestone or you know whether you can buy the latest tech to be able to be that innovative company moving forward. It's also things like the business admin that you have to think about you know when you're you're applying for your next grants or your funding or what the next sort of money coming in is and when that will be. Um the HR stuff as well. So, payroll, pensions, benefits, what they might be, when you're going to implement them. How many people
How many times you hear, "Have you got five minutes?" Yeah. In one day. So, it's yeah, it's feeling like as well that they they can't take that time off because of all of this stuff is building up and they've got those stresses. And I um I was speaking to a director um recently who decided to uh use an an AI calendar to help populate their diary for the week with all of the key tasks that they needed to put in. And they they so they they entered all their tasks into this AI calendar and they

said it was great. you know, it formulated this, you know, really finessed schedule, but it came up saying that it left five things out that it couldn't physically fit in at all.
Five really important things.
Really important things. And this was the person's lunch. It was their break. It was their time to breathe, their time to take those, you know, that that sort of hour to themselves to alleviate that stress. And that's where ops and HR can come in. we can help take that that stress off you and help give give directors and company owners that time back and I think it will give them time back to be able to spend time to lead their teams and to direct them and to help like learn learn more about them and um and you know it's
yeah or go to the toilet or have a sandwich or something or have a cup of tea but you say all of those things uh go towards making the game they can't do any of that without it particularly with the with the finance function and the HR capabilities,

but actually being a human and why they came there in the first place to be able to do it. And so we speak to a lot of company owners, they feel like they have to do it all because it's their natural default
because they're trying to do all of this
and we did this as a bit of an exercise for us. These are the things that we cover just between the two of us. And there are companies um smaller companies, even larger companies where you have people that are leading that are trying to do all of this stuff. It might be the first time they're doing it or they feel like they have to do it, but they feel like that leadership expects them to do all of that. The reality is they don't have to do all of it because there are people like me and Becky for all our fight faults love doing it. We actually like doing it. Um I really look forward to receiving my magazines tell me about changes in employment law. Um but I also love my health and safety.

Love my health and safety. It's nothing that I love more than arguing with people about immigration and Brexit. However, however, I know how important that is. And when we speak to business owners and the first question I ask them and they say, "Could you help me?" And they go, "I want them to do this, this, this, and this." Say, "Can we just take a moment? What's keeping you awake at night? Actually, what's worrying you?" And it's this plus the other slide. There's a lot
and this is just an overview.
This is just a little bit
a highle overview. Yeah, high level overview. So when you think about that plus everything else, they're saying that game development is it is really complex. It's not straightforward. And I liken a lot of what I've done and what I've seen over the years is it's like spinning plates, hence this lovely image here. Um people miraculously spinning plates whilst standing on each other's shoulders. But the part that that business operations and HR play in helping you make the game is a part of

the game. And what I've always felt really proud to be a part of the credits on any game that gets published and sent out into the world is I feel like I've been able to take some of the weight off the shoulders of business leaders because they instill that trust and they ask for your expertise and you can help them. So they don't feel like as if they're having more plates being added or they're expected to have more people stand on the head because they're expected to say, "Have you got five minutes? Have you done the video game tax relief? Have you done your VAT return? Oh, by the way, you've got a pensions uh meeting to go to now and you haven't breathed and you can be a little bit Actually, I'm just How many times have you heard somebody say, "Do you have five minutes?" And you've internally eyeolled and taken a sharp in breath and gone, yes, I have five minutes. The reality is that you don't. But you do need to give that time to that person.

If you give some stuff away and delegate it, you will give yourself the space to be able to do that. And we were talking about this actually and we think there might be a slightly better analogy for how this might be.
Yes. And that is the game of Tetris. And we this may play, this may not play, I don't know. But the game of Tetris, you know, you're you're you're trying to lay down those foundations, those clean lines. you've got a few sort of things coming in every so often. Um you're trying to sort of fit in those pieces together and fill in those gaps, those kind of key crucial gaps. And you know, if you imagine it when you get to the harder levels and things start to build up a little bit quicker and it gets faster and you get more shapes in included and and it's harder to fit in those gaps and to fill the the holes that are there. And you know, just when you think, oh, okay, you're you're doing all right, you know, you've got your schedule and your plan laid out. actually there's, you know, you've got an inbox full of emails or the build

breaks or you get a bug or there's an unexpected visitor or oh, there's a pandemic. You know, there's all of these things that that add you think, oh, a few box blocks have gone down and I've had a weekend off. I can do a breather,
but you can't because somebody hands their notice in and now you need to recruit someone and you need to write a job description. But that's okay because you've put that out now. But that's not where it ends because now you need to look at the CVs. Now you need to interview the people and then they uh you make the decision. You go around send the contracts out. The contracts out that's fine. Um we could get a few blocks. No. No. They've just started now. And your Monday is now showing somebody where the toilet is, where the coffee is, how to connect on to pass out.
That's your day gone.
Um and that's your day gone. And you haven't even touched the game.
You haven't even touched the game. And then you've got other things that can land on your plate, like I say, changes, Brexit, the build, someone

copying your game of you haven't even talked about PR and marketing yet and everything else that comes with it.
So yeah, there is a lot there's a lot.
So we like to think um or talk about ops and HR like your Tetris experts. We will come in, we will help lay down those clean foundations, those clean lines, make sure there's no gaps, you know, missing from from what you what your requirements are, what you need. But if there are gaps, we'll come in, we can fix those as well, and we can make things run more efficiently and more smoothly. And now I can't make it go away because it makes me want to play Tetris all the way to the end. No, that makes it play, Becky. They want more, more, more, more. It's over an hour long that video. So, we're not going to play the whole thing.
No, they have to show them that.
Level six.
Hover. Hover here.
No,
just makes you play play. Tech person

help.
Escape and then start again. Maybe
this is what happens when you embed a video into a presentation.
Yeah, we try to be slick.
We're all good. We're all good.
And now we've gone back to the beginning. Not too far. No, because you're gonna get
Oh, there we go.
I'm not even doing
So, yeah, we help we help lay down those foundations, fill in those gaps, um, and and help set the businesses up so they've got those those clear kind of business capabilities and and solid business capabilities.
I say business capabilities. Oo, sounds a bit corporate and we don't like corporate in the games industry, do we? So when I talk about business capabilities, actually they're more like the pillars or the tenants that holds your company up
and actually any company. I mean within the context of games where you've you've got those solid fundamentals, they're there. Um there's a a fellow called McKenzie. If you've done like an MA,

you've done CIPD, any any stuff like that, you'll know who this person is. and I see some gentle nods from the PTSD that comes with studying for a master's degree whilst being full-time employed. However, um the key elements of those business capabilities as I talk about is a company's superpower and being able to tap into what that is will actually help your studio be more resilient and be able to withstand any of those changes and the things that have been coming up that we've seen. So is making the use of the best use of an integrated set of people, processes, and tech that creates value, but enabling your company to do something consistently better that you're able to keep being more efficient, keep delegating, use all of the people in your company to do a great job. And that will help you stay competitive. And it's not about when we say competitive about taking anybody else down. just always be

better. Always look for just trying to edge that up and be that little bit more savvy while using those strong foundations. All of those people, those like say those pillars are your facilities, your HR, your finance, your IT, IT, HR people, your talent acquisition, everything else is there to help you, to facilitate you. Mhm. And to talk about some kind of key figures that really sort of set the scene and and you know is thought to take away today is that according to Harvard Business Review, you know, business owners that delegated their HR and ops tasks to specialists to operation and HR experts, they were able to have a reduction in stress by 33%. So that's 33% reduction in stress.
Yeah. And we were like, what does that actually look like? Because you can't sometimes it's hard to quantify what 33% less stress feels like, but that's like
two days per week that you feel less stressed. And we can't count our

weekends in there because we're kind of still reeling from
from the middle of the week,
but imagine you just like two days of your working week. You feel less like your hair is on fire.
I mean, if I had the opportunity, I would be straight in that line to make sure that I
hear some stuff.
33%. And also to like sort of back this up as well is that they also reported feeling 30% more um confident with their business potential. So that's 33% reduction in stress and also 30% more confident in their business potential as well. So really key figures to just think about and and take away with you today.
Yeah. And it's really interesting with our study with um where they felt they were more confident in their business's potential because they actually had the room to think about what tomorrow or next month or next year or next project looked like because like I say, their hair wasn't on fire and they had the mind space to be able to not think about

all the things that were going on right in front of their face, but they were actually thinking about um what could come next. they moved from thriving to um from surviving to thriving. They they could really make that shift because they felt they had trusted experts around them that would take the load off of them and they could focus back on what they were best at,
what they were best at. And actually there's um a book that's come out recently called The Founders Legacy by Simon C. recommend you read that. Um and then he talks about the importance of doing what you do best and find trusted people to be able to bench press that for you as well so that you can be a better founder, co-founder, CEO, director by not feeling like you have to do it all. So let's go into a little bit more details of why using people like us early on and as a caveat early on at any point I don't wait until it's gone too

far. Don't wait until the waterline is up to your lip. Maybe speak to us a little bit before then or you know there are lots of experts for you to tap into. There's another talk happening exactly now. Um and there are a lot of experts in there so check out that. Um but using this early on will actually help you and your studio at any stage but definitely early on.
Yeah. So when we talk about ops, you know, we're talking about ensuring things run smoothly. Um and this can be making sure that you've got effective and efficient processes in place. Um when we think about processes, you can think about your daily routines and your your daily habits. And if you compare it to your home life, you know, it's about having your morning coffee or maybe taking your dog for a walk or going for a run in the morning. You set things up in certain places, in certain ways to make things that little bit easier for yourself. So, you might leave the the dog lead by the door and your shoes by by the door as well or your coffee by the coffee machine. It makes sense. So

operations can kind of come in and we are essentially, you know, we help make those habits and those daily um daily routines a lot more easier for you um and a lot more efficient. So it means that you get that time back and it takes away that pressure. It takes away that stress. Uh we're also talking about resource management. So that's not just um tools and and software, that's people as well and equipment. And it's making sure that you've got the right people in place, the right equipment in place, and the right tools. Um, you know, no, not everybody has time to research and and demo thousands of pieces of software and see which one is the best one that fits for their studio, but getting somebody in ops to be able to assess certain things and assess the way that the studio runs and find the best things that suit them um and helps them, you know, be more effective is really key. um crisis management as well. We if we think about crisis management, we could think about COVID. Uh you know,
we're pandemic ready now.

Yes, we've all been through it. So, it's your business continuity planning and and your disaster recovery and and preparing for the unforeseen that could, you know, impact your business. And I think you know you can pretty guarantee that 99.9% uh of of companies would have their operations team coming in during the pandemic and during lockdown to make sure that they've got their teams and the studio working successfully at home. Uh operations also covers the work environments. So whether this is in office or remote or hybrid uh it's about those collaborative inclusive and engaging environments whether it's physical or virtual and making sure that there's ways in which the team can help build really good working relationships and build that element of trust. Um so operations can help you know put those fundamentals in in place. Um especially like during COVID when we all think how we had to adapt from working remotely if we weren't doing that before. It was how do we transfer the culture from an

inerson to a virtual um so they they kind of play a big part in that. It's also business uh business compliance. So we're talking health and safety insurance to some people sounds really boring. You know people might yawn about it but operations generally tend to geek out about it and really love it. We like coming in and fixing things and making sure that everybody's safe and looked after and um we're kind of helping the company and the people in the best way that we can that will set them up and and set their game up for success. Um as well as the budget management and procurement. You know, I mentioned earlier figuring out if you've got enough budget to to treat your team to, you know, that celebration for that big milestone or to know when you can get that latest bit of equipment or tech. Um, it's also whether or not you know you can afford to actually have a physical office space or maybe expand your physical office space or whether that's better that you have it remotely and spend your money elsewhere. And the other thing is not not last um but it's

you know the security things as well. So this could be physical security or cyber security. Uh it's about the safety of your team and your studio and your operations.
Yeah.
Appliances.
Yeah. Um, we do know people that are um, we set things up so it's we don't need the bouncers.
Um, but yeah, that is just a a sort of a very short overview, but I don't want to bore people into the details and and everything.
No, bore them into the details.
If anybody wants to know more about operations or if there's something on there that you didn't think was there and you'd like to talk about, then we're more than happy to to have a conversation to ask questions in in about two minutes. But say from from the HR perspective and I say people like HR like you um but um some of this work that I do can be really simple as much as a company's been really successful. They've got plenty of people. They have got fantastic projects but they might not have any policies in place. people

don't really know how much sick leave they have and whether they'll get paid for it or whether um you know if if somebody's poorly. They they kind of get they've got an idea how things work, but actually what a policy does it sets that framework of what what's expected and what you're actually going to get out of being employees at that company and what they can expect from you. Um, and knowing the studio brands and culture, I mean, people talk about it, but really what it is is that playbook when you go into a company, what what are you going to expect from them? What kind of behaviors would work here might not work somewhere else? And being able to really clearly communicate what that is is golden because it helps with hiring people, helps with people getting on boarded. If you don't develop your developers, I promise you, they will walk. You can't stand still with this amazing, brilliant people that want to keep learning more and being better and and

pushing the boundaries of making games. If you don't invest in that, it's going to be a problem and someone like me will be able to see that and give you some solutions that will work for your company. Not everybody, your company that will work for you. and also supporting leads, supporting business owners, being someone that's trusted, that can understand what it's like to make a game and some of those stresses. Helping with things like, are you paying people the right amount of money? Um, helping with conflict. Um, and also small companies, people don't want to complain to the boss. They don't want to complain to the person who runs the company. They feel like they might want to have a bit more of an open conversation with someone who is HR. But the key part of what we're saying is that you don't necessarily need to hire these people into your company if it's a smaller one or if it's a moment that you just want some additional support. Our support can be small on just one of those things. You know, the giant

spiderweb that we showed you earlier or it could be something a little bit more longterm. Um like I say, making games is complex. Also, finding those solutions uh is not So you could get in a piece of a bit of expertise and then step away. Even very big studios worked with them to help guide their hiring processes and support training hiring managers purely because the team did not have enough time to do it and that's okay. We like helping studios. We love the games industry. We want to see it thrive and continue and that's why we do what we do. So yeah, to sum up, um, and we hopefully have some time for some questions as well, um, you know, we understand that making games and setting up a studio and running a business is stressful. We get it. You know, we've been there. We've been amongst the team throughout all of those phases from, you know, a very

short game cycle to a very large and long game cycle, which
that felt like it was never going to end. So like we're talking like 18 months through to maybe four or five years. Um we've we've kind of worked alongside the teams and and the games developers um to support them through this process as well. So we we get that it's stressful.
Yeah. And I say just just to say this again, your superpower is being like if you don't need to do this by yourself because you don't. Good news. There people out there that will do it for you. Um you don't have to do it by yourself. early is best, but don't wait until you've gone too far, particularly as a business owner, where you feel like you can't really do anymore because the capacity in your soul and your brain is not there anymore.
Yeah. And I mean, I think the the other kind of key takeaway as well is that use the experts that you have available to you. You know, there's so many out there now in the industry. There's more and more that are sort of forming their own consultancy businesses. So there's there's plenty of us to go around and I

think it's just making sure that you you think about where you've got those gaps and those kind of key bits of of support that you really need and utilizing those experts that are out there because you know they they can help. We can help um massively and and help take that that time that stress um and that time pressure off.
Yeah. So not every company's going to want to do this the same way because you shouldn't. You're individual and that's amazing. But the outcome should always be the same and that's us feeling like we've walked away or helped you be stronger and more resilient as a company. Um, so thank you very much for listening to us. Seen some nodding heads.
Apologies for all the tech issues at the start but
games. Um,
so we've got some time for questions. I think we've got seven minutes. some um so it'd be lovely to hear from you if you've got any questions because otherwise it's going to be industry horror stories.
We've got some back.

Hello, thank you for the talk.
Um I know that it might be like a topic for whole separate talk but uh from your point of view there's lots of happening you know in HR in terms of trends innovation you know different things that we hear in this conference as well. what's the top kind of HR related trends that you're excited about that you believe has you know future in the industry?
Okay, I I can answer that from my perspective. So from HR side of things um because of the changes and pivot in the industry at the moment from an HR perspective um it's less about developing a talent pipeline and going back to basics actually and making sure that your workforce is happy with where they are right now. Um, there'll be a lot of people that have got survivor syndrome. If you've stayed at a studio and there's lots of people that still amazing that are looking for roles, some people are actually in this room. So, meet everybody and if you can help them do that. Um, but there are a lot of smaller companies now that are starting to rise

from the ashes of that. Um, and they are people that are opening up businesses because they've got an idea and they want to make a game. they're not necessarily doing it because they want to run a business and make money. So from the HR side of things, it is going back to basics and the fundamentals which is a lovely place to be.
What about you? Would you reckon from from say it's hybrid and remote working is still a thing? Yeah, I mean is I think that we're finding a lot more um employees and especially with like the the younger generation as well is a lot more people are looking at their values that are important to them and and how they match with the company that they're joining. So I think there's a lot more studios that are going to be putting more focus on values um and especially for the teams that are joining them. They want to make sure that they sync with with what they believe in and what they aspire to. And you know, I think there is a lot of work being put in

there for team development as well and and helping everybody feel like they've got a place where they can belong.
Yeah. And co-development, I think, is going to become
more important than outsourcing. Um the size of companies as super studios. I personally don't think we're going to see those kinds of sizes anymore. Um, we will be looking at companies that be thinking about how you can do this differently, how you can be more efficient, how you can have your core team and be able to lean on expertise of companies that are full of amazing people that have worked on multiple different titles and picked up lots of skills and experience along the way rather than working on one franchise for 15 years. Um, and they've not got the breadth of experience. So, hope that answers that question. Oh, yeah. the microphone. Honestly, these lights.
Hi there and thank you for the uh talk. Um a little little bit of a side question. So um it's mainly to do with

um building like a strong company culture. Um how would you sort of um fit obviously the HR and policies and the strict sort of things that you do there with like a strong company culture? like how like what would be the key three things that you would say to focus on to build that strong company culture?
I've just done something like that for a client actually and it's a client that we that that we share.
Mhm.
That's amazing. Um they're a lovely lovely company but they had a really really strong culture from the minute I walked through through the door there. Um and in terms of policies they didn't they had them but they weren't available to people. So for me, I spent more time getting to understand how they talk to each other, how they communicate, what was important to them, even the way that they what font are they using, what is their language, how did they

communicate? So it wasn't about what I was doing and what I thought was right for me. I knew what that framework looked like, but I needed to make it palatable and usable for them. So they felt like I was giving them something that they were already familiar with. So for me, I leave on what's familiar and take time to get to know people before I just pick up a template, you know, turn it and throw it in because that
from my perspective that is not a good HR professional. An HR professional is someone who's there as much for the people as it is for the company. Probably more so for the people that's me. Um, but when you have an HR person that can listen and people trust in the company and they know those policies are there to help them understand how to navigate their way through problems, changes, things that happen in life, that's where they become important and then that feeds into your culture because your policies

keep replicating that and cycling that back around.
Yeah.
Awesome. Thank you.
You're welcome.
I think those are gentlemen at the back. Sorry, I didn't move forward. You move forward. Still back here. Um, so I work for quite a sort of I'm a leadership group in a sort of corporate game studio. This is sort of on the same lines of of culture. So from my experience, culture is sort of quite a natural thing within a studio that's sort of built through the years. Um, but when you sort of talk about it, it's sort of like a line item. So I guess I'm curious sort of how you approach culture from your perspective and building culture while also kind of keeping it a natural thing.
I think it's it's about when you you know like you said culture kind of naturally forms from the the sort of the starting founders and and and people that are already there in the team but it's all about nurturing that culture as well and and reviewing and seeing how people interact and making sure that you put things in place and implement things that help sort of support that in a way.

Um, and yeah, if it's I think culture change, you know, if you needed to change the culture, that can take a long time and a long process. So, it's just doing it slowly in a more sort of natural and holistic way.
Yeah, I think again just to kind of reiterate that that the very different cultures are a reflection of the company's personal values. quite often they haven't written it down or been able to actually communicate what there is. It's almost like the unspoken rules here. That's not how we do things here. Favorite saying in inverted commas. It's really not. Um but when you can write that down
and put that in writing or you can verbalize that confidently and you know it,
that's when culture becomes a real thing rather than just a you know kind of nebulous idea. And then you can start structuring everything around that as well. Um so so you know culture can be

you know talk about company fit. What it means is like how are people behaving in line with personal values? Are you being abrasive to a collective set of values or not? Um so yeah it it it blends. It really does. But if you can sit down with company founders and the leading team saying what's really important to you and your personal values and what does it mean in this company? What is it to this context? Because everybody working here, they believe in you and they believe in the game and they believe in your vision. But how do they show up doing that? And then when you verbalize it, you write it down, it's there and you communicate it. Comm's experts read the room. Um, that is where the magic happens and that's where you and your company have your own identity and that's what will make you stand out and that's how you attract great people and that's why they stay. And I think that's all we've got time for, unfortunately.
The best thing is
Oh, no.

The best thing is, look at that. You can you can see us later. We're going to be around um if anybody has any extra questions that they want to sort of hang back or I think I don't know if this room is booked afterwards. It is. So, we have to
we have to congregate outside of this room. Um but yeah, feel free to come and and chat with us and ask us any extra questions.
Come chat with us. I say those uh QR codes go through to our LinkedIn profiles.
Oh, and my website
and your website. Um but uh you can send any questions there. But I say we are around um around I tend to go to lots of events uh because I like people and I like talking as you can tell. Um but thank you very much for coming. I know it's been it's day two. We're probably a bit tired. We're nearly at the end of the day. You can smell the beer and the wine from the bar downstairs. Um you're full of merch. Um and thank you very very much everybody again [Applause]