This time last year, we made a commitment to take a deep look at where we can improve as an organisation.

We knew there were things we were excelling at, and no doubt those things have helped fuel our growth – particularly over the last decade - but, in order to do better, we had to acknowledge where we were falling short.

It’s important to all of our team that Insanity leads the shift in our industry, to doing business in a way that benefits all. We know that our clients rightly hold us to a high standard and it’s our aim to exceed those expectations. Ultimately, as a privately owned but top tier talent management, production and record label business, we were craving accountability.

That’s why over the course of the last year, we’ve been working with an organisation called Seismic, to be our expert critical friend and accountability partner.

And as we wrap up one financial year and go into the next, it’s time to share some successes, but – more importantly - look at where we need to be doing better.

Environment and sustainability

Moving into new larger offices a couple of months ago, allowed us to completely overhaul our energy consumption. We’d intentionally chosen an office that was Carbon Neutral, rated ‘Excellent’ by BREAM and with a B Rated Energy Performance Certificate. This meant that as far as our office goes, we were up there in terms of energy efficiency and a low environmental impact.

Additionally, we also looked at our supply chains. We’ve implemented both a Purchasing Policy and a Sustainable Practices Policy. As a result, we now use sustainable suppliers, products and services, wherever possible. This has meant using cleaning products that are non toxic and refillable. Our paper products are unbleached and recycled or recyclable. And, we have increased the volume of purchases from independent and local companies (which sit on an approved supplier list that is reviewed quarterly).

However, our international travel is too high, which is increasing our carbon omissions. We also receive a lot of gifts that are sent to our clients from brands, which is increasing unnecessary omissions from delivery, excess packaging and wastage. We also identified that there is a knowledge gap on sustainability at all levels of our team.

Some immediate objectives that we are working on are:

• We will measure and reduce our international travel;
• We will positively use our influence through environmentally positive impactful partnerships with our talent;
• We will educate brands to reduce client gifting, transport and wastage;
• We will build in environmental and sustainability goals into job descriptions and performance reviews, including at leadership team level.

Community and Charity partnerships

Over the last year, we continued our partnership with Shadow To Shine, a charity that provides employability training, mentoring and work opportunities to under-represented young people in London. We also started two more key partnerships. The first was with Choose Love, a charity that helps refugees and displaced people with everything from lifesaving search and rescue to food and legal advice, where our colleagues volunteered ‘in-store’. And the second was Women @ The Well, a charity local to us that supports women who are at risk of or affected by sexual exploitation and where we provided much needed supplies around International Women’s Day. Last year, we also donated over £5,000 to various charities (a full list is disclosed* at the bottom of this post, for transparency).

However, we are not going far enough when it comes to charity and our community, and over the next year we have committed to doing better by making the following promises:

• We are implementing a volunteering policy where our colleagues can take 2 days each year, as paid leave to volunteer for a charity;
• We will provide our internal skills and experience to support charities utilising more initiatives like our employability course with Shadow to Shine;
• We will increase our cash donations to registered charities by at least 10% year on year. We will publicly disclose what donations we make and to who, every year, to keep us accountable;
• We will delegate the decision making on charitable giving away from the leadership team and into a committee made up of representatives from our teams;
• We will implement a payroll charity giving initiative where Insanity will match colleague donations up to £10 per colleague per month

People and Governance

Insanity has, for many years, invested in its people. We are proud that for over four years we have provided comprehensive private medical insurance to all colleagues from day 1, together with unlimited support for mental health therapy.

We are a ‘people first’ business and believe that we have made the right decisions when it counts, for example by keeping all colleagues on 100% salary during the global pandemic with zero redundancies. We also offer flexible hybrid working and many other perks to our colleagues.

We've increased the investment into the training and growth of our teams. Some examples of this are that we have supported our back office legal and finance personnel through to qualification, all members of our leadership team have undergone external Leadership and Management Training Programmes with ‘Happy’ and we have a rolling programme of internal training where all colleagues undergo anti-racism and mental health resilience training.

However, over the last year, we have also been leaning in and inviting anonymous feedback from our teams, and we have gained lots of valuable insight, driving us to introduce a range of new objectives over the course of the coming year.

Acknowledging the need for continuous improvement, we have made the following commitments:

• We acknowledge that we still have a lot more to do to fully understand, celebrate and improve the diversity of our team. We will work with our team to agree objectives and KPI’s and we will publish those KPI’s as well as our progress on our website, by the end of 2025;
• We will introduce a new accessible way of receiving feedback, via the implementation of QR codes around the office which link to an anonymous feedback form. We will receive all feedback with curiosity and determination and avoid defensiveness;
• We will implement a formal ethics policy and whistleblowing procedure, utilising a third party company who can receive reports from any stakeholder of the business;
• We will introduce a formal growth and training plan for every colleague in the business and review it every quarter.

It’s been a year of learning and growth for us, and as we plan for the year ahead, we have in mind that underpinning everything we do is our ambition to use our business as a force for good and in a way that benefits our team, our clients and our wider community.

Charitable giving

Shadow To Shine (Registered charity number 1200087) £1,755

WarChild (Registered charity number 1071659) £1,000

Choose Love (Registered charity number 1177927) £1,000

Joe's Buddy Line (Registered charity number 1193127) £750

Women @ the Well (Registered charity number 1118613) £250

Youth Music (Registered charity number 1075032) £250

Nordoff and Robbins (Registered charity number 280960) £200

Alzheimers Society (Registered charity number 296645) £52.30

New Life (Registered charity number 1155084) £51.50

Mind (Registered charity number 219830) £50

*to March 2024 (Total = £5,358.80).