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foxandcat.online

Some pressure in the workplace is helpful – it keeps us motivated, productive and encourages progression and growth. But too much pressure, or even too little, can take its toll, both on the individual or wider agency.

At fox&cat, our mission is to help agency teams manage the growing and evolving pressures of professional life. We are a virtual agency which brings under one roof four key solutions to help agency teams manage pressure:

Client service & consultancy: prompt senior support, forward planning and out of hours work to help agencies deliver their client’s work while minimising pressure on the existing client team. The fox&cat network provides access to strategic communications consultancy (health, consumer, corporate and crisis), content creation and copy, design, web and digital work – meaning its senior professionals’ network can provide integrated services and hit the ground running

Training: through partnership with experts who understand the pressures of creative industries, all training programmes from fox&cat have a focus on helping people, teams and businesses cope with pressure. Services include coaching, pressure workshops, and resilience training, right through to the more holistic end where it helps people identify where stress lives in their body

Leadership: fox&cat has a network that includes ex owners, MDs and directors of communications and creative agencies; meaning it can offer clients that important “independent perspective” on team- and company- matters when the issues are causing unnecessary pressure. This includes:
- leadership team advice and counsel around branding, missions & values, operations, community, people & HR matters & environmental matters
- helping the leaders of tomorrow understand and navigate the pressures of creative agencies

Wellbeing: staff wellbeing isn’t about drop-in-the-ocean gestures, rather it’s about longer term thinking and tailored support to help create happy healthy company cultures. Fox&cat offers wellbeing packages that help fix cultures. Through building meaningful long-term relationships with its clients, fox&cat has a unique window into each business and what will help them manage wellbeing

Everything we do stems for our unique adapt^TM framework: a tool designed to assesses the root cause of an agency or agency team’s circumstances, create a strategy, then deliver a programme that will see them through a period of particular pressure. Evaluation is critical to fox&cat’s proposition and is used to track and assess how its solutions have positively impacted the performance and culture of the agency.

Who are we? Our team tackles all forms of unhelpful pressure. We are an ten-strong blend of comms pros, trainers, leadership experts and wellbeing gurus who all understand the pressures of working in creative and high-pressured roles and are committed to helping others through those trickier times.

Why do we do it? We want to reduce work-related stress & ensure balance in high pressured, creative jobs. Staff mental health is a growing concern in many types of business, but particularly in creative agencies and highly-pressured client delivery roles. According to a 2020 CIPR survey, one fifth of communications professionals experience mental health issues, and more than half of those said work pressure contributed to their symptoms, with unrealistic deadlines and unsocial hours cited as common causes.

Interested? Book an introduction and we’ll talk you through what we do & how we do it. We will discuss services, our online booking system & ways of working. Then, you can book us between 6am and 10pm seven-days a week.

Find out more here, or book an introduction here.

Our values are central to everything we do. We keep things:

simple: we're easy to work with, agile & flexible
present: we help you hit the 'pause' button & reflect
in balance: we level things off & help prevent future wobbles
novel: we encourge change: evolution or revolution

And finally, it you're curious about why fox&cat, read the fable here.

Areas of Expertise

Everything we do comes back to us wanting to help take the pressure off you, and we do this through four workstreams:

Delivery of your client work & strategic consultancy

health communications delivery
corporate communications support
a spare pair of hands to deliver work
another version of you to work out of hours
a quick pow wow with senior consultants
super-fast turn-around work (less than four hours)
planned support: insights | strategy | content & copy | design | web

Team training & development

some extra coaching
embodiment workshop
problem-solving training
managing pressure & resiliance training

Leadership support

outsider perspective & insights reports
helping the leaders of tomorrow manage pressure
business guidance & operational support
aligning brand with values & connecting inward
CSR & connecting outward
company marketing opportunties
opportunity scouting

Wellbeing

wellness campaigns
a bit of TLC
physical exercise#
mental health workshops

Corporate Social Responsibility

We give back to our community through our "hours for ours" campaign. We believe that businesses with similar missions should support each other, which is why for every eighty hours of time that our clients book with us, we will:

donate one hour of our time to supporting a mental health organisation
accrue one hour for our clients to spend on something to keep them happy & healthy

Find more about our community here.

Clients

GCI Health

Team

Paul Hutchings

Next Generation Consultancy Launches To Help Creative Agency Teams Manage The Pressures Of Agency Life: A new ‘mould-breaking’ virtual support agency, fox&cat emerges today with a clear mission – to help creative agency teams manage the growing and evolving pressures of agency life. Initial roll-out targets pressurised healthcare communications teams with a network team of ten.

White Papers and Resources

Employee wellbeing in creative agencies: three tips to get you started: Paul Hutchings, founder of fox&cat, and new friend, Welfy, a workplace wellbeing training firm, discuss the importance of collaboration
Managing unhelpful pressure in your creative agency: the human approach: Paul Hutchings, founder of fox&cat, answers the questions: what does it mean to be human in 2021? Are we putting ourselves under too much pressure?
Happiness and wellbeing: you can have both, but they’re not the same thing: "Wellbeing needs to remain central to leadersip", writes Paul Hutchings, founder of fox&cat. In this article Paul and his network explain the difference between wellbeing and happiness. And how problems (of all things) can make us happy
How nature can help you manage the pressures of agency life: Paul Hutchings, founder of fox&cat, outlines how nature can help you can boost staff wellbeing in your agency this Mental Health Awareness Week
Leaders leading leaders: objectivity and respecting the micro-leader: Passionate leaders go far. But clip their wings, fail to recognise their skills or respect their passions, and you’re set for uproar. Especially with Gen Z now established in the workforce.
Oh no… not more training: Paul Hutchings, founder of fox&cat, discusses ways to help your team manage pressure in a more human, pressure-centric and engaging way
Want to give perfect client service? Tough luck, you’re human: In this article an ex-client of mine, Liz Skrbkova, and I explore the (unhelpful) pressures of trying to perfect the client-agency relationship
Feeling the pressure?: Pressure affects us all differently. But one thing is certain... left unresolved, pressure will have a lasting negative effect on the culture of your agency

Videos and Podcasts

Testimonials

Zoe, Director, GCI Health

GCI Health used Fox & Cat for some wellness training during our Beat the Blues campaign in lockdown January. The sessions were very well put together, managed and run and we all got a lot out of them. The trainer, Alex, was very knowledgeable and passionate, and we had a lot of great feedback about the sessions. They lifted us in a troubling time providing life skills to help manage stress at work and beyond. We will certainly work with Fox and Cat again.

Tamara, Director, GCI Health

I really enjoy working with Paul - he is more like an extension to our team. He gets stuck in, challenges briefs, and comes up with some amazingly creative ideas. I look forward to working with him and his team as a part of the fox&cat venture.

Alex, Wellbeing Coach & Founder of Tula Corporate Therapies

I worked with Paul to create a wellbeing offering to his client, which was delivered in January 2021 and involved several sessions covering key wellbeing themes. The whole process was really smooth and very professional Paul clearly gives 100% to his clients and genuinely cares about building great relationships with both his clients and his network.

Networks

PRCA

CIPR

HCA

Company Details