Empowering Personal Growth: How VIOOH Builds Success from the Inside Out

While scaling to 200 employees across 29 markets globally, nurturing talent has proven instrumental in VIOOH’s remarkable journey since its launch in 2018. Our commitment to growth and development has evolved from a nice-to-have initiative into the cornerstone of our business culture and success.

VIOOH Week exemplifies our commitment to growth. During the recent annual conference for our people, we reflected on the previous year's accomplishments, set out our vision for the future and engaged in knowledge sharing across the organisation. This year's theme was ‘Scaling for the Future’, which perfectly captures our growth mindset. The event featured inspirational talks from leaders including interns who spoke about resilience and taking challenges one step at a time.

Our comprehensive approach to development has contributed significantly to our success. We've experienced double-digit revenue growth each year since 2020, earned recognition as a top 50 MarTech company in the UK for two consecutive years, winner of two Digiday WorkLife Awards and ranked in the Top Ten Sunday Times Best Places to Work in 2024.

Liz Dowling, chief people officer VIOOH

People success platform

Our continuous performance management programme, with bi-annual reviews and quarterly check-ins, ensures regular feedback and course correction where necessary. We employ cascading Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to connect individual and team objectives with our overarching strategic goals. Leadership sets ambitious company-wide objectives, communicated transparently at VIOOH Week and throughout the year.

Lattice, our new people success platform launched during VIOOH Week in January further facilitates the cascading of these goals to every team member, and represents a significant milestone in how we approach development. This comprehensive system goes far beyond traditional performance tracking - it creates an ecosystem that connects every aspect of our professional growth journey.

The platform's transparency and structure fosters connection and development at every level: a company info page celebrates our community through real-time recognition and birthdays, org charts help us understand team dynamics, detailed profiles allow us to learn about colleagues across the business and the 360-degree feedback system ensures everyone receives constructive input from multiple perspectives.

One of Lattice's most powerful features is how it brings clarity to our professional paths. Having clear goals that cascade down to each VIOOHer provides clarity and transparency to ensure we are all working together to achieve our results. The Grow module provides competency matrices, giving each team member clarity on role expectations and advancement opportunities.

Reaping rewards

Our ‘Your Growth Time’ initiative reserves every Friday afternoon, or 10% of work time, specifically for personal and professional development. This is supported by substantial learning resources including a Learnerbly budget for accessing books, courses and coaching. In addition, each VIOOHer may use professional development funding up to £3,000, unlimited access to the EdApp learning management system and DiSC profiling and coaching. Our Leading@VIOOH programme, featuring Manager Lab and reverse mentoring, helps to build leadership capabilities at every level.

Focusing on internal mobility has facilitated numerous moves across and up the organisation. This is increasingly important, as research shows internal mobility offers considerable benefits: savings in time and money compared to hiring externally, improved employee retention rates and greater diversity and innovation in the workplace.

The results of this investment speak volumes. In 2024, we launched VIOOHture, our emerging talent programme, to attract interns and provide valuable work experience. In addition, half of our current leadership team has been promoted internally – executives such as Steve Norman, Chief Technology Officer and Peter Vick, Chief Operating Officer among others – unique evidence that we truly believe in growing our own talent. We're proud that 50% of our current leadership team has been promoted internally, and we're committed to promoting or transferring 20% of our talent annually.

As we look to the future, our focus on growth and development remains essential. In an industry as dynamic as digital out of home advertising, VIOOH’s ability to adapt and evolve depends entirely on the capabilities of our people. By investing in development, we're not just building careers, we're building the foundation for continued innovation and market leadership.

Growth and development remain central to VIOOH's identity - they are the engines that power our success today and will fuel our ambitions for tomorrow. Through our structured programmes, continuous learning culture and transparent advancement paths, we're creating not just a successful company but a place where careers flourish and potential is realised.

Liz Dowling is chief people officer at VIOOH. For more information visit: viooh.com​