“Cultural add”, not “cultural fit”: How Medialab protects its values

Most founders worry about building a culture. Catherine Falla, chief people and culture officer at independent media agency Medialab Group, has spent the last five or six years worrying about keeping one.

As the 20-year-old business has undergone fast growth, its original culture was at risk of becoming a boardroom slogan rather than a lived reality.

The three values behind the culture

“We are a company that doesn't sell a product, we sell a service to our clients, which is our people,” she says. “They really do see the value in that and it's over-indexed in terms of how important that is to our organisation.”

That focus on people is reflected in Medialab's three values: ‘Do the right thing’, ‘Help people flourish’ and ‘Dig deeper to understand better’. The language has evolved over the years, Falla says, but the sentiment has stayed the same. The first value, in particular, acts as a moral compass for the business.

“That is about making sure that, whether it's a difficult decision or a commercial one that isn't going to benefit our business, we will always do the right thing by our team and our clients,” says Falla. “We are spending a lot of our clients' money, many of whom are charities, and so we have a duty of care with that funding.”

The danger for any growing company is that values become words that are agreed in a boardroom and then forgotten. At Medialab, Falla says the work starts at the very beginning of the employee lifecycle. Interview questions are built around the values and candidates are assessed not on whether they are a “cultural fit”, but whether they are a “cultural add”.

“For me it's not around whether your face fits in this agency or not,” she says. “We've got a real diverse mix of individuals who don't look or act or behave the same in many regards. They've got different heritages, different cultures, different languages, but they all share the same values.”

This is then carried through into the company's talent frameworks.

It is an attempt to remove the inconsistency that can come when values and behaviours are left as subjective or “fluffy” concepts. The best people in the business, Falla says, tend to have both the ability to do the job and the behaviours that help them do it in the right way.

Values under pressure

One of the clearest examples of Medialab living its values came during lockdown, when the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of Sarah Everard left many employees feeling personally affected while working remotely. The business created ‘Together We Stand’, an open forum that began with very little structure but a clear purpose: to give people a safe space to talk, listen and learn from each other.

“We dealt with that by doing the right thing and helping people flourish, back to our values,” says Falla. “We just allowed a safe open space for people to talk and learn from each other as well.”

The forum has since evolved into a regular part of life at the company. More recently, after some employees experienced or feared an increase in racism in London, Medialab held an impromptu Together We Stand session led by board members, the head of talent acquisition and inclusion and one of the chairs of its employee communities.

“Our board members were talking as openly as somebody at an entry level that was being just as vulnerable,” says Falla. “That sort of real open behaviour just showed a united front which was not really anything about work but just looking after our people and making sure that they feel supported.”

In the early days of the forum, one senior Black colleague also led a session called ‘Awkward Questions’, allowing people to submit anonymous questions about race and language. The business later built a library to help employees understand the right language to use.

“There was this apprehensiveness for people to talk about it because they didn't know what to say and didn't want to offend anyone,” Falla says. “It really helped us.”

Another Together We Stand session saw Falla interview Medialab CEO Marcus Orme, who is dyslexic, about his experience growing up and leading a business. The session, called ‘The Diary of a Dyslexic CEO’, inspired an employee with ADHD to set up one of the company's employee resource groups, Great Minds, a spin on the phrase ‘great minds don't think alike’.

“When we talk about leadership and diversity, inclusion and values, that for me was the epitome of exactly those things all coming together,” says Falla. “It was just him being a normal human and letting his team see that for what it was.”

As Medialab grew, diversity and inclusion also became a more formal part of its business strategy. The company created a board pillar focused entirely on diversity and inclusion of talent, built around a strategy called ‘Recruit, Rise, Retain’. That meant looking not just at hiring, but also at how people progress and stay in the business.

One of the biggest changes was creating the role of head of talent acquisition and inclusion, combining recruitment with internal diversity strategy. Falla says appointing Kianna Briggs, who leads that work, has been “a game changer” for the business.

“We knew recruitment was our main area of focus,” says Falla. “By combining those two roles into one and creating a head of talent acquisition and inclusion, it was the perfect solution to that problem.”

Rewriting the policies

The business has also worked to make policies reflect its values. After reviewing employee feedback, Falla realised Medialab's benefits package was lagging behind the expectations of a business of its size. Alongside more traditional changes to areas such as healthcare and pension, the company worked with its Women at Medialab community to benchmark and improve maternity and paternity support.

“We essentially doubled it,” she says. “We also doubled our paternity leave because we know that shared parental leave isn't necessarily as easy for businesses to navigate. But by doing so, it allows more women to be in work and that's a big ambition of ours.”

The change went beyond pay and time off. Medialab created a wider maternity and paternity experience, including flexible working after return, a baby basket and ready-cooked meals for new parents.

For leaders trying to create a more values-led organisation, Falla's advice is not to try to do everything alone. Medialab works closely with WYK, a not-for-profit organisation whose name stands for ‘What You Know Not Who You Know’. The partnership is aimed at opening up opportunities for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and challenging nepotism in the media industry.

The agency mentors WYK students, hosts insight days in its office, offers CV and interview support and hires from its programmes. Around 40 per cent of Medialab's entry-level talent has come through WYK initiatives, according to Falla.

“Having an external partner like that – you can't do it all, especially when you're a small organisation like ourselves,” she says. “You've got to find just one really brilliant partner who you trust that shares your values and can do what you want to do together.”

What can leaders learn?

Values only count if they survive contact with hiring. Medialab assesses candidates on “cultural add” rather than “cultural fit”, a distinction that stops values becoming a filter for sameness. Founders should ask whether their own interview process tests for values or just comfort.

Values need a moral compass function, not just a mission statement. Falla's “do the right thing” principle shapes real commercial decisions, including how the agency handles clients' money. Founders should be able to point to a decision their values actually changed, not just one they were consistent with.

You don't have to build values infrastructure alone. Medialab's partnership with WYK shows how an external organisation can do some of the values-in-action work founders don't have capacity for internally.