Having clear goals and a powerful framework to achieve them bagged Grosvenor Property UK the Workplace Culture Award for Smaller Organisations. This award is sponsored by HSBC UK.
WINNER
Grosvenor Property
In 2020 Grosvenor identified the need for a new, five-year strategy to enable it to adapt and compete effectively in an increasingly complex marketplace, particularly in light of Covid-19. Incorporating feedback from its 2019 employee survey, the updated strategy had at its heart a cultural change programme based on Bain’s model of high-performing organisations. In less than two years, Grosvenor successfully reshaped its organisational culture by strengthening its existing organisational purpose and values around four key pillars: innovation, diversity (of thought and background), and an inclusive culture and a high-performance philosophy.
Grosvenor closely linked performance management with business strategy and prioritised transparency and communication from its leaders. It did this through measures including: multi-faceted cascade of strategy, at business and functional level to ensure understanding; tailored team roadmaps and action plans aligned to a five-year strategy (reviewed quarterly); business and team KPIs including D&I, innovation and sustainability ambitions; and direct communication from the executive team, including weekly video updates. Communication scores show Grosvenor’s methods have been successful with 90% of people now feeling that the executive team effectively communicates business priorities as opposed to 75% in 2019. Similarly, 78% now agree that the firm’s culture promotes an environment of fairness and respect, as opposed to 64% in 2019.
Grosvenor has often been described by employees as a special place to work, due to its sense of purpose and collaborative approach, and as a result, more than a quarter of its people have stayed more than 10 years (average 7.5).
RUNNERS-UP
Arden University
Arden University is privately owned and offers a mixture of blended and distance learning to around 17,000 students in the UK and Germany. Since January 2020, the team has adopted a ‘people before process’ approach. Arden University has achieved rapid growth over the past two years and now has over 700 colleagues across the organisation.
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One of the initial objectives of the people strategy was to conduct Arden’s first ‘official’ engagement survey. At the time, because of lockdown, 60% of colleagues had never physically met their peers so helping them to understand and contribute to the culture of Arden was difficult. The solution was to invest in an external engagement survey platform, Peakon, that would introduce external benchmarking and real-time results. The data would also help enhance the colleague experience as part of the broader people strategy.
Arden wanted to engage colleagues before the survey launched, and had a company-wide vote for a name with a poll on Yammer in January. The name agreed was Being Arden. Following the engagement survey results, the executive team agreed on four Arden focus areas to work on for 2021/22: health and wellbeing; reward; growth; equality, diversity and inclusion. Several key ideas came out of the engagement focus groups that have significantly helped colleagues and students, such as the mental health first aid training for all student and colleague-facing roles. The initiative sits well with Arden’s SPARK Values (launched in October 2021) and the listening approach, particularly as many colleagues have continued to work remotely. A pulse survey in November and a complete survey in April 2022 showed that engagement increased from 7.2 to 7.3 (Nov 21) to 7.6 (Apr 22) and improvements in all focus areas, including workload.
Financial Services Compensation Scheme
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) helps people get back on track by protecting them when authorised financial services firms fail. Since its launch in 2001, it has come to the aid of 6.5 million people and paid out £26bn in compensation.
In 2021/22, FSCS developed a multi-faceted employee experience to help it unlock four key opportunities. These included: nurturing a strong workplace culture through the pandemic and beyond; and amplifying employee voice to drive belonging, equity, and inclusion.
FSCS’s recent people survey results show that high engagement levels across the organisation can be attributed to its positive culture – colleagues believe it has crafted an environment where they truly feel they belong, they are able to make a positive difference, and believe FSCS is an inclusive and caring employer, with a positive and healthy culture. Communication has been central to strengthening its culture and channels have been reviewed to ensure that colleagues feel heard.
During the pandemic, FSCS put in place initiatives to support its employees including: a comprehensive wellbeing strategy, regular virtual wellbeing sessions, videos to support working parents, virtual social events, fitness challenges, mental health support and an additional wellbeing day off. It continues to place emphasis on wellbeing and mental health through regular knowledge-sharing sessions, promoting the support available (including 14 Mental Health First Aiders), and regular messaging from its CEO to amplify the importance of staff looking after themselves and their colleagues.
Supporting employees to be at their very best also has a significant positive impact on FSCS customers. In 2020/21 it delivered its best operational performance to date, despite the challenges of the pandemic. This includes helping more than 52,000 customers.
M:M Bio
M:M Bio is a UK drug discovery and development company. Founded in 2016 by a husband-and-wife team, M:M Bio has grown quickly to become an ecosystem of four specialist companies, which allocate skills and resources to help drive medicine development programmes across the globe. It has sought to nurture a strong workplace culture bound by a set of common goals and shared values which underpin all of its activity. With a diverse team working flexibly across several different companies and locations, its key challenge has been to maintain a consistent company vision and values, as well as high levels of team morale and staff retention.
The firm places its employees into both individual companies and cross-company communities, in order to encourage problem-solving and foster cross-company working. It doesn’t expect everyone to have all the skills for their roles and has a culture of actively developing skills and providing a safe environment to try out new skills and be allowed to fail. Collaboration is at the heart of the company’s values.
At monthly company meetings, the executive team updates everyone on where it stands with company goals, company successes/challenges and achievement against individual objectives and regular values workshops explore company values in more detail, sometimes featuring external speakers.
Workplace culture
Nurturing a strong workplace culture and sense of community based on shared values has helped make its people both more productive and loyal to the company.
Staff retention this year has been 94%, and all individual objectives were completed for the first period (January to April) of 2022. M:M Bio’s latest employee survey found that 96% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “My strengths are recognised here and I have the opportunity to do what I am good at”.
Maverick
A video games creative agency, Maverick has for 25 years partnered with well known game publishers, developers and brands. It has a team of 40 experienced creatives, producers and technical wizards.
In 2021, partly in response to lessons from the pandemic, it implemented a Happy Working initiative. Maverick Media had ways of working that had not changed over 25 years, loosening the relationship strength between Maverick and its employees. This became clear when measuring the communication of Maverick on Glassdoor. As a result, employee surveys were shared via Microsoft Teams and were followed up by 1-to-1s with HR. Most employees felt they wanted to increase employee engagement, receive more clarity on health support, especially during the pandemic, and to improve their work-life balance.
The Happy Working initiative was delivered in bite-sized sessions to tackle each of these factors: communication by increasing employee engagement, happiness by working on the relationship strength and work-life balance by decreasing overtime. To increase employee engagement, HR introduced committees consisting of employees from different departments and backgrounds. These helped employees and applicants to feel included, represented and listened to at work. This was done by celebrating different cultures, raising wellbeing awareness and monitoring feedback after each initiative to ensure maximum effectiveness. Employee engagement and acting upon it is key to Happy Working.
The Happy Working Initiative was successful as measured by three factors: communication by increased employee engagement, happiness through a strengthened relationship between Maverick and its employees, and an increased work-life balance by a reduction in overtime. The first factor was communication and employee engagement in Glassdoor reviews. The success of the scheme is seen when considering that 100% of the reviews scored 1 or 2 stars out of 5 in 2019 but 84% gave 5 out of 5 star reviews in 2021. Overtime in 2021 was reduced by 26.3% which was a unique achievement, especially because overtime is the norm in advertising. Financial metrics have also been positively impacted by the happy working initiative. Revenue increased by 86% in one year. This is due to increased happy working.
Ombudsman Services
Ombudsman Services was founded in 2002 to provide independent dispute resolution across a range of sectors, including energy and communications. Prior to the pandemic, it had low levels of trust and engagement. It was clear that the organisation had to transform its culture. Previous unsuccessful culture change initiatives had been inconsistently implemented, in isolation, or poorly timed, with a “command and control” approach to leadership dominant.
The frustration felt among employees meant Ombudsman Services was having issues around time attendance and high levels of sickness absence – its 2019 stats were three times above UK average. So this time the organisation took a more holistic, back-to-basics approach to culture, underpinned with a consistent strategy. “Building Our Foundations” aimed to embed good habits around engagement and wellbeing, rebuild trust, give colleagues a clear voice and restore organisational integrity. The programme links directly to the business strategy.
The purpose of Ombudsman Services’ culture, the sustainability of its success, and accountability for its actions at all levels, had to be driven by a new leadership team. Therefore, it committed to only introducing new initiatives that were linked to its shared values of being balanced, courageous, empathetic and open.
The resulting new approach to culture has had a big impact on key indicators, both within the business and for its customers, including in the areas of productivity, retention and innovation. The transformation of the employee experience is reflected in increased loyalty and staff retention and a waiting list to join it. In 2018 the organisation’s sickness absence rate was 12.7%, more than treble the national average. It is currently running at 3.1% (based on last 12 months, including Covid numbers).
Reward Gateway
Reward Gateway focuses on maintaining a company culture that celebrates individuality, initiative, ownership, and collaboration. The employment benefit firm sees values as the common thread that connects employees and forms a framework for how it acts. It views its approach to diversity, equity and inclusion – its Encouraging Positive Improvements Continuously (Epic) initiative – is a fundamental strategic value driver for the business.
Reward Gateway’s leadership team brings together a diverse mix of skills, experience and backgrounds to help the firm create a culture where people can thrive. They understand that each employee plays their role in making RG a great place to work. The firm sees open and honest communication as core to its engagement strategy. It establishes trust across the business. RG people can expect leadership to be transparent with the ‘what, how, and why’ of decision making, and leadership trusts colleagues to give them open and honest feedback.
All recognition initiatives are centered around the company values – from peer-to-peer recognition to manager-led and leadership-driven rewards. Appreci8! (Reward Gateway’s recognition programme) is core to the company’s identity. Depending on the level of the reward, recipients can celebrate through a variety of reward choices to buy something they truly want, which reminds them of their accomplishments. Feedback is seen as a gift and the business is constantly looking for feedback from employees on how the firm can make their world a better place to work. Its annual bridge survey show scores of above eight in all key cultural indicators. The Epic survey also produced excellent results.
Zopa
Personal finance firm Zopa is an employer of choice for a diverse range of talented people and sees its challenge as being to shape and nurture its workplace culture to support this aspiration. It sees it as very important to ensure a successful, evolving workplace culture and has two-way communications forums for all employees to use. In addition, every 6-9 months an internal communications audit is run by the firm’s senior internal communications specialist. This ensures the business is giving its people what they want.
The company holds a weekly meeting hosted by different “Zopians”. Discussion ranges around everything from new product launches, people initiatives, team updates, hobbies and life updates. There’s also an anonymous Q&A session where the audience can probe the speaker. It’s a regular opportunity for Zopians to ask the firm’s leadership team anything they like. The meeting is followed by drinks so employees can mingle and unwind, celebrating the weeks achievements.
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For a successful workplace culture to work, everyone who works for Zopa needs to understand the company’s goals, their role in achieving those goals and what values need to be channelled daily in their work and behaviour.
Zopa’s last two engagement scores recorded through CultureAmp was 70% and above and the firm is very satisfied with its ratings on Glassdoor, LinkedIn and through its own engagement surveys. However, it recognises there is always room for improvement and believes that if it were to sit back and consider it job done, this is when Zopa’s culture would suffer.
