The Personnel Today Awards 2023 Workplace Culture Award – Larger Employers, sponsored by HSBC UK, went to IRIS Software Group.
Our judges were blown away by its Employee Voice Ambassadors initiative, and there was clear evidence of a strong culture where employees can voice their comments via a variety of channels. Here we take a closer look at its entry and showcase the work of our other finalists in this category.
WINNER
IRIS Software Group
One of IRIS Software Group’s guiding principles is to delight its employees, it says. The company is committed to achieving this through continuous improvement driven by feedback. This is evident in its values which were chosen by its employees: Innovation, Making it Happen, Passion, Accountability, Customer Focus, and Teamwork.
IRIS employs 3,000 people globally and understands that each person is unique and can positively contribute to the success of the business. It says it’s important that employees have access to a variety of channels to voice their comments so that they know that IRIS is there to listen to them. This is done via Employee Voice Ambassadors across all departments; monthly Q&A sessions with the Executive Team; Glassdoor; and Peakon which measures feedback and engagement via an anonymous monthly survey.
IRIS is pleased that employees think of it as “a company where the wellbeing of staff is at the forefront of everything they do”. It’s proud to be a Stonewall Diversity Champion, a Disability Confident Committed Employer, and has signed The Race at Work Charter. Its Belonging Group, of 50 volunteers from across IRIS, cultivate an inclusive workplace where everyone is welcomed and celebrated. The group holds monthly webinars focusing on topics such as Black History Month, celebrations for Pride Month, breastfeeding at work, and National Inclusion Week. A Green Group champions sustainability at IRIS. With its help, IRIS tackles tough environmental challenges and comes up with creative solutions to create a stronger culture of sustainability.
RUNNERS-UP
Elior UK
Personnel Today Awards
All our 2023 winners revealed
View the 2023 photo gallery
The Personnel Today Awards 2024 open for entries around Easter
Sign up to keep updated
With over 10,000 colleagues in more than 1,000 client locations, Elior UK has faced far-reaching challenges because of Brexit and Covid, including a decline in the availability of EU workers who had previously made significant contributions to its teams. Furthermore, following the pandemic, Elior UK found that potential recruits had found employment in other industries and it now faced a significantly reduced labour pool and heightened competition from other sectors.
Elior UK recognised the necessity of being seen as an exceptional place to work, continuously building talent capability, and ensuring its colleague experience receives the same level of care and consideration as the customer experience.
It was at this time that Elior’s aspiration of a ‘People Promise’ was first discussed and how it might help the firm navigate the uncertainties and changes it faced, while contributing to the ongoing success of the firm.
The People Promise aims to be authentic and truly represent what it’s like to work for the company. To embed the People Promise into Elior UK’s business it has introduced consistent communication branding that incorporates images and short videos for each element of the promise to ensure colleagues understand and connect with the message.
Under the People Promise Elior UK has enhanced communication across the company, reaching every colleague with valuable information including benefits, wellbeing, diversity and inclusion.
Turnover rates have shown steady improvement despite the significant labour challenges. In 2019, turnover was 26.55%. Post-pandemic, it reduced to 24.3% in 2022 and 23.88% in 2023, highlighting the positive impact.
South Western Railway
The past year has been very difficult for the rail industry. Despite ongoing negotiations and strikes, promised reform hasn’t materialised and rail workers, who are tired, dissatisfied and disinclined to trust their employers. South Western Railway needed to show employees that, far from slowing down, its cultural growth continues to accelerate through 2022 and beyond. But with extremely limited budget, the outlook remained bleak. Its strategy was to underscore the positive results of historic initiatives to employees, while striving for improvement across every cultural metric that it could measure.
Among successful initiatives that are driving improvements are: an overhaul of its Recognition of Service programme, recognising service at five-year intervals rather than 25 and 40 years, and at retirement; a new Excellence Awards site, recognising outstanding colleague achievements through peer-led nominations; the hosing of an annual Sustainability Heroes event, celebrating colleagues doing charitable or sustainable work; regular live company-wide Zooms, including Q&As chaired by the MD, allowing colleagues to ask questions and challenge leaders; and a monthly employee engagement steering group, including senior leaders across HR and frontline heads of functions, to discuss survey results, action plans and other feedback.
Another new scheme is a twice-yearly Time With Your Manager meeting for colleagues to discuss their progress, development and career aspirations, plus raise any wellbeing concerns or issues. South Western Railway’s Innovation Station and Track’a’thon’ events involve colleagues directly with business improvement processes, and have resulted in several employee-suggested innovations
The railway operator has continued to proactively support wellbeing, D&I, and a variety of causes to create an inclusive workplace culture where differences are celebrated. A recent Women’s Week issue featured testimonials from SWR’s growing cohort of female colleagues. It also recently published its ‘We are SWR’ booklet and video, which clearly states its Purpose and introduces its Vision and Mission statements, alongside its Values and Behaviours statements.
Zopa
Zopa is a hybrid digital bank with rapid growth year on year. Its challenge is to have a compelling culture that attracts and retains a high calibre of talent, for which it deploys a people-centred approach, and investment in personal growth and career advancement. An open-door policy is used at the company, so employees can be supported with advice, expertise and additional support whenever needed.
The bank is making a six-figure investment in management training, rolling out a targeted programme to managers with lower engagement scores, implementing bespoke job family-based management training. It’s important everyone at Zopa enjoys the right level of support with career advancement, personal development, and wellness as well as with recognition and praise. Its managers are key to all of this.
Zopa’s weekly company meeting features guest speakers from across Zopa who do a spotlight on projects from their area of the business. The workforce is now 600-plus so this helps keep everyone in the loop on strategy progress, day-to-day business and social updates. These meetings are followed by company socials, which quite often have a topical twist to them.
Company confidence is high. In the current external climate, this was seen as “truly incredible” by Culture Amp when going through recent results. The company’s rolling voluntary attrition is the lowest it’s ever been, dropping by almost 10% in the past 12 months and its most recent engagement survey had a culture score of 80% and showed 89% of colleagues would “recommend Zopa as a great place to work”.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
In association with
