In June 2019 we were awarded our Investors in People (IIP) Silver accreditation which lasts for three years (until 2022). As part of the process, we recently underwent a mid-point assessment, where assessors interviewed and held focus groups with people across the Group to review our people practices and upcoming plans. Thank you to everyone who participated. We now have the report from the assessment which I would like to share with you.
A few points from the report I wanted to highlight are:
- The positive feedback on the way we adapted how we work, communicated and the wellbeing support provided throughout the pandemic. It was reassuring to hear that this has been well received and we will, as recommended, continue to evolve the way we engage with you as we continue on our agile journey.
- Our performance management culture has shifted to become more outcomes-focused and managers have welcomed this and felt supported. This is another area we will continue to develop to help with performance and learning conversations as we move forward.
- We need to consider how our awards processes adapt to a more agile environment, ensuring that positive support of our values or excellent performance is acknowledged even where it might not have been directly seen.
As an area for review and improvement we will be refreshing how our values are promoted as we embark on future ways of working, helping drive our high-performance culture. To help us maintain this standard and reach the aspiring Gold accreditation (we were only two of nine IIP indicators away from the Gold in 2019), as well as the above, we will be re-engaging with performance reviews across the business to encourage conversations about reward, capabilities and managing expectations.
This was an incredibly timely review point for us. The feedback has provided us with a useful snapshot of how we’ve performed over the last 12 months and has helped us to refine the forthcoming Staff Survey and the questions we need to explore with you to build on our understanding of how you worked pre-Covid, things you have liked about our current way of working and how you would like to work in the future.
Shape our future ways of working
We will be launching our survey this afternoon, and it will run until Monday 12 April. The survey should take between 20-30 minutes to complete and can be completed via your computer, tablet or smartphone.
I would really appreciate you taking the time to complete the survey and give your honest feedback to help shape the design of the way we work going forward, the practical issues to better use of our office space and how we continue to respond to the needs of our customers. We hope this process will take us on the next stage of our journey to being a more agile, responsive and high-performing organisation.
You will receive your link to the survey through an email from Work Buzz this afternoon. Work Buzz is an employee engagement specialist organisation and will be conducting the survey on our behalf to ensure all answers remain confidential and anonymous. The data gathered will only be shared with us as part of the survey results.
We will follow up this survey with focus sessions, however, as this survey is anonymous, we are unable to follow up any individual requests, for example, equipment and wellbeing support which should be directed to HR.
We would like as much engagement from across GC as possible to help us shape our future ways of working and value your input so would really appreciate you taking the time to give your feedback.
All respondents will have the option of being put into a lucky dip and we will be pulling out five names who will have their GC Hive account credited £50 to spend using the high street retailers' discounts. We will be doing a lucky dip each week the survey is open and then a further two when the survey has closed, so the earlier you complete the survey the more chance you have of winning.
On a separate note, at 12.00pm I would welcome all colleagues to join in Marie Curie’s National Day of Remembrance, by holding a one minute’s silence, reflecting upon those we have lost to COVID-19 throughout the past 12 months. You may wish to check your calendar and put in a reminder, or perhaps start any meetings scheduled for 12 for a few minutes later.