We’re particularly proud of the great strides made in making our employee experience rich and rewarding, which was reflected in the leap we made in our B Corp score last year.
“Every initiative we’ve undertaken this year has been carefully crafted with our partners in mind.”
This includes:
Continued focus on partner development: our collaboration with Realise – our new external training provider – focuses on developing essential manager soft skills and team-wide capabilities. We’ve also introduced a manager’s forum, creating a collaborative platform where leaders can openly discuss challenges and share insights. Additionally, we rolled out comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training, followed by inclusive leadership training for all managers and board members.
Employee engagement: our internal communications strategy has yielded great results. The engagement in Insights, our internal newsletter, has climbed to 86.34% over the past 12 months, up from 79.82% last year. Team days also saw remarkable attendance, with our most recent gathering achieving 89% participation. We’re also excited about our first community day, where partners will participate in a sponsored walk from our Torquay to Exeter office.
Initiatives with impact: some of our most successful initiatives this year include:
- An enhanced onboarding process, which received outstanding feedback, with 94% of new starters feeling welcomed and supported from day one.
- A comprehensive sabbatical programme – our ‘partner pause’ – is accessible to all after seven years of service and continues to be well received.
- We’re delighted to have five partners undertake the formal mental health first aider course through St John ambulance, including our first male representative.
- We continue to review our hybrid working policy, which means moving towards a more trust-based model between individuals and managers, while maintaining some guidelines.
Our leadership and strategy survey: this sawpositive improvements in many areas. Most partners feel leaders are visible and approachable, and that they care about partners as individuals. Levels of trust in leaders is generally high, and partners feel well informed about our goals and how their roles contribute to their achievement.
We remain focused on creating an environment where our partners can thrive.
To find out more, download our Impact Report 2024 – The next chapter.
