Jenrick believe the term work life balance is an out dated expression, due to the fact that they now live in a world where they are constantly connected through their mobile, email and other electronic devices. As such, Jenrick believes that the expression ‘work/life integration' is a far more appropriate term to describe a modern working environment, simply because an individual's personal life and work commitments will constantly overlap. For this reason, they seek to enhance the wellbeing of employees by being flexible in their approach to working hours. For example, employees who are parents often need to adapt their working hours so they can attend school events such as morning assemblies, sports days and parents evenings. Jenrick are always accommodating when circumstances like this arise. They're not clock watchers and have built a strong culture of trust where it's more about getting the job done, rather than set working hours. They know that if people deal with their personal issues at the time, this will result in them being much more focussed and effective in their work.

Through schemes such as ‘Jenrick's Helping Hand' and the ‘Jenrick Charity Photo Calendar', the company donates in excess of £2,000 per year to charitable causes nominated by staff and the local community. The ‘Helping Hand' charity initiative is run each year and enables any member of staff to nominate a charitable cause that they would like Jenrick to donate £1,000 towards. Once all the nominations are received, an online voting system enables every individual member of the company to decide which cause they believe merits the award. For every additional pound given in personal staff donations Jenrick also doubles the amounts. Every year, The Jenrick Group create a ‘charity photo calendar competition' allowing candidates, clients and their own staff to enter in photos based on a theme. The competition is now in its sixth year and has already raised thousands of pounds to a large number of charitable causes. The final 12 winning photographs are featured in Jenrick's calendar and each winner receives £100 to donate to a charity of their choice. These schemes are so unique to Jenrick, and for a company of their size, it's quite remarkable how much money they have raised over the last few years, often raising awareness for lesser known charities. It would be very easy to 'follow the norm' and nominate a designated charity each year, however, because Jenrick's values are built around ‘People', having two schemes that allow individuals to nominate charities very close to their hearts adds far more meaning.

This year many colleagues have taken part in a coaching course which has been of significant benefit not only to those staff who have been on the course, but to the many colleagues they have since coached as a result of this development. Those coached worked through confidential issues both work and non-work related. Their programme is accredited by the University of Edinburgh.

Employees can apply to study for the Certificate in Football Management - FA Edition. This has proved very popular and the organisation recently sponsored 23 FA employees, 9 international people and 2 from the counties. The HR team complete a review of their core learning and development needs across The FA Group. They identified a number of key training requirements as follows: handling difficult people and conversations, negotiating and influencing skills, advanced project management, essential skills for team members and managing your wellbeing, effective minute taking, unleash your creativity, advanced handling difficult people and conversations, personal effectiveness and managing your wellbeing, recruitment and interview training, disciplinary, grievance and formal performance training.

The TAQA car share programme allows personnel based onshore to share journeys with colleagues who have similar routes to work. TAQA also shares commuter transport with neighbouring companies in the industrial estate at Westhill in order to limit the number of buses needed for the same route. Waste segregation bins and VegWare products are in place to further minimise their impact on the environment and be more sustainable. TAQA recycles waste wherever possible and has waste segregation bins throughout the offices for plastic, cans and compostable waste. VegWare is also used in TAQA's café's to reduce the amount of waste that is sent to landfill. VegWare is disposable food packaging and all TAQA café catering products are made from this recyclable, starch-based material which takes 4 to 6 weeks to become compost.

Sue Ryder's flexible approach to development and their varied interventions makes it easy for everyone to access the opportunities that suit them, their role and their development needs. These include training workshops, development programmes, coaching and mentoring, action learning sets, 360 feedback, secondments and a variety of other interventions.

To recognise the hard work of Stateside Foods workforce, the company holds a Family Fun Day for all employees and their extended families each year. The day is held at Bolton Arena, a local sports facility and employees are treated to fun activities and a BBQ lunch free of charge. The event is well attended year on year and the feedback is always excellent with employees really appreciating the opportunity to meet with their colleagues' families and socialise. The event is great for young children, as the company provides lots of entertainment such as a climbing wall, inflatable activities, football shoot-outs and face-painting. The workforce are always keen to hear about the dates for the next fun day and planning and preparation for next year's event will begin soon! Stateside Foods also recently rewarded their Employees of the Month with an all-expenses paid trip to London to see Lee Evans at the O2. The Employees of the Month were able to take their partners away to this event to celebrate their hard work and commitment to the Stateside Foods behaviours.

The HR Manager at St Ermin's created 2 development programmes specifically for the business: For Management: Fish S.U.P.P.E.R (Supports, Unites, Plans, Participates, Energises, achieves Results). For Supervisory Fish S.T.I.C.'s (Strives To Inspire Change). They involve the following: Leadership vs Management, Stages of group development, Behaviour and Motivation Learning styles, Communication Conflict Management, Time Management Problem solving and decision making. Whilst both programmes have the same elements, the Management Programme deals with more complex theories and processes. Both programmes are highly interactive, with a significant range of exercises observing natural and learned behaviours. There are 6 modules, 4 weeks apart with practical work based projects to complete between modules. The course also has a very practical base, where hotel issues are openly discussed with no fear of retribution then analysed and often fixed there and then or a plan put in place by the delegates. The modules are tough and also a lot of fun. At the end of the course, the attendees are then set a project as a group that is work related and needed to improve or launch something within the hotel or help with employee communication. The 2013 project was to make a video that embodies St Ermin's culture, especially fun, love and energy. The pilot courses were run in 2011 and proved such a success that there are courses each year, and to date, 58 employees have attended a course. In 2014, 10 delegates attended the course. The 2015 course is already planned for April.

St Ermin's Operating (UK)'s employee rewards programme encompass the 4 areas within the culture and is designed to reward employees for behaviours that meet the Vision and Mission. Traditionally in hotels, reward programmes are centred on earning credits/points that can be exchanged for items within various company catalogues. The company believe that the most important thing to their team members is the ability to earn extra money outside their normal salary. St Ermin's created a programme called ‘Fish hook', which is split into the 3 of the 4 core value areas, Choose Your Attitude, Make Peoples Day and Be There plus Guest Recognition. The reward is a points based system, 1 point = £1 and the company pays the employee and employer tax on that £1 so that the employee receives the whole £1. Points are issued to employees by way of a personal cheque given by a Manager. All managers are issued with guidelines on what to look for within the business and are able to issue cheques to any employee they see or hear fulfilling the required criteria. Points are totalled at the end of every business quarter and the employee receives the cash value of their points in their salary. The average quarterly cost to the business has increased from £4,000.00 (plus the employee tax) in 2013 to £4,7000.00 in 2014. All new employees receive a travel card wallet with the Vision printed on the back and Fish hook details within.

Spire's Senior Management team 'live' the ethos, principles and values of the organisation particularly on a day to day basis. They take the time to greet colleagues and walk around the office every day and get to know colleagues on a personal level, and not just a work basis. There is an open door policy with no ivory towers at Spire. As is the Spire way, they work hard and always model the positive working culture by remaining in good spirit and not bringing bad moods to work. The Senior Management Team encourages flexibility and don't expect colleagues to stay late and work long hours. If for any reason, colleagues do stay later than normal; Senior Managers will take the time to ask why to see how they can help. A good work life balance is very important to their Senior Management Team who champions the Mi Life initiative and encourages flexibility. They encourage time away from day to day work as it is recognised that this is an important part of the job. They will always treat all colleagues with respect. The Senior Management Team will also challenge where their values are not lived, and encourage colleagues to take appropriate intervention to maintain their positive culture at Spire. The Senior Management Team regularly gets involved in fun activities to generate team spirit.

Senior managers at Spectrum Housing are aware of the values and were all involved in deciding what these should be. All senior managers act as role models and are aware of the need to act in line with the values and lead by example. They are all accountable for their behaviours and the values underpin everything that the organisation does. Senior Managers work in creative ways and have backed a ‘smarter working' project group. This has been trailed in Finance with the senior Finance and IT managers overseeing it. The results have been positive and employees have been allowed to come up with creative ways of solving problems. These groups will be set up in all departments. Senior managers go to all sites every other month to give a presentation on Bigger News. These managers give sessions throughout the day then spend the day at the site. Managers go to sites they wouldn't usually therefore meeting new people and developing relationships. These managers offer shadowing to all staff and take part in back to the floor days. There is the ‘one voice' section on the intranet where managers can update everyone on progress and offer thanks or congratulations. Senior managers use the Spectrum leadership competencies to ensure they act in a professional and responsible manner. All senior managers have or are undertaking a coaching and ILM qualification so every day they act as a role model.

Andrew Barker joined SFS over 22 years ago as their Technical Manager and has subsequently worked his way up to become Managing Director in 2011. Due to his experience of working in SFS, Andrew has extensive knowledge of the whole business and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by staff in each area. With this in mind, he maintains open engagement with his staff at all levels and has launched many innovative staff engagement initiatives such as License to Grill where staff can ‘grill' him in team meetings and License to Chuck. Andrew is committed to attend every Financial Planning Manager Roadshow nationwide and is a guest at department team meetings once a year. He also holds quarterly business update briefings to all HO staff and issues a monthly update email with his personal thoughts. Upon his appointment to MD, he abolished the MD's private office and remains seated with his colleagues. Andrew asked for this room to be used for study purposes to help staff who want to gain further qualifications to enhance their career. Andrew is well liked by many staff due to his ability to engage with people on all levels. Whilst he is already well respected for his knowledge of the business, he is well known for encouraging a ‘fun element' to working for SFS by organising many staff events and competitions and with his references to popular culture, which he often demonstrates in his presentations to staff. At previous conferences, Andrew has taken part in a comedy video and the outtakes often sees him at the end of a joke, and for this, amongst many other things he does, he is respected by staff for not taking himself too seriously and they see him as very approachable.