Shaylor Group's recognition and reward strategy is based around the consistent management approach of praise and thanks for good work and performance. Recognition is seen as a key motivator, hence the focus on praise and encouraging “what can we do better” rather than stifle the proactive and innovative ideas and contribution of individuals and teams. This approach was confirmed during their Investors in People assessment. Recognition is given both verbally and through personal emails and letters from the CEO and Directors. Wider recognition is given in celebrations posted on the intranet, e.g. thank you letters from clients, passing a successful audit, achieving 100% customer satisfaction, attaining a high score in the Considerate Constructors scheme, entry to the national site manager of the year award etc. Examples of press releases, client letters and cards of thanks are often shared to highlight individuals' successes.

Given their size and geographic spread, it's hard to bring everyone together regularly, but they do run quarterly get together's across most of the sites shortly after financial results. These buzz sessions bring people together to find out more about the results and share the stories behind them. It's an opportunity for people to meet senior leaders, ask questions, bring their suggestions and build excitement for the future. They bring together people from different departments or sites into a room together to celebrate success together, these are people who wouldn't normally meet. On the social side, they give their leaders the power and a budget to run events locally to them. For many, this will be a Christmas social event or another kind of celebration. They havealso got a great resource in the Every One Fund, an online portal that allows people to organise volunteering events, get colleagues involved, or find out what's happening locally, as well as share their stories afterwards.

Rockpool Digital's annual off site this year celebrated 10 years of Rockpool. The whole company headed down to the South Coast to do a day of treasure hunts on speed boats speeding across to the Isle of Wight. They then headed back to the spa hotel for a 6 course taster menu and annual awards such as Least likely to be a Jerk, Most likely to think Big.

Pension Insurance Corporation provide the following: Daily delivery of fruit, Offer private healthcare with Pruhealth, which offers proactive well-being management scheme, as well as discounts for gym membership. Provision of access to a local doctor based a walking distance away from the office for emergency visits. Offer an influenza inoculation once a year to all employees, their company doctor comes into the office to do this.

Their organisation's Primary Purpose of Opening Doors, Enhancing Lives has a variety of medium term priorities driven by Delivery Outcomes for the Community. These are categorised under 2 key themes, one of which is Enhancing Resources and Governance to ensure they deliver high quality, cost effective and efficient services. One of their key Business Plan priorities therefore focuses on Value for Money and Boosting Productivity. Examples include: Homeworking introduced for 20+ staff to allow better quality of life, saving time and mileage costs going unnecessarily to hot-desking facilities. An app was written to access their HR system to enable mobile users to request holidays and see their wage slips using a tablet and personal computers – removing the need for paper copies and needing to login from a work PC. Automated the collation of information on ‘Notices Seeking Possession' saving 1hr a week compiling stats for housing. A new process agreed with British Gas to immediately transfer gas and electricity supply to BG when a property becomes void, thereby ensuring utility supplies are working allowing work to be carried out immediately on the property by their contactors. This ensures quicker entry and turnaround of void properties, avoids time wasting chasing to get utility supplies transferred.

They offer to refund up to 3 prescriptions per year per employee in support of them giving up smoking. This can be used on any aid the employee chooses to support their individual need. In line with their healthy eating regime they provide all staff with free fruit twice a week. They have declined the option of a on-site vending machine because they felt this goes against the healthy eating style, since the supply of products would be dictated by supply and demand. They have a big focus on mental health as part of their everyday life since a large proportion of the customers suffer from it. They run internal training and awareness sessions for all staff. Mental health has been a key focus for them in the last 2 years covering key elements of mental health and how staff can spot the signs and sign post customers if required.

Every year Nucleus sponsor a nominated charity, chosen by the staff. Throughout the year they do various different fund raising events in order to raise awareness for the charity. By doing so, this also reaches out to their wider community, and helps them raise large amounts for causes close to their staff. This year they have had three key fund raising events, as well as regular smaller activities throughout the year. In June a large group of staff entered a Dragon Boat race at Ocean Terminal in Edinburgh, and raced against lots of different local companies. Their group successfully raised the most money for charity, despite the fact they lost out on the races themselves! At the end of August, four members of staff risked their lives doing a skydive to raise money for the charity! They overcame their fears, and raised a huge amount in the process. September saw a group of four staff, including David, their CEO, compete in the Great Scottish Run. A couple of people hobbled away from it, but they successfully raised thousands of pounds for their worthy charity partner!

Northwards Housing promote better health and offer quarterly health initiatives such as free flu jabs, signposting people to health websites, raising awareness of mental health linked to national campaigns, providing advice on healthy eating and tips to prevent colds and flu. The company also run a Global Corporate Challenge – this 100 day challenge is the opportunity for their teams to sign up to compete against each other and other organisations around the globe in trying to achieve a daily target of 10,000 steps of physical activity. Access to wellbeing support is available from their Employee Assistance Programme and includes a 24/7 helpline available to everyone.

The senior team are visible, proactive and committed to developing behaviour of good leadership within the organisation. They are role models for their values of collaboration, flexibility, integrity, professionalism and ambition. They show evidence of this by operating an “ open door “ policy so that they are easy to access, avoiding e mail wherever possible and walk the floor as a way of being visible and human within the business, stopping to chat to people about their families and the work that they are doing. This helps them to understand what is going on for people, attending every team meeting twice a year and do not go with an agenda but simply ask staff to be prepared to tell them what they would do if they were boss for a day and be ready to ask anything. They have not been short of any suggestions or questions sponsoring every cross functional project team. This helps them to remain engaged and enables a wide variety of staff to come into contact with and work with them, participate in all social and charitable events, coaching staff as a way of helping them attain or embed new skills, mentoring junior members of staff, being curious and interested in the business and the people who work within it and being authentic.

North Hertfordshire Homes have an Above and Beyond employee recognition scheme which incorporates both an Extra Mile Award scheme and a Bright Idea Award. The Extra Mile Award is to celebrate employees whose exceptional work needs to be recognised. Worthy recipients are nominated by their colleagues and the Executive Team selects a winner each month. The Bright Idea Award is to encourage staff to come forward with their own ideas for how things could be done better. Each month the Executive Management Team discusses all of the ideas submitted (of which there are many) and selects worthy winners – sometimes more than one. The CEO writes to everyone submitting an idea but not a winner thanking them for the submission and explaining why they could not implement the idea, but making clear how important it is to come up with suggestions as the debates at EMT often throw up all sorts of interesting thoughts and solutions. There are always great ideas, and often these are simple things they had not thought of. North Hertfordshire Homes track carefully that the winning ideas get implemented. The awards are presented to the employee by one of the members of their executive team in front of their colleagues and they receive a warm round of applause. The employee receives a certificate and a £25 voucher and they have their photo placed on posters around the organisation and on the intranet.