Robert Woodhead Ltd value their employees and their supply chain immensely and the ‘Good to Gold' programme is a pathway through which they offer them the support they need. In whatever area support is required, from health and safety, project and work management, recruitment and human resources, business compliance to best practice, the ‘Good to Gold' programme is designed to help them learn, improve and grow. They are putting their core values, their knowledge and expertise into helping them go from 'good' to 'gold' standard. The program consisted of workshops aimed at increasing the employees' knowledge and understanding and so growing their business and their supply chain.

Robert Woodhead Ltd value their employees and their supply chain immensely and the ‘Good to Gold' programme is a pathway through which they offer them the support they need. In whatever area support is required, from health and safety, project and work management, recruitment and human resources, business compliance to best practice, the ‘Good to Gold' programme is designed to help them learn, improve and grow. They are putting their core values, their knowledge and expertise into helping them go from 'good' to 'gold' standard. The program consisted of workshops aimed at increasing the employees' knowledge and understanding and so growing their business and their supply chain.

Riverside has an in-house, bespoke, modular manager development programme called ‘Cornerstone'. This ILM accredited programme is mandatory for our over 400 managers and provides them with workshop based modules. Each module is highly participative and creative – with an onus on reflective review between modules to embed the learning through application of the learning back in the workplace. Cornerstone has won the 2015 Investors in People Leadership Development Programme of the Year. Feedback to the programme is consistently excellent and the theme of the programme is engagement through how to ‘inspire and challenge' by developing behaviours that will engage to drive performance and consistency in the business. The cost per delegate for the entire programme is £900 – an indication of the commitment to the managers who they know from previous Best Companies data to be the conduit to employee engagement at Riverside. The company utilise ‘Yammer' to build a network of delegates for Cornerstone – to share good practice, experience and challenges.

The One Riverside Annual Training Plan & the launch of ‘Learning to Lead.' 100% of employees have an annual performance appraisal, containing a two-way discussion between employee and manager to evidence competencies and objectives. Training needs are identified and agreed. This forms the basis of Riverside's annual training plan. Each employee reviews development through a regular 1-2-1 meeting with their own manager. This training plan guarantees employees a range of elearning, workshop-based training, non-work related personal development opportunities, and the opportunity to apply for funded professional development – often with time off to study. All business areas have provision for learning adaptations, staff events and conferences and a continuous professional development. As part of this commitment and to provide the business with a bench strength of ‘ready talent to entry level line manager roles, the company launched a new talent programme called ‘Learning to Lead' – with applications open to those wishing to become ‘job ready.' This talentpool of 40 employees completed an assessment centre, 360 feedback, a series of skills, knowledge and behaviour workshops, heard from guest leadership speakers, and had unlimited access to a line manager elearning suite of modules. Each employee had a mentor throughout the 6-month programme. One year after the launch, 70% of employees in the programme had successfully been recruited into line manager roles, reducing our cost and time per hire and raising engagement with this talentpool and retaining their skills rather than lose them to other organisations.

All Ridgeons employees are encouraged to work towards appropriate workplace qualifications including NVQ's at levels 2, 3, 5 & 7. There is no restriction in terms of an employees grade or job role. There are currently over 60 people studying for an external qualification fully paid for by the company. In addition to paying course fees, the company also offers an exam award payment for successful completion, £300 at level 2, £500 at level 3, £750 at level 5 and £900 at level 7. The company has also recently launched a coaching framework and has trained over 30 managers to level 3 and 5, with the L & D Manager trained to L 7. All of the level 5 trainees have been allocated a trainee from the internal management skills development programme to coach

Ridgeons have a range of activities throughout the year as fundraising events for charity. All branches recently took part in the Macmillan coffee morning. Branches have also organised dress down days, sponsored cycle rides, dragon boat racing etc. A number of the branches will also respond to requests from local organisations for free building materials. Each branch has a separate community budget that they control. As a company they are also members of Business in the Community and take part in their Business Class initiative where they partner a local school. Ridgeons partner North Cambridge Academy and facilitate a range of events including mentoring students to learn about the world of work, providing pre-employment skills to students, offering work experience and have just introduced an annual competition for 13 year olds to design a display stand to be used in one of their branches.

Managing Excellence is RICS' internal training programme, which is designed to encourage Managers to talk about their performance with their line manager, to identify strengths and gaps in performance, to create and own their own development plan and build capability as a people manager. The process has been designed to be flexible, so that workshops and other development solutions can be added and updated according to the company's organisational needs. This approach has also allowed RICS to package workshops into 3-4 day modules to be delivered globally, according to the needs of the management teams outside of the UK. They also have Elevate, a leadership development programme that is delivered over three, three-day modules designed for managers to take the next step from managing people to leading teams. It is based on three areas: Leading Self (self-awareness, emotional intelligence), Leading Others (transformational leadership) and Leading the Business (culture, vision and strategy).

With a dispersed workplace across many time zones, digital collaboration is becoming a major part of RICS's regular working day. They are pursuing a ‘Digital Workplace' approach throughout the business. Skype for Business has been installed across all computers and is accessible via company mobiles. Video calls - Skype has transformed the support that colleagues receive through screen-sharing and allowing shorter catch ups to happen on demand. Facetime via screens is a great way for RICS to build stronger links across teams, with putting faces to (often very remote) names. Direct messaging – Skype DM capability allows immediate answers within meetings from absent colleagues, and has been used effectively to solicit questions during presentations and online training, allowing more voices to be heard and presentations to run more efficiently. VideoConferencing: VC facilities are in all the company's major offices and all staff can Skype into VC meetings using the BlueJeans bridge. This is great for large meetings with dispersed participants, and is allowing wider participation on big projects. Meetings can also be recorded and replayed later – this approach was used to support a big IT rollout this month with short ‘how-to' videos shared online. Sharepoint is increasingly used to enable project and teams to share information and work collaboratively on single-source documents. In-house ‘TED talks' are available to all teams and projects to host, before colleagues in their London office. They promote greater awareness and understanding of major initiatives. Selected talks now are filmed and will be shared via RICS' new intranet.

Teams are encouraged to use communal areas to boost communication and creativity. Activities such as pool and table tennis are available as well as computer consoles. Benches outside are available for meetings.

Teams are encouraged to use communal areas to boost communication and creativity. Activities such as pool and table tennis are available as well as computer consoles. Benches outside are available for meetings.

The senior management teams are always out and about in the business on a daily basis engaging with the frontline teams and managers. Bound by the 'manager promises', these are promises that frontline teams wanted the senior team to make as they felt it would improve their relationships and working environment. The executive team keep the company values alive through reviewing progress of their managers on a regular basis and creating development plans and objectives that work towards our overall goal.

The company's impressions star cards are used throughout the business on the frontline, each associate is given a business card on one side are the principles and behaviours and the other a 'loyalty' style stamp space. All senior managers within the business carry a stamp so that when they see brilliant service being delivered it can be recognised instantly on the spot. Completing a star card entitles the associate to a personalised reward. The company also use their annual service awards where we recognise the achievements of our teams.

A high percentage of the company's managers are home grown and the company therefore ensure they have the opportunity to receive training prior to promotion, to enable them to take on new responsibilities and tasks. The company have two training courses that are aimed at supervisors and assistant managers specifically, Ambassadors in Management (AIM) 1 & 2. They cover subjects such as, workplace communication, motivating a team to perform, induction and coaching, dealing with change, time management, problem solving skills, influencing and negotiating amongst others. Once managers, there is a range of foundation management courses they must attend, such as Health & Safety for Managers, Appraisal skills, Recruitment & Selection, and how to manage people and their performance. We call this AIM 3. For Heads of Department, senior managers and general managers there is a course called “Championing our Elite” which covers project management, managing a budget, leadership and management skills. The company has mentors for junior managers and for our graduate programme participants which helps support, nurture and challenge the managers of the future. All those on the graduate management programme have quarterly meetings with our Managing Director which is both a great development opportunity and support for individuals as they progress through their programme.

A high percentage of the company's managers are home grown and the company therefore ensure they have the opportunity to receive training prior to promotion, to enable them to take on new responsibilities and tasks. The company have two training courses that are aimed at supervisors and assistant managers specifically, Ambassadors in Management (AIM) 1 & 2. They cover subjects such as, workplace communication, motivating a team to perform, induction and coaching, dealing with change, time management, problem solving skills, influencing and negotiating amongst others. Once managers, there is a range of foundation management courses they must attend, such as Health & Safety for Managers, Appraisal skills, Recruitment & Selection, and how to manage people and their performance. We call this AIM 3. For Heads of Department, senior managers and general managers there is a course called “Championing our Elite” which covers project management, managing a budget, leadership and management skills. The company has mentors for junior managers and for our graduate programme participants which helps support, nurture and challenge the managers of the future. All those on the graduate management programme have quarterly meetings with our Managing Director which is both a great development opportunity and support for individuals as they progress through their programme.

In 1995, Tom Watson, Vice Chairman of Omnicom Group Inc., with Harvard Business School professor Len Schlesinger, created a global leadership development program, Omnicom University Senior Management Program (SMP). Today, the program is regarded as one of the pre-eminent executive education experiences and one of the major sources of “cultural glue” for the Omnicom network. RAPP sends the Leadership team to SMP. SMP is a two-year commitment which includes action learning and peer problem-solving dialogues. Students attend a six-day Undergraduate Program, followed by a four-day Graduate Program a year later. Students are required to identify and implement a Personal Strategic Change Initiative between the Undergraduate and Graduate programs that will have significant impact within their organisation. The Senior Management team also attend the Advanced Management Program, AMP. AMP introduces future leaders and “rising stars” throughout Omnicom to the core principles of managing a professional service firm and the Service Profit Chain, the core management framework we use at SMP. In addition to affording participants a world-class development experience, AMP provides a new form of recognition and retention for key managers, an opportunity for these managers to forge relationships with other talented individuals within Omnicom, and an additional source of support for returning “apostle” SMP graduates as they endeavour to affect change within their organisations. As with SMP, these three-day sessions use the case study method to stimulate discussions of issues and trends that challenge our industry.

The company have Friday drinks each week and end of the month drinks on a Thursday to encourage socialising outside of individual teams. The company as a whole also receive a newsletter from the UK President each week with the latest news and new business wins along with new joiner emails each week from HR. All internal training courses are open to all employees and are delivered on a weekly basis. The company also have work experience initiatives for more junior employees from the regional offices to spend a week in London and East Grinstead to learn more about RAPP and the wider business. The company moved offices in December 2015. The new office covers one floor in an Omnicom building, encouraging more internal interaction but also engagement with sibling agencies. The company also provide free yoga classes and the option to join Bootcamp during lunch or after work. .

In addition to recognising a 'team player' as voted for by the entire company and a 'top performer' as voted for by the senior management team, each quarter, the compamy also hold regular team building days and company wide celebrations for employees and families, so the entire organisation can celebrate achievements and success together.

The SMT demonstrate their commitment to open, collaborative communication by actively contributing to Town Hall Updates - everyone gets a section, managing and responding to the weekly ask the SMT emails and actively encouraging the flat structure the company try to encourage whereby everyone is approachable and everyone's voice gets heard - regardless of their role.