What are companies doing with regards to 'My Company'

The company have in place a 'Spot Bonus Award Policy'. This is awarded by management on a special basis when employees have made a particularly noteworthy contribution, above and beyond the call of duty. This programme provides managers with a valuable tool to motivate, reward and recognise those employees who distinguish themselves through extra efforts. Significant short-term contributions earns a bonus of £200. A Significant medium/longer-term contribution earns the employee £300-500. A special recognition award to sustained leadership performance over a considerable timeframe, and/or the accomplishment of mission critical, company-wide projects of a major scale is awarded with £1000. To achieve maximum recognition and motivational value, managers are encouraged to provide the employee with a letter of commendation, which will be included in the employee's HR file. They also have a colleague recognition programme; colleagues can nominate an individual or team who has made a measurable contribution to the company; if successful, every quarter a nominated individual wins £1000, or if a team, £2000.

OpenBet supports employee development via a plethora of activities, such as, Brown Bag sessions to share knowledge across the organisation, workshops for hands on programming activities, supervised Google hangouts with subject matter experts at hand to explain specific subjects and topics, internal and external training sessions on soft skills, managerial skills as well as methodologies and technical skills. Traditional classroom training is used in conjunction with e-learning activities and remote teaching via conference systems and remote internet meetings. Training plans are developed for specific roles within the organisation to help new comers or people being promoted internally, handle their new role within OpenBet.

As they have grown it's inevitably harder to keep an ear to the ground and understand how everyone in the company is really feeling. They have also recognised that it's harder for newer or perhaps younger people in the team to feel confident giving them their ideas or telling them what they really think. To provide an anonymous platform for people to give the company their ideas and point of view, and to allow them to keep a finger on the pulse of how people are feeling they signed up for a service called Tiny Pulse. It's a micro survey service for internal engagement, a single question is sent out weekly to all staff and in a couple of minutes they can answer that, recognise some of the people they want to thank (Cheers for Peers) and give any ideas and suggestions. Sign up and participation is voluntary, though they regularly promote the initiative to raise awareness, and 89% of the team are signed up. Each week half to three quarters of those people tend to take part.

As they have grown it's inevitably harder to keep an ear to the ground and understand how everyone in the company is really feeling. They have also recognised that it's harder for newer or perhaps younger people in the team to feel confident giving them their ideas or telling them what they really think. To provide an anonymous platform for people to give the company their ideas and point of view, and to allow them to keep a finger on the pulse of how people are feeling they signed up for a service called Tiny Pulse. It's a micro survey service for internal engagement, a single question is sent out weekly to all staff and in a couple of minutes they can answer that, recognise some of the people they want to thank (Cheers for Peers) and give any ideas and suggestions. Sign up and participation is voluntary, though they regularly promote the initiative to raise awareness, and 89% of the team are signed up. Each week half to three quarters of those people tend to take part.

As a contract catering company, Olive is committed to healthy eating and offering healthy eating choices to their customers and staff. In 2012,Olive signed up to the Department of Health's Responsibility Deal pledge to reduce the salt in the food they produce. As part of this pledge they have put together communication packages to educate both their employees and their customers about the dangers of excessive salt levels in food and the benefits of reducing salt usage. Their Operations teams also periodically run Healthy Eating Awareness days at their sites which enable their customers to learn more about general nutrition and health awareness.

As a contract catering company, Olive is committed to healthy eating and offering healthy eating choices to their customers and staff. In 2012,Olive signed up to the Department of Health's Responsibility Deal pledge to reduce the salt in the food they produce. As part of this pledge they have put together communication packages to educate both their employees and their customers about the dangers of excessive salt levels in food and the benefits of reducing salt usage. Their Operations teams also periodically run Healthy Eating Awareness days at their sites which enable their customers to learn more about general nutrition and health awareness.

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!

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!

Ntegra hold team events every month to bring employees together, these include; their‘All Hands Event' which takes place quarterly and gives their leadership team the opportunity to share with everyone what has been taking place and what they expect to see has been achieved by the next ‘All Hands' meeting. Food and refreshments are provided to all staff at these meetings. ‘Thirsty Fridays' enables staff to enjoy a drink after work on the first Friday of the month; this is a company-wide event open to everyone. ‘Monthly Team Lunches' take place amongst every team at Ntegra, they enable internal teams to bond and catch up in a non-work related environment.‘Last Friday Lunch Debates' are held on the last Friday of every month and enable the company to come together to collaborate and discuss an industry trend and debate it in a wider context. ‘Dragon Boat Racing' or some form of company-wide team building event, takes place once every month, providing teams at Ntegra with the opportunity to get know their peers and work as a team in a non-work related environment.

Ntegra offer a company-wide bonus scheme of 10% based on employee and company targets, along with company-wide engagement events such as lunches. A reward is given to recommendations of talent to the organisation of £500 for every successful placement. Rewards are also given to staff who bring in new business to the company.

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.

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.

During the last year North Star have involved all staff in the launch of new services and initiatives including new ways of capturing feedback, their new maintenance services, their approach to value for money, invited all staff to their 40th year celebrations, designed, developed and delivered their Leading and Growing Staff conference with another planned for October 2014. During Octobers event staff will help them to further refine their strategy, funded an annual xmas event and use this occasion to present their “ Staff Oscars”. Staff were nominated by their peers and winners receive an Oscar and a prize. The team of the year receives £200 to organise an event to celebrate their success. The business closes for this celebration, provided £200 per team to enable staff to host lunchtime social events. The first one took place in June and was really well attended with around 80% of the organisation taking part in a “ pub themed “ event with pie and peas and a pub quiz. They also raised £200 for charity. Staff from dispersed offices hosted their own event and connected to the main event via video link, supported the staff nominated charity of the year including the hosting of a big lunch which raised £300.

During the last year North Star have involved all staff in the launch of new services and initiatives including new ways of capturing feedback, their new maintenance services, their approach to value for money, invited all staff to their 40th year celebrations, designed, developed and delivered their Leading and Growing Staff conference with another planned for October 2014. During Octobers event staff will help them to further refine their strategy, funded an annual xmas event and use this occasion to present their “ Staff Oscars”. Staff were nominated by their peers and winners receive an Oscar and a prize. The team of the year receives £200 to organise an event to celebrate their success. The business closes for this celebration, provided £200 per team to enable staff to host lunchtime social events. The first one took place in June and was really well attended with around 80% of the organisation taking part in a “ pub themed “ event with pie and peas and a pub quiz. They also raised £200 for charity. Staff from dispersed offices hosted their own event and connected to the main event via video link, supported the staff nominated charity of the year including the hosting of a big lunch which raised £300.

NHH has an active Health and Wellbeing programme called Nutrition Health Happiness. The programme supports and improves the health and wellbeing of their employees by offering a wide range of activities promoting positive links between health and work designed to reduce absence rates, improve performance, motivation and morale and create a positive working environment. This helps attract and retain the best staff. They deploy a mobile health monitor across their workplaces that measures height and weight, calculate body mass index and blood pressure. It is fully automatic and produces a print out. The printed ticket carries reference information regarding the normal body mass index reading and World Health Organisation recommendations on blood pressure. NHH offer fun ‘tasters' leading to more substantial programmes. The most recent have been Pilates, salsa and yoga, combining fun, team building and health benefits.

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.

The company use a number of formal and informal processes to support employee development. Monthly business reviews between an employee and their manager are time off the desk and cover the monthly results in terms of activity and performance, then touch on areas of concern and areas of strength and a section left for discussion upwards and downwards and then room for manager comments and actions for the next month. Quarterly reviews are a more in depth look at how an employee is doing and cover more areas such as challenges faced across the quarter and training and development discussions which focus on what training the individual needs to succeed and quality of training is evaluated. The quarterly reviews also look at the promotion criteria and discussions are had to ensure the individual is on track for promotion. Ratings are also given to each employee on how well they demonstrated the Nicoll Curtin Attributes over the last quarter, and this rating needs to be at a minimum level in order to be considered for promotion. Annual career reviews work to ensure that an individual's goals and targets are recorded and acknowledged by the business and enables them to create a talent pipeline for the business- knowing who wants to become management or principal billers. These annual reviews do not cover billing performance but more about the individual and how they are doing in terms of their career and satisfaction..

Team building is incredibly important at Nicoll Curtin. As a company they have an incredibly strong culture and people genuinely are surprised by how positively like-minded their colleagues are to themselves. Their teams are always initiating their own team building nights with a yearly budget each team leader is given, but getting the whole company together is important. Each summer they fly in their Zurich office and shut down the office for the afternoon and organise a group programme which gets people from all parts of the office working together. Last summer they rented out a space in Victoria Park and had a company organise a giant Olympics course where teams competed in 6 challenges and one crowned the winner. Feedback was exceptional on the event, not only because of the investment into the calibre of activities but the fact that staff developed great relationships with new people in the business across floors and between their global offices. Following that event, their summer party takes place in the evening at a top dinner destination in the city and it is all funded by the business and something the staff talk all year about. Another initiative Nicoll Curtin has started is called Project Outstanding whereby a team is nominated at the quarterly town hall to spend £500 in any way they want in order to make the business more outstanding. The teams hold brainstorming sessions and come up with their idea which they present to the business at the next quarterly town hall, and pass along the baton.

NYAS employ staff from a range of professions: social work , legal , financial and they support them with a regular programme of Continuing Professional Development training to ensure they are up to date and can retain their professional registration.

The leader of NYAS has an inclusive style of management, promotes a learning culture and not a blame culture. Employees learn from mistakes and move on. She genuinely seeks the views of others, actively listens. When suggestions are not taken up or implemented she always acknowledges them, explains the consideration process and the rational for the decision taken. She keeps to deadlines and has the confidence of staff as the organisational leader.