People Managers Matter

A comprehensive plan is put into place to take new managers through a journey to help develop their skills and knowledge alongside confidence in taking on their new role, this is in the form of a Personal Development Plan. The plan is reviewed by the Senior HR Business Partner, the relevant Line Manager and T&D. It involves job shadowing more senior experienced Managers in post as well as shadowing support functions.

Everyday Loans offer employees an Employee Assistance Programme, flexible benefits, performance related pay, staff discounts and free life insurance.

The pillars of the ETL brand are: Each other; Trust; and Learning. They ensure all employees have the professional skills to do their job to highest standards. ETL encourage employees to think about their personal development and what they might need to improve.

ETL provide employees with an Employee Assistance Programme, flexible benefits, performance related pay and free life insurance.

EWT implemented management training a recently, and they have ongoing resources and learning to support people with this including refreshers and short skills courses.

EWT provide e-learning, external coaching and support for non-work related training to help employees develop new skills.

The CEO holds regular 'Breakfast Briefings' open to all colleagues and is a way for staff to feedback on anything they wish the SMT to know, or wish to ask the CEO.

The 'Future Stars Programme' is a talent management programme that recognises potential, enables the organisation to 'grow their own' and contributes to succession planning; open to any grade of staff who is either aspiring to a managerial role or wishing to lead on projects/initiatives.

David Lloyd have an employee engagement application called 'KITBag' which can be accessed via a computer, tablet or mobile phone. It is an informal tool which enables all team members to get involved, chat and share best practice, as well as the company being able to provide company updates, latest news and also promote benefits and key initiatives such as mental health week.

David Lloyd currently run two development programmes. One for team members to become ready for middle management roles called 'Step up to HoD'; and one for HoDs to become ready for a General Manager role called 'Step up to GM'. Both programmes have been designed and run by Operations and HR collaboratively and both have gained considerable credibility within the business with delegates feeling a sense of recognition in being selected.

Thwaites trained a number of staff as facilitators and trainers which has been hugely successful in helping encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, ideas generation and feedback in many more areas than before.

Every member of staff has access to a free, confidential helpline that is available 24/7 where there is a range of advice and support available, including a counselling service.

Currencycloud offer an Employee Assistance Programme for all employees. They also offer a Values, Vision and Goals workshop each quarter to allow employees an afternoon away from the business to consider their career and plan goals.

Currencycloud offer an Employee Assistance Programme for all employees. They also offer a Values, Vision and Goals workshop each quarter to allow employees an afternoon away from the business to consider their career and plan goals.

Benefits such as car allowance, free dental insurance, performance related pay and staff discounts are available to all employees at Citation.

90% of Citations managers have been through an Internal Leadership one day course which includes training on effective communication, situational leadership, coaching, employee engagement and difficult conversations. They have also run specific management training sessions such as absence management and mental health awareness for managers.

Circadian Trust support employees to take time away from the business to travel and experience new ways of working such as Camp America. They encourage people to share their personal achievements within the workplace and regularly showcase triathlons, marathons, extreme bike rides to name a few.

Circadian Trust provide free advice and help for employees and their families ranging from health, work, financial, family, personal and even moving house.

Cartrefi Conwy's subsidiary company, Creating Enterprise, has recently opened a Passive House factory which enables them to build their own Passive House standard homes. These homes are 90% cheaper to heat than a standard 'bricks and mortar' home. Their first Passive standard build has commenced in Anglesey, and they aim to use this technology in all new builds going forward. Employees have been trained in these new build techniques and are now licensed to build these homes from start to finish.

All employees are offered annual personal development grants. Employees can apply for a grant for personal development activities that are outside of the normal scope of their day to day roles, but help develop valuable skills that can be transferred back to the workplace. They can make an individual application to apply for something they want to do on their own or they can make a mixed-group application if the activity involves several people.

Cairn currently have on-going 121 coaching for all Senior Managers along with individual psychometric and personality testing. 360 feedback is used on a regular basis to inform development. The Senior Management Team have also committed to shadowing teams with their directorate to understand the main challenges across the business, as well as how their strategic direction impacts teams.

Cairn are committed to ensuring that colleagues achieve a healthy work life balance. To help people achieve this, they recognise that they need to be more flexible as an employer. They have, for some time, had a flexi system where people can build up flexi time to take a day off every flexi period (each flexi period last 4 weeks). However, they have removed core hours allowing people to start and finish each day at a time of their choosing (provided they still work 34.5 hours each week). This means people can work around their other commitments such as doctor appointments and dropping off/picking up their kids from school.

This year, they made a conscious effort to reduce the amount of plastic waste they create. They bought every employee a branded water bottle, and have glasses readily available for visitors (instead of plastic cups). They also have changed their hot drinks machines so that a mug has to be used rather than a paper/plastic cup. They no longer purchase plastic cups at all within the business.100% of their waste is recycled. This means that nothing they produce goes to landfill. They have replaced their air conditioning as well to save energy and maintain a comfortable temperature for everyone who works in the office.... creating a better working environment and running a more efficient air con system which will save costs. They are an accredited member of the carbon trust - with the aim to reduce CO2 emissions year on year.

Before the leadership development programme starts, each manager receives coaching from someone else who has been through the programme. They also choose action learning groups as part of the programme - this is a group of peers getting together regularly to discuss issues/concerns and learn from each other. Their Leader Essentials programme focuses less on leadership behaviour and more on the basics of being a great people manager, such as policies and processes, case studies on how to deal with certain situations etc. This not only ensures everyone is on the same page, but also builds internal relationships so each of their managers have someone else they can go to for advice.The HR team also support, having regular 121's with all managers to coach and mentor them where appropriate, and attending team meetings.

The senior management team at Brightstar Financial live and breathe the mission, vision and values of the company in all that they do. They love what they do, they work tirelessly to secure and enhance partnership, they actively encourage, lead and place huge value on people development, they work ethically, always safeguarding standards and practices to ensure this and implement and encourage practices to make it easy to work with Brightstar.

Success at Brightstar is down to their people. They value the team and reward loyalty, commitment and hard work. To support this belief, they introduced the 'Brightstar Partners Programme' in 2019. Any Brightstar whom has completed 5 years of continuous service becomes a 'Brightstar Partner'. This status identifies and elevates their longest standing team members and affords specific benefits, opportunities and responsibilities to the individual.

Beyond offer a comprehensive L&D programme, which is compiled of an internal leadership & management programme, external career coaching for those stepping in to senior roles and bespoke learning programmes for top talent. They also offer everyone the chance to switch roles or move through different skills in the business.

All employees are given 15 paid sick days a year. They advocate for them to use this for mental not just physical health. This means they offer the chance for people to take "mental health days" so that people can be transparent and it also means as a people team, the organisation can support people better as they really know their reasons for absence.

An annual staff awards programme is held where colleagues can nominate each other to receive non-financial rewards for their work.

They want to attract, recruit and retain the best people and one of the ways they do this is by investing in their staff's health and wellbeing to create a positive, professional place to work. Their Wellbeing Group promote numerous health and wellbeing initiatives including:

• Hosting tea and talk and wellbeing walk events for World Mental Health day, to share experiences over a cuppa and a cake;

• Providing a quiet and relaxing area where staff can take time out of the working day to relax and unwind. They encourage staff to log off from their electronic devices, listen to relaxing music, read or do a puzzle.

• Creative charity fundraising in support of national campaigns such as Jeans for Genes, Wear it Pink and Movember

• They also encourage staff to step away from their desks and walk in the fresh air when they have their team catch ups instead of sitting in a meeting room.

• They hold monthly, on-site massage clinics.

At Barker Ross they work towards achieving 'Acts of Kindness' and have done many things including handing out sleeping bags to the homeless, to handing out Easter eggs at the local children's hospital and raising money to help with an operation for an ex-employee, their aim is to achieve 30 Acts of Kindness throughout the year.

At Barker Ross they work towards achieving 'Acts of Kindness' and have done many things including handing out sleeping bags to the homeless, to handing out Easter eggs at the local children's hospital and raising money to help with an operation for an ex-employee, their aim is to achieve 30 Acts of Kindness throughout the year.

Roadshow Events – They have continued their annual roadshow events this year in which members of the Senior Executive Board travel the country to meet with their employees to deliver key updates, messages and networking opportunities. This year the focus of the Roadshows has been to feedback to their employees on the results of an internal Transformational Diagnostic conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of their business from their employee's perspective, so that they can work towards change and transformation of their business. Everyone was invited to these events which occurred in various locations across the country, and for those that couldn't attend physically, they offered a virtual solution.

Personal Learning Networks with social learning becoming more popular, several of their employees naturally use PLN's to support their development at work, effectively using associates and peers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Instant Messaging during the period under review, they have adopted a new company wide communication method to promote learning and development opportunities, internal vacancies and support with new system integration and learning. This platform also facilitates a new method of sharing information about beneficial training and development undertaken, sharing success stories etc. Information Sharing within their organisations intranet, they have developed a learning & development hub to share useful training and development material, documentation and content. As a number of these techniques are new, along with launch of the learning & development team, the true impact of the department and strategies are still to be evaluated, but as the above demonstrates positive pioneering steps at Babington are being taken to improve the opportunities for their people's growth and career aspirations.

When new team members join, as part of their settling in process they all take part in a Welcome Fest which is designed to give them the background of the company, they talk about their purpose, their values and their behaviours so that they can live by these, as part of the Away Resorts family, and provide the best customer service possible to their guests. They also learn about the history the business, who is who and what they expect from each other. The sessions are very interactive, based around festival theme and are delivered by their Park Marvels who are in house trainers who have a day job which may range from accommodation cleaning through to F&B assistants and People Development champions.

A monthly recognition programme of awards celebrates a holiday hero of the month at each location, and there is an overall monthly winner. The award recognises not only the big things but importantly, the little things that make all the difference and align to their values. Each monthly overall winner is then considered for the sought-after Holiday Hero of the Year award. They also have their Awesome Awards, these are rewarded to individuals who have gone above and beyond, and live and breath their Values or have shown an exceptional level of service to their customers.

Their EAP is operated by Hospitality Action and supplies their teams with free of charge, 24/7 assistance should they require it. This could be for financial assistance, grief counselling, depression and anxiety, addiction of any kind or just to talk to someone. This provides the opportunity to chat online Monday to Friday, tons of information and fact sheets on a wellness portal loaded with relevant information, free 24/7/365 phone line available to speak to a qualified clinician - this can also be escalated to 5-6 free face to face counselling sessions if required. Management referrals - to assist someone in making that first phone call and management advice line for dealing with difficult situations.

They have 4 values within in their team and Community is one of them. As the largest employer on the Isle of Arran they have a large social responsibility to the community and their team are actively encouraged to be part of this. They have taken part in local beach cleans as well as promoting local events such as the Highland Games, Fireworks and Bonfire nights, Arran Show and much more.

Isle of Arran Food Bank has received a large amount of produce from their team during a food bank drive in early 2018 by the entire team

Arran Trust - all guests that stay on the resort are asked to donate £1 on check out and over the last year this has been over £30,000.

To aid employees personal development, Adaptavist provide e-learning, external coaching, financial support for work related qualifications, job shadowing and paid time off for study to all employees.

The business supports flexible working and working from home, this allows employees with children to work from home should the need to be at home to supplement childcare arrangements. When an employee has a baby, the company sends them a "new baby hamper" full of gifts.

The Senior Management Team hold quarterly Town Halls at which they openly brief employees on business performance, Company changes and initiatives, Client developments, and their people experience and call out individual successes for recognition and reward.

First time managers receive training to help them to develop a leadership mindset, by managing the business, leading teams and developing people. All first time managers receive an email from the global team congratulating them and guiding them to the resources that are available for first time managers, focusing on the foundation manager skills needed in the first 6 months. They believe a great start makes all the difference.

Infor Global Solutions have a dedicated platform called Rave. This is were employees can send a rave to other employee's who they believe has excelled in an area of their job. The employee's with the top raves are rewarded at the annual away day.

Infor Global Solutions have a dedicated platform called Rave. This is were employees can send a rave to other employee's who they believe has excelled in an area of their job. The employee's with the top raves are rewarded at the annual away day.

Viking aim to be the world's leading cruise line. Their core values are quality and service; passion and innovation; collaboration and support; integrity and openness; and fun and inspiration. These values are integrated into the appraisal process.

Viking aim to be the world's leading cruise line. Their core values are quality and service; passion and innovation; collaboration and support; integrity and openness; and fun and inspiration. These values are integrated into the appraisal process.

A range of benefits allows everyone to maximise their own 'package' of reward. That could be discounts in retail outlets, or buying and selling holidays to help with their care commitments.

Their new people strategy identifies a range of different approaches to personal development.