What are companies doing with regards to 'My Manager'

Zurich recognises its employees are best placed to identify and rectify issues within the business and have in place a range of processes to allow their concerns to be heard and dealt with. One of the key innovations is the introduction of the 3Cs – Concern, Cause and Countermeasure. This allows colleagues to raise any issues they have, with for example their working practices or working environment and if they can, suggest solutions. Each issue is held on a central database which tracks their progress and highlights any trends affecting areas of the business. Once an issue is raised it is discussed in weekly meetings and the colleague raising the issue is then empowered to implement the solution. If this is not possible it may be passed to a manager or further up for a solution. Zurich also places great emphasis on the results of the Best Companies survey. The effectiveness of these changes are then monitored through feedback and mini surveys. In addition, some departments have set up Quality Circles to facilitate the changes highlighted by the employee survey on a more micro level. The Circle is made up of managers and employee representatives and solutions are communicated back and monitored by Circle.

We Are Social share the UK and Global vision with the whole agency and have given real understanding of what the key changes were going to be to staff to ensure they achieve this. The company ensure that the global senior management team physically meet twice a year at summits to ensure they all have an opinion and are part of the vision/strategy/how to execute it all.

Supporting school breakfasts with donations, sponsoring local sports activities, apprenticeship schemes and Toureen ensure local people in all regions their sites are based in, have the chance to work on Toureen Projects. They also supported a community outreach activity for a local school they were working on. They built a 'skip garden' for the students so they were able to grow, nurture and harvest organic produce on the school grounds. They sank the skip into the ground and built a walkway around it using recycled materials.

Personal Group has Pick A Star awards for Head Office, where employees get nominated by fellow colleagues. The company holds an awards ceremony every quarter and employees can win a 5 day break with their partners overseas.

Monarch is geared towards saving money on utilities for their customers. Therefore every quarter, the company calculates the monetary amount of refunds all of their teams have identified for their customers and the team which obtains the biggest refund value for that quarter, receives a 5% bonus in their salary for that month for every team member. Their customers are rewarded and their people are awarded.

There are many team building events which run across the year at TGI Fridays. The company's team challenge begins in February, where each of their stores goes through a review process to ensure everyone in their organisation meets the behavioural and ability criteria. Each staff member is then asked to re-certify to ensure they have the knowledge to be efficient in their role, and then they are observed to ensure they display TGI Fridays brand promise to their guests. This is a store activity so that no one is left behind. The store will be visited by a Director of Operations to sign off, the opportunity is used to reward and recognise key individuals who may have stood out in the journey. A series of additional targets and competitions all count towards the aim of finding the very best store. The final event will be a Senior Leadership visit at peak, again taking the opportunity to reward, recognise & energise the teams. The scoring will then determine a regional winner and that store will receive £1K towards a team event. The overall 2nd place store, will receive £100 for every member of the team, and finally the winning store will not only be crowned store of the year, but every member of the team will receive an extra weeks' pay, which they receive the week before Christmas. This is not only a much coveted accolade, but a very welcome sum of money which is cited as giving them a Christmas to remember.

SPF Private Clients' Sales Consultants are rewarded in line with the company's TCF (Treating Customers Fairly) principles.

Employee development is encouraged at every level within the business within the parameters of Speedy Hire's “Career Journey” and this is evidenced tangibly in the volume of roles that are obtained by individuals already working within Speedy. 25% of vacancies within Speedy are filled internally as individuals are encouraged to complete both role based and aspiration training and development, preparing them well for their next career move. The development of the employee starts at the “Qualified” level of the Career Journey. Inductions to the business are tailored for each discipline and each team member has a career journey that highlights courses required, relevant qualifications and on the job training to support them through three levels of competency through the “Developed” level to “Expert”. At this point, the team member is in a great place to progress to their next career move. Each course is supported by their internal Training Academy to ensure each individual training log is up to date and the booking process is seamless. The leaders in the business are supported with tailor made management courses at different levels that will give each attendee a qualification from the CMI (Level 3 or 5) and there are various leadership plus modules and 360 feedback put in place to develop them further. Development is seen at every level and a number of current Directors started in the business at entry level. The internal mobility supported by the Career Journey is certainly one of the best examples of their commitment to employee development. In addition to this, Speedy Hire have a Human resources Service Charter manual that details all of the services they provide for employees to ensure managers and employees know what they have access to and what extra services they provide to support them in their development.

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.

Flu jabs are offered, return to work discussions and in one case they offered a taxi for someone to get in and back from work. They provide fresh fruit every day in the office and sustainably sourced drinks. They also have access to the health care scheme.