What are companies doing with regards to 'My Manager'

Biogen strives to be an open organisation and to communicate frequently and openly with the wider employee population. This is an increasing challenge as the business grows, but in order to maintain this high level of engagement the leadership team and CEO hold bi-weekly 'Speed Updates' at which many members of the Biogen team contribute the achievements of the past fortnight. In addition there is a monthly Bulletin which provides an opportunity for the CEO to communicate key thoughts, milestones and forward looking challenges across the entire business.

As a result of strong performance across the teams in June 2014 the entire UK team from Bazaarvoice travelled to their headquarters in Austin, Texas for a global ‘All Hands' meeting which mixed receiving company updates with recognition of people, celebrating and socialising. As well as this day long event, the team were able to stay a whole working week to spend time in the US office collaborating with colleagues from around the world.

Arrows Group held its inaugural Arrows Group Sales Conference in October, bringing together the current and future leaders from all offices. The overall aim of this conference was to revisit the group strategy, explore best practices across the business and gain some in depth feedback from each division around how they are doing and how Arrow Group can improve. The event focussed on representing everyone within the company and the majority of the work done on the day was designed to take away practice improvements that were shared with everyone, so all colleagues can participate in building a world-class company. One of many reasons for appointing Greg Searle as Board Advisor for Coaching and Development, was to ensure Arrow Group could use his expertise in eliciting maximum engagement from employees to achieve the company's vision. One method involved offsite sessions for two days with team leaders, spending time with them to share the company's vision and performance goals, and encouraging participants to commit to actions and processes that contribute to these goals. These were then fed back for review against ongoing initiatives. The company's Personal Development Plans provide the primary route for a tailored approach to developing Arrow Group's employees' careers. Feedback is a critical component to the PDPs, ensuring the employee has a voice in their career path, and how their career contributes to the company's success. Feedback is gathered by each manager, and implementation is assessed in terms of practicality, relevance, and scope.

Academy Insurance Services offer health insurance to all employees and a cycle to work scheme

The organisation has a number of processes in place that allows colleagues to feedback their ideas and suggestions. Firstly, the organisation makes use of the intranet, Sharepoint and social media, Yammer, as tools for knowledge and idea sharing. All employees have access to these sites. A suggestion facility allows employees to share and feedback any ideas and suggestions they may have on any area of the business. This is a straightforward and effective process to allow all employees to be heard. The organisation also holds regular ‘town hall' meetings, which all employees can attend. In these meetings, a brief executive report is made about the current status of the business. Employees will then have the opportunity to ask any questions they have, discuss any emerging issues, voice their concerns and feedback on any ideas and suggestions they may have. The meeting is usually fairly informal, allowing the employees to take the lead and discuss the topics they feel are necessary. Abellio also aims to gain feedback from employees by conducting yearly engagement surveys. A gap analysis is used to understand areas for development and the feasible measures necessary to close the gap.

The health and wellbeing of 1st Credit staff is extremely important to 1st Credit. They understand that sometimes throughout working life and personal life times can be difficult. Through ample communication with their staff during return to work interviews and one to one meetings they try to establish and eliminate any cause for concern. 1st Credit has established an open and honest ethos which encourages staff to share any concerns to prevent them escalating further. Working alongside a local doctor's surgery they obtain advice on dealing with work related stress in guidance of the HSE (Heath and Safety executive). 1st Credit also offer an Occupational Health service via the surgery; this enables staff to gain professional medical advice and provides further guidance to 1st Credit in making any further adjustments. They provide behavioural workshops at all levels in the company that address stress in the workplace and provide practical solutions on how to avoid and cope with the demands of the job. These courses are essential for teams who deal with sensitive issues faced by their customers such as bereavement, critical illness, and mental health. This level of development is not only about equipping employees with the skills, knowledge and confidence to deal with such issues but it also ensures that their employees are given a degree of resilience.

Wulvern Housing support employee development by their internal coaching development programme - this year they have trained 10 managers to become coaches so they can help and develop staff from across the business. Each coach had to complete a two training course on the basics of coaching, undertake a minimum of 10 hours coaching practice and report on the benefits to the business and the individual of the coaching experience before being added to the coaching bank. The coaching bank are now used to support staff identified by Managers as wanting additional development to progress or where they need performance improvement support. Coaches are now working across the business with staff from all team including Apprentices, Rising Stars and general colleagues needing support. They intend to run their second cohort of coaches training in February to widen the scope of this resource as they want coaching to be a key way that managers support their teams to develop and learn to make decisions and decide actions for themselves. Additionally they run quarterly updates for their coaching bank to give them insights to other methods and style of coaching to give them flexibility and alternatives to the GROW model they learned on the initial two day course. December will see the coaches exploring the Time to Think philosophy and methodology developed by Nancy Kline.

The organisation celebrate Thanks giving, Christmas, Eid and Divali.

This year Updata Infrastructure introduced the Employee Assistance programme which offers a helpline where employees can speak to an experienced counsellor, legal representative or qualified nurse 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. This provides around the clock advice and counselling on matters such as, emotional issues, bereavement, relationships, health concerns, healthy living advice, alcohol/quit smoking advice, debt/money matters and landlord/tenant disputes. Employees also receive access to the Worklife Solutions website where you can gain access to help on a number of topics including: relationships, family, home, bereavement, finances, sickness, disability, retirement, change, workplace conflict, working as an expatriate, work-life balance, stress, nutrition, smoking, drinking, ill health, physical health and healthy heart. The Healthy Living website includes an online health coach, Heath Matters E-Zine and information on an extensive range of health related topics. Employees can set personal fitness goals and track their progress online. Finally, employees can take an online assessment, generating their own ‘Q' score, understanding the impact that their lifestyle is having on their health. There is also an area for line managers providing management tools and advice. In addition to this, the company have launched an income protection scheme, the policy will provide 65% of base salary until the age of 65 should an employee become medically incapable of performing their duties. This takes the stress and worry out of any long term sickness situations for the employee.

Unruly offer spot ‘superhero' bonuses to team members who have gone above and beyond the call of duty. These £1000 bonuses are given each quarter to nominated employees. Managers globally are given the opportunity to nominate Unrulies for a superhero bonus, and these nominations are reviewed by the executive team to ensure senior Unrulies are aware of special contributions team members have made. In addition to monetary rewards, Unruly provide a mentoring programme which partners team members based on skills, this is not about hierarchy, it's about subject matter experts providing support to team members seeking development in this area. If someone has delivered wow in a spectacular fashion they are given a pair of tickets to an exclusive film preview, hosted by the NSPCC in Mayfair. This helps the company to reward Unrulies who have delivered wow and to share the love with the NSPCC. They always try to make sure their most dedicated Unrulies are given lots of high profile networking and speaking opportunities, which have included lunches at #10 Downing Street, appearing on stage at the Barbican theatre, industry leadership dinners and invitations to the opening of the market at the London Stock Exchange.