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My Manager - How employees feel about and communicate with their direct manager
The quality of direct line management really impacts engagement, after all the latest stats suggest that 7 out of 10 people leave their manager and not their organisation.
Great managers should be selling the direction and vision of the organisation, helping others see how their role impacts the bigger picture, ultimately influencing the factor My Company. Good Managers recognise the importance of growing and developing their people, which means the My Manager factor also has a significant impact on the factor Personal Growth.
When it comes to My Team, great managers build great teams, but world class managers also focus on connecting teams throughout the organisation. Managers can heavily influence the Wellbeing factor by helping to positively restore a work/life balance, managing employee workload and recognising that employees have a life outside of work
FreshMinds offer many extra curricular actives within the company such as Bake Club, Running Club, Climbing Club and the FreshMinds netball team to name a few. In the last twelve months they have organised free gym trials and free month long boot camp training trials, as well as arranging a refit of the basement to provide bike storage and showers. They also offer free eye care vouchers and their flexible benefits include private medical and optional dental cover. On birthdays they offer an hour lie-in and the employee receives a card and a cake/cheese/plant or other gift. FreshMinds provides fresh fruit every morning and breakfast every Friday as well as drinks at the end of the day on Friday.
FreshMinds offer many extra curricular actives within the company such as Bake Club, Running Club, Climbing Club and the FreshMinds netball team to name a few. In the last twelve months they have organised free gym trials and free month long boot camp training trials, as well as arranging a refit of the basement to provide bike storage and showers. They also offer free eye care vouchers and their flexible benefits include private medical and optional dental cover. On birthdays they offer an hour lie-in and the employee receives a card and a cake/cheese/plant or other gift. FreshMinds provides fresh fruit every morning and breakfast every Friday as well as drinks at the end of the day on Friday.
To use it as part of EducationCity's journey towards continuous improvement, together with other sources of information and feedback. They believe it will be particularly helpful to have access to the benchmarking data that will be provided after the survey has been completed. They have worked extremely hard in the last 2-3 years to become an employer of choice and apply the same excellence they use on their product, to the way they treat and develop their employees. EducationCity have won two local business awards this year, including SME of the Year for Stamford and Rutland. EducationCity view the feedback they will gain through participating in the survey as essential in helping them on the next part of their journey. They are already evaluating Investors In People as the next possible step but wish to build on what they learn through this process first. Any action taken will be set within a framework of meeting strategic need and cultural and ethical fit, together with the smart use of resources available to them.
Managers and team leaders are responsible for conducting 6 monthly reviews with their individual team. Depending on the various job roles within the business, managers or team leaders will provide evidence to support what they are discussing with the employee, for example, in the sales department they are able to produce KPI figures for each employee, these are in turn rewarded with bonus payments based on their achievements. Performance reviews set out achievable and realistic goals and objectives for the next 6 months, and both the manager and employee set agreed timescales to achieve these in. There are many opportunities for more informal feedback, both face to face, via announcements in meetings and via whole-company or departmental emails.
Duplo's building has sun scoops, air scoops, solar panels and heat pumps. Duplo International are a founder member of the Two Sides organisation. It shows that the print and paper industry is one of the only truly sustainable industries that exists.
Duplo's building has sun scoops, air scoops, solar panels and heat pumps. Duplo International are a founder member of the Two Sides organisation. It shows that the print and paper industry is one of the only truly sustainable industries that exists.
The Chairman, MD and General Manager visit branches on a very regular basis at least weekly and make a point of talking to all staff, retail and workshop, not just the manager about a wide range of topics, seeking feedback and ideas on: how to improve the customer experience; views on product range; marketing materials and sales opportunities. Each member of staff is personally known and this helps to establish a good dialogue and opportunity to raise any issues or concerns that they may have. As a small company with many employees having long service - average service is almost 11 years, there has developed an extended family culture with a strong ethos of doing the right thing: for customers and each other.
The Chester showroom team recently went to London for an overnight stay which was primarily about team building and exposing them to the fine jewellery offering in the capital city. The evening was spent at a top London restaurant which was an excellent introduction into luxury living, a theme carried into the team meeting the following morning. Ideas for growing the Chester business and making the most of social media were explored. This was particularly important as the Chester location had lost a key watch account and was going to be focusing on the origins of DMR - fine diamond jewellery supported by two Master Goldsmiths based on site. The team then took the opportunity to conduct some mystery shopping after lunch including competitors' window displays, giving them ideas to bring back and implement within their own showroom.
It is testament to Tom's leadership skills that the values created by Byron's people embody his own personal style. As the founder of the business, he hasn't had to dictate or compromise on his beliefs; instead through osmosis everyone knew what the values were before they did the work around articulating them. He spends 95% of his time in the restaurants; however has implicit trust in his teams and is always available for anyone in the business to speak to him, contact him on Twitter, email or give him a ring on his mobile. Tom will also, any time he passes a Byron restaurant, pop in to say hello to the team and then leave. Tom is a people focused CEO, making sure he knows his people, from Alfredo their oldest kitchen porter through to Fenwick their newest general manager. He is extremely engaging as well as empathetic; putting himself in each individual's shoes to make sure he can articulate and understand what doing it properly means to that person. Inspiring, thanks to his drive, unrelenting energy, slightly strange sense of humour, irreverence and his ability to empower people to do what they want to do. His direct team are encouraged to challenge him and naturally imitate his leadership style with their own personality.
Secret squirrel is Byron's monthly mystery guest programme and to make this competitive they introduced the ‘Squirrel Cup'. This pits restaurants against each other to strive for the best customer satisfaction scores across the year. At the end of the financial year, scores are averaged out and everyone from the winning restaurant is taken out for the day to a secret location where they take part in different fun activities. For example ,we've been go karting, punted up the river in Oxford and even had our CEO, Tom, dress as a squirrel. We think he will do this on a regular basis – he seemed to like it!! This has proven to be huge success, with Byron's mystery guest scores rising by 2% across the business as a whole. It's the talk of the restaurants and even covered in their employee magazine on a leader board. This year they took the winning restaurant out for the day Go-Karting and then for a long lunch and then out into the early hours of the morning!
Brookwood offers term time only contracts to a high proportion of employees, and this ensures they have a good work/life balance, particularly helping parents work. People say it really does help them find the right balance and stops the job interfering with responsibilities at home. Managers get private health care, and senior managers also have psychiatric cover to mitigate the risk of stress. People don't feel their health is suffering because of work or believe they are under too much pressure to perform well. It probably helps that there's a defined school dinner time, because employees say work deadlines are realistic too.
Sponsoring beehives is among the more unusual environmental initiatives at Brookwood. The company has a Planet Matters Team of people who discuss and implement new initiatives, running vegetable and herb plots, using local suppliers, fairly traded products and refillable water bottles. There's a Waste Less programme to reduce and monitor food wastage and last year the firm had a Planet Matters Day. Every single one of its catering operations in schools – all 96 of them – took part, planning a day to raise awareness that the planet matters to it, its schools, and pupils who eat in its restaurants. They helped pupils grow herbs and vegetables for the kitchens, and encouraged them to reduce food waste and drink tap water in reusable, not plastic bottles. People say it genuinely cares about the environment. More than a third of employees got involved with charitable activities in work time last year, and the firm supports the charities Build Africa, Magic Breakfast and Springboard. It encourages people to do their bit.
The leader of BRE his highly visible, he takes time to get to know his employees. His messages are consistent on the strategy and direction for the organisation and he builds upon their successes. The Senior Management team have brought together the different parts of the business and the directors and their staff now work across business areas.
The leader of BRE his highly visible, he takes time to get to know his employees. His messages are consistent on the strategy and direction for the organisation and he builds upon their successes. The Senior Management team have brought together the different parts of the business and the directors and their staff now work across business areas.
Brammer aligns a scheduled programme of training and development directly to its business strategy, in order that employees can better execute the demands of their customers. It is the programme as a whole that makes the difference. The programmes are defined by business function and job role, to ensure absolute relevance, so that nobody attends a training course, which isn't related to their needs. The training is carefully designed to address business critical objectives for both Brammer and its customers, and it addresses the individual needs of the employees. As examples, Brammer has operated a number of training programmes to support the manufacturing need to reduce costs and increase productivity, and has done this in close collaboration with its supply partners. A recent example of this has been a structured programme to help UK manufacturers reduce their energy costs, and working in partnership with Siemens, Brammer employees have acquired the right knowledge and education to drive customer energy cost savings. The programme has already added real benefits, and is receiving acclaim from customers and industry sources. On a more individual basis, Brammer has an ongoing programme of management development training, which suits the individual needs of those wanting to progress their careers within the organisation. Packaged together, the Brammer employee training programme demonstrates absolute commitment to the growth and development of its employees.
Whilst Brammer do not have any formal systems or processes in place for managers to ‘formally recognise' that what they are asking staff is realistic and achievable, the Performance and Wellbeing results in their internal opinion survey would suggest that this is intrinsic. The organisation sets realistic performance targets, involving operational managers in their formation. Within this the appraisal process enables managers to set individual objectives which are agreed by employees and revised as appropriate. Brammer is committed to celebrating success and acknowledging a ‘job well done' whether this is through formal, documented recognition or through their culture of simply saying thank you. Brammer recognises that ensuring their employees have enough information available to them to do their job well, is essential in successfully attaining targets. The Group infrastructure and systems allow ease of working and information sharing. The Brammer Awards recognise exceptional performance in a number of categories across the business in the UK and on a Group wide basis across Europe, The organisation also seeks to reward a job well done and invites various nominated employees as ‘VIP Guests' to their exclusive ‘UK Manufacturng Forum & Awards' event. The prestigious thought leadership event, now in its seventh year, is attended by executive level senior management from our largest customers. This privileged opportunity recognises the outstanding contribution these individuals have made to the success of the business.
Blue Cross actively encourage all new employees at Induction to contact any member of the Executive Team to ask questions or seek clarification on any issue and they do get contact and feedback directly as a result. To embrace the areas Blue Cross excel in and to put together a robust action plan to address areas where they can improve.
Blue Cross run a psychometric called ‘insights' and using this for a full day's event. They have also had two off-site full team days looking at their directorate and their business issues. Executive team have had two full day events and a long weekend team building intervention. The team building weekend for the executive team was an exceptional event. People were put in several scenarios which meant they were under huge pressure and out of their comfort zones entirely. It has made everyone a tighter team, more respectful and caring to each other, as well as focussed everyone more on their relationships with each other rather than simply getting the job done!
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