What are companies doing with regards to 'My Manager'

June 2012 saw another of Boxwood's legendary Summer Fun Day weekends – a sociable and fun weekend to thank their employees and their families for their effort and support during the year. This year the company took over Tylney Hall in Hampshire and managed to dodge most of the rain! The highlights were: a treasure hunt in the grounds of the hotel for the children, whilst ‘grown-ups' sampled fine canapés and champagne in a fantastic walled-garden, a fantastic hog-roast and BBQ accompanied by live entertainers – a roving magician, caricaturist, Barber Shop Quartet and late-evening live music. Even the ‘little ones' were kept entertained later with their own movie room before being swept away to bed by the babysitters. On Sunday they had an event-packed day of fun including: hovercraft racing, Segways, bunjee trampolines, bouncy castles, cake decorating, canapé making, face-painting - to name but a few! After a lazy lunch and more activities, families then made their way home on the Sunday afternoon.

BMS introduced a number of new Well Being initiatives in 2012 and these included the subsidised funding of a well being activity and an annual health assessment. The comprehensive health assessments were held on site and each employee received a personalised health report giving the overall status of their well being and advice and recommendations on appropriate individual health targets and ways to maintain or improve their health. Both options were well received and take up was higher than anticipated. The activity funding was attractive because it allows individuals to do an activity of their personal choice rather than being limited to gym-based options and the health assessment was attractive because it was convenient to schedule in a welcoming environment and only took an hour out of the employee's day.

Reward for performance is a key facet of the remuneration strategy and therefore there is an opportunity for each employee to achieve a significant amount of their annual compensation through commission on sales. This is, however, a fairly rigid scheme and does not really achieve the relevant in company recognition desired. In order to address this the business has for some years run an annual incentive. This is launched each year at the annual conference and takes the form of the top ten employees/managers going on an all expenses paid overseas trip for four nights. The purpose of this trip is to engender healthy internal competition, create a high achiever business forum - one day of the trip is devoted to a business improvement workshop and recognise performance within the business. Every employee, whether in sales, administration or management is included in this incentive and there are regular monthly updates as to how each employee is doing against their objectives. For the first time in 2012 Berkeley Scott also introduced a silver and bronze level to reward individuals who over performed but did not make the overseas trip. This involved cash prizes and extra holiday days and was extremely well received

Project teams regularly complete volunteering activities in their local area to give back to the communities BAM are working within. e.g. BAM Plant redevelopment of a school playground into a beach themed play area.

In November 2011 Avanta held a Managers Conference for all Line Managers across the business. It was at this event when they officially launched their new vision and values, thus it provided the perfect opportunity for the Chairman and Managing Director to be clear about the strategy and the future direction of the business. All the Managers broke out into groups to discuss how they would practically implement the vision and values. This enabled the Managers to think creatively and share ideas with their peer group. Avanta also had an external motivational speaker at the conference, who spoke about their personal journey, to inspire their Managers to strive to excel in everything they do. In the evening the Senior Leadership team hosted a dinner and dance for all the delegates. This was particularly enjoyable, as the Managers were able to socialise outside of business hours and network with their peer group from different parts of the organisation.

Astbury Marsden think it's important to continually invest in their people to equip them with the skills to always be at the top of their game. The company have been recognised with a Bronze Investors in People award.

Everyone is encouraged to take on as much responsibility as they desire and to be accountable for activities within their control. Staff are given flexibility and autonomy and although guided toward reaching agreed goals, are encouraged to find their own way, asking for assistance when needed. Recognise and reward a job well done. Monthly scorecard to provide metric to Agents and allows them to understand their performance against set and attainable goals

Angie Moxham, founder of 3 Monkeys, set out to create a culture where people can be themselves. Creativity was free to be expressed and everyone was treated as an individual, not just an employee. Nine years on, those sentiments still guide everything Angie does and this permeates the culture from top to bottom. Angie is accessible to all staff and continues to encourage, inspire and guide the team every day to do the best work, with the best brands and with the best people. Her humanity and humour are as valued as her big brain and her even bigger contacts book.

Sally Hutfield, Director of Operations, was invited to do a 'back to the floor' shift in one of their Direct Access Hostels. Although Sally has 'worked her way up' through the ranks, it's been some time since she's done a night shift as a support worker. When she was invited to 'give it a go' however, she jumped at the chance, booked herself in and rolled up her sleeves. In the end it proved to be a challenging night but a valuable one. Working with vulnerable young people at night in a homeless hostel presents any number of stories and scenarios but Sally rose to the occasion and used the chance to link in with staff there to hear what their issues were, ideas they had and to talk about how things were going or what the wider organisation was doing. Sally keeps a blog on the staff intranet and used the opportunity to write about what she'd been up to. It was brilliantly received and people loved the fact that people 'at the top' were prepared to roll up their sleeves and 'give it a go'. It showed that the senior managers were far from out of touch, knew what challenges were being faced by support staff and still had the skills and understanding to do the shop floor work. It had quite a significant impact on staff as they were able to read about and comment on Sally's experiences.