What are companies doing with regards to 'My Manager'

All Managers have regular meetings with their line managers to identify any development needs. They provide external training in a number of different business areas including coaching and leadership which are open to all managers who need support. Managers take part in an annual management development programme to ensure their skills are up to date. Regular management and operational meetings are held where managers can share knowledge and discuss objectives.

Pret A Manger provides employees with competitive pay and bonuses are awarded to employees of all levels. Senior managers always take time to say ‘thank you' to employees for their efforts and use ‘wow cards' to instantly recognise hard work. The company also run a monthly competition where the top performing shop is awarded with funds to spend on an event of their choice. Career development opportunities are available to all employees and they celebrate promotions within the company with vouchers.

Pizza Express consistently seek to ensure their employees feel rewarded and hold roundtable events to gain feedback on what employees would like. Restaurant support teams are rewarded through the ‘Restaurant Support Hero Awards' by the Managing Director at their monthly team brief. They also run an employee of the month scheme to recognise exceptional work from operations managers, managers and team members.

Managers at Personnel & Care Bank are given the autonomy to manage their branches ensuring that their teams are included in decision making, gaining buy in at every level. They are supported with both external and internal coaching and training in Neuro Linguistic Programming via an external practitioner.

Orange run an employee recognition scheme called Brilliant to recognise people that go above and beyond. Anyone who works for the company can nominate someone else for a Brilliant award on their intranet. The panel meets to review all nominations and they award up to twenty people a month. Winners get a day's holiday and a Brilliant star paperweight. The Sales and Loyalty directorate launched its own scheme this year, Sales Legends. Every month, the top 50 performers across all sales channels are listed in the online league table and the top Sales Legends every six months are invited to a superb gala event with their partners. In July this year, the event took place at BAFTA House. Employees are also recognised via the Orange Community, where there are certificates for fundraisers, a profile on the volunteer wall with photos and reports for all volunteers and Orange News coverage on volunteering and fundraising activity.

NHS West Essex provides detailed management toolkits for each of their people managers to give them support in their day to day role. Further support is offered through the provision of internal and external training if ever the need is identified whilst managers occasionally get together for away days where they can meet up and share knowledge and experience.

Formal team building is held a couple of times a year to encourage employees to build strong relationships and have fun outside of the office environment. For example, they held an organisation away day last year with the theme of ‘Old World – New World'. Every member of staff was invited to attend and arrangements were put in place to provide adequate cover for the office to remain open to enquiries. At this event they explored, with full participation of all present, the behaviours that they wanted to see within the organisation. In addition members of staff participated in presentations which looked at how they work and ways of working more efficiently. One theme that resonated with lots of staff was the ‘time thief' who stops to ask you a quick question that then turns into a detailed conversation or the other time thief who leaves everything to the last minute and then expects others to be able to meet their own timeline.

Being a small organisation everybody knows one another and the staff are very caring toward each other. Once the gym was set up several staff were embarrassed to join but with peer support and encouragement many of the staff enjoy their new found exercise regimes and say it helps in many ways. The gym is open all day and there are no restrictions when it can be used. They provide bicycles for people to use to cycle to work or to go on rides around the local area.

Nando's have a learning and development team within the business providing a wide variety of internally organised and run courses that include various themes such as inductions, coaching and practical courses on restaurant management. They also have two external coaches and mentors who work with the regional managers providing specialist support and development on an ad hoc basis as and when the need arises.