They sit in an open plan office so they are with the rest of the team. They know everything there is to know about the brand. They have an "open door" policy when it comes to asking/answering questions. They are extremely approachable. They live and breathe the company. They take ownership.

They sit in an open plan office so they are with the rest of the team. They know everything there is to know about the brand. They have an "open door" policy when it comes to asking/answering questions. They are extremely approachable. They live and breathe the company. They take ownership.

Rocket Fuel have a Town Hall teleconferencing meeting with all their offices worldwide to communicate the company vision and strategy.

Rocket Fuel HR team provides one to one coaching for people managers and offer fortnightly people focused coaching meetings for new managers recently promoted. They have a management mentoring programme of junior staff members on industry knowledge and technical which gives them experience to learn and coach junior team member. In Rocket Fuels Marvels Training programme they offer management courses to up skill managers with management tools, The following training is provided to all managers. Accelerated Feedback training, The versatile manager, Challenging conversations along with accelerated leaders programme to up skill their talented employees in the business to develop in their careers. HR also work with people managers to set out quarterly objectives for their team members, to support them in providing challenging and measurable objectives that are non revenue focused. Rocket Fuel also carry out a twice a year performance review of all employees allowing managers to fill in a self evaluation form along with feedback provided to them directly by their managers in a formal performance meeting. The strong culture in Rocket Fuel is team work and everyone working together to achieve the business success.

The One Riverside Annual Training Plan & the launch of ‘Learning to Lead.' 100% of employees have an annual performance appraisal, containing a two-way discussion between employee and manager to evidence competencies and objectives. Training needs are identified and agreed. This forms the basis of Riverside's annual training plan. Each employee reviews development through a regular 1-2-1 meeting with their own manager. This training plan guarantees employees a range of elearning, workshop-based training, non-work related personal development opportunities, and the opportunity to apply for funded professional development – often with time off to study. All business areas have provision for learning adaptations, staff events and conferences and a continuous professional development. As part of this commitment and to provide the business with a bench strength of ‘ready talent to entry level line manager roles, the company launched a new talent programme called ‘Learning to Lead' – with applications open to those wishing to become ‘job ready.' This talentpool of 40 employees completed an assessment centre, 360 feedback, a series of skills, knowledge and behaviour workshops, heard from guest leadership speakers, and had unlimited access to a line manager elearning suite of modules. Each employee had a mentor throughout the 6-month programme. One year after the launch, 70% of employees in the programme had successfully been recruited into line manager roles, reducing our cost and time per hire and raising engagement with this talentpool and retaining their skills rather than lose them to other organisations.

Riverside has an in-house, bespoke, modular manager development programme called ‘Cornerstone'. This ILM accredited programme is mandatory for our over 400 managers and provides them with workshop based modules. Each module is highly participative and creative – with an onus on reflective review between modules to embed the learning through application of the learning back in the workplace. Cornerstone has won the 2015 Investors in People Leadership Development Programme of the Year. Feedback to the programme is consistently excellent and the theme of the programme is engagement through how to ‘inspire and challenge' by developing behaviours that will engage to drive performance and consistency in the business. The cost per delegate for the entire programme is £900 – an indication of the commitment to the managers who they know from previous Best Companies data to be the conduit to employee engagement at Riverside. The company utilise ‘Yammer' to build a network of delegates for Cornerstone – to share good practice, experience and challenges.

Ridgeons have a range of activities throughout the year as fundraising events for charity. All branches recently took part in the Macmillan coffee morning. Branches have also organised dress down days, sponsored cycle rides, dragon boat racing etc. A number of the branches will also respond to requests from local organisations for free building materials. Each branch has a separate community budget that they control. As a company they are also members of Business in the Community and take part in their Business Class initiative where they partner a local school. Ridgeons partner North Cambridge Academy and facilitate a range of events including mentoring students to learn about the world of work, providing pre-employment skills to students, offering work experience and have just introduced an annual competition for 13 year olds to design a display stand to be used in one of their branches.

Ridgeons have a range of activities throughout the year as fundraising events for charity. All branches recently took part in the Macmillan coffee morning. Branches have also organised dress down days, sponsored cycle rides, dragon boat racing etc. A number of the branches will also respond to requests from local organisations for free building materials. Each branch has a separate community budget that they control. As a company they are also members of Business in the Community and take part in their Business Class initiative where they partner a local school. Ridgeons partner North Cambridge Academy and facilitate a range of events including mentoring students to learn about the world of work, providing pre-employment skills to students, offering work experience and have just introduced an annual competition for 13 year olds to design a display stand to be used in one of their branches.

With a dispersed workplace across many time zones, digital collaboration is becoming a major part of RICS's regular working day. They are pursuing a ‘Digital Workplace' approach throughout the business. Skype for Business has been installed across all computers and is accessible via company mobiles. Video calls - Skype has transformed the support that colleagues receive through screen-sharing and allowing shorter catch ups to happen on demand. Facetime via screens is a great way for RICS to build stronger links across teams, with putting faces to (often very remote) names. Direct messaging – Skype DM capability allows immediate answers within meetings from absent colleagues, and has been used effectively to solicit questions during presentations and online training, allowing more voices to be heard and presentations to run more efficiently. VideoConferencing: VC facilities are in all the company's major offices and all staff can Skype into VC meetings using the BlueJeans bridge. This is great for large meetings with dispersed participants, and is allowing wider participation on big projects. Meetings can also be recorded and replayed later – this approach was used to support a big IT rollout this month with short ‘how-to' videos shared online. Sharepoint is increasingly used to enable project and teams to share information and work collaboratively on single-source documents. In-house ‘TED talks' are available to all teams and projects to host, before colleagues in their London office. They promote greater awareness and understanding of major initiatives. Selected talks now are filmed and will be shared via RICS' new intranet.

Managing Excellence is RICS' internal training programme, which is designed to encourage Managers to talk about their performance with their line manager, to identify strengths and gaps in performance, to create and own their own development plan and build capability as a people manager. The process has been designed to be flexible, so that workshops and other development solutions can be added and updated according to the company's organisational needs. This approach has also allowed RICS to package workshops into 3-4 day modules to be delivered globally, according to the needs of the management teams outside of the UK. They also have Elevate, a leadership development programme that is delivered over three, three-day modules designed for managers to take the next step from managing people to leading teams. It is based on three areas: Leading Self (self-awareness, emotional intelligence), Leading Others (transformational leadership) and Leading the Business (culture, vision and strategy).

Teams are encouraged to use communal areas to boost communication and creativity. Activities such as pool and table tennis are available as well as computer consoles. Benches outside are available for meetings.

Supported cascaded training , Management training in numerous topics is delivered by managers, which results in a greater understanding of the material.

The senior management teams are always out and about in the business on a daily basis engaging with the frontline teams and managers. Bound by the 'manager promises', these are promises that frontline teams wanted the senior team to make as they felt it would improve their relationships and working environment. The executive team keep the company values alive through reviewing progress of their managers on a regular basis and creating development plans and objectives that work towards our overall goal.

The company's impressions star cards are used throughout the business on the frontline, each associate is given a business card on one side are the principles and behaviours and the other a 'loyalty' style stamp space. All senior managers within the business carry a stamp so that when they see brilliant service being delivered it can be recognised instantly on the spot. Completing a star card entitles the associate to a personalised reward. The company also use their annual service awards where we recognise the achievements of our teams.

All of the company managers go through the core management training which is facilitated by experts in the various subjects. Specifically, managers get trained on transitioning into management, situational leadership, giving difficult feedback, coaching, running effective PDP sessions. The company think it's important for their managers to have a common language around management theories and how the company like to manage at Redgate as well as using their own style. New managers are given a training plan and an internal management buddy to talk through their experiences. Managers can join external facilitated peer-learning groups to learn from managers in other business at a similar level. The company run internal dojos on the above topics where managers come together to practice the skills they have learnt on the training. In the past the company has not been clear about what exactly makes a great manager at Redgate, this year they have articulated this from a collaborative workshop involving some managers and have now created a feedback tool that can be used to give managers clear, specific and highly valuable feedback on their performance as a manager. They then have a session with their manager to go through the feedback to recognise their strengths and agree what support they need in areas for improvement. It's a positive tool that encourages developmental feedback and continuous improvement.

The company are working with Form the Future ,a Cambs-wide educational charity to support various educational outreach activities. They have sent volunteers to participate in mock interviews with students at a local secondary school, run a CV writing workshop, and an interactive STEM careers workshop, and invited 20 students to visit Redgate where they'll spend time learning about four different projects. The company has just started to partner with Chesterton Community College to help their head of computing design and deliver a Computer Science curriculum for years 7 to 11. The company is partnering with Simprints, a local non-profit delivering hardware to help healthcare workers identify patients in the developing world, on a week-long project to rewrite some of their key software. The company also has a long-standing relationship with Romsey Mill, a local charity supporting young people and families, and offer them help throughout the year. The company donate their old computers to Afrinspire. There is also a volunteer day where every member of staff can spend one day a year volunteering on any charitable project they like.