What are companies doing with regards to 'My Team'

The company have an incentivised lunch club where £13K worth of placements in the month sees their employees wined and dined at a top London restaurant with at least 2 directors each month, as well as helping them qualify for the company quarterly. A favourite of theirs is just being able to have fun and take the team out to the pub for an afternoon, a shopping trip, or an impromptu lunch as a reward for all the hard work. It's much easier to do this when all are doing well, and the team understands that if the company does well they will do well too. They love a reason to celebrate and have worked hard to fuel their company's culture of competition, achievement and excellence, whilst retaining its community feel and an environment where everyone feels included. Each week, the teams vote for the DG Hero - the person they feel has lived and breathed their values above & beyond - and they take a cheeky snap shot of them for the wall! Coupled with the annual Golf, Fifa, Darts, Sports day and Ping Pong tournament, there are always new champions to be found!

Digital Gurus provide industry leading external training for all team managers and directors through Elite Leaders. This great programme is a peer-led mentoring group that not only challenges their managers in their way of thinking, but also provides them the opportunity to step away from their desk and focus on what is most important. They get to listen to and interact with some great industry leaders on a bi-monthly basis. With ongoing pastoral care, they have seen individuals evolve their leadership skills. In January 2015, the company were lucky enough to secure Marcus Childs, who is - in their opinion - one of the best motivational speakers on the UK circuit. He hosted a ‘mindfulness' session with their consultants, clients, and candidates, helping them to face challenges with positivity and to remember that they have the choice in how they let things affect them.

Every team at Dale & Valley Homes receives a large basket of free fruit at the start of every month to encourage staff to have a healthier diet. This also increases the likelihood of staff achieving their '5 a day' and makes eating fruit a normal part of their working day. Their 'Workout Wednesdays' take place on the first Wednesday of every month to encourage employees to carry out some form of physical exercise. Employees receive a half hour credit to their flexi account when they have undertaken an exercise activity (usual walking, running or a visit to the gym) in their lunch hour. Employees can boost their annual leave entitlement by buying an additional five days leave. Alternatively, they can sell up to 5 days leave. Annual flu vaccinations and mini health checks are available to all staff to improve their health and reduce absenteeism. The mini health checks gives employees a picture of their current health and suggests changes to their lifestyle, if needed.

Following the stock transfer of homes from Durham County Council to Dale & Valley Homes, 4200 new tenancy agreements needed to be prepared, hand delivered and tenants' signatures obtained in a 3 month period. This was a mammoth task and required a ‘whole team' approach. Roles ranged from Tenancy Agreement preparation, home visits to get the document signed and data entry. They were assigned to every member of the organisation, including the Managing Director and Executive Management Team. For this task, traditional team boundaries were put aside and new virtual teams established. This approach meant that staff members were working alongside colleagues they had never worked with before, thus supporting improved relationships and communication between both teams and individuals, once back in the ‘day job'. Motivation was maintained through weekly updates on progress. Every member of staff took pride in the achievement of steadily moving towards the end goal. Weekly updates were followed by e-mails from the Managing Director praising everyone involved for their hard work and dedication. What could have been a hugely mundane and cumbersome task, became a real team building exercise which promoted interaction between different individuals across the organisation, breaking down barriers between teams. Once finished, the sense of achievement, shared by the whole organisation, was almost tangible and re-enforced that the 'impossible' can become 'achievable' when everyone works together.

Having a Performance Learning, Supervision system which enables staff to explore every 6 weeks in detail the development support each individual requires within the organisation. All managers have received bespoke coaching training to ensure they work in a way which supports staff development.

The organisation supports its Senior Managers through external coaching and mentoring schemes along with developing their own coaching skills through bespoke coaching programme. All managers are sponsored to achieve level 5 or above management qualifications. Access to peer support and external coaching if required.

The company have spot bonuses for a job well done. . Deal Flow, cross selling reward programme, enables employees to benefit personally from any work they refer outside their own team. Personal bonus incentive plans.

The company hold firm wide updates for employees between twice a year to communicate progress towards delivery of our objectives. They also have a spot bonus/reward programme which recognises employees who have demonstrated exemplary behaviour aligned to our values. Corporate induction is held every quarter.

Staff have been involved in: Belfast Marathon - 23 staff members took part to raise money for charities including The Welcome Organisation and one of residential homes (De La Cour House) Residents Funds - £1,632 was raised for the Welcome Organisation & £264 was raised for the Residents Fund. Over 60 staff have taken part in the Treasure House Project, a project with the Northern Ireland Museums. This project is about reducing social isolation amongst older people & promoting social inclusion, learning & development of new skills & improving social networks. The Women's Tech Project - In partnership with Women's Tech, the Association delivered a programme called “Tea and Drills” which is a taster programme for those interested in developing skills for employment within the construction industry. This has now developed into an £850,000 funded Programme called SPEC (Supporting People: Empowering Communities), funded by the European Social Fund and Department for Employment & Learning.

Staff have been involved in: Belfast Marathon - 23 staff members took part to raise money for charities including The Welcome Organisation and one of residential homes (De La Cour House) Residents Funds - £1,632 was raised for the Welcome Organisation & £264 was raised for the Residents Fund. Over 60 staff have taken part in the Treasure House Project, a project with the Northern Ireland Museums. This project is about reducing social isolation amongst older people & promoting social inclusion, learning & development of new skills & improving social networks. The Women's Tech Project - In partnership with Women's Tech, the Association delivered a programme called “Tea and Drills” which is a taster programme for those interested in developing skills for employment within the construction industry. This has now developed into an £850,000 funded Programme called SPEC (Supporting People: Empowering Communities), funded by the European Social Fund and Department for Employment & Learning.

Through their Citygate academy, they have a structured development path for managers to show clearly how they can progress to the next level in their career. They are coached and supported by their managers and are put through structured development modules. There are many examples of employees who have progress and taken the next step in their career with Citygate.

They have created their own City Gate Sales Academy. The Academy of Excellence will help ensure they promote a consistent message and best practice across the entire group while creating and maintaining the best possible standards in customer service. In doing this, they will unlock their people's potential, giving them the best tools to succeed and positively influence and shape their careers. With an emphasis on accuracy and quality, the aim of their academy is to deliver a “world class” customer experience, training their teams in such a way that they can also display their own individual personalities. Every sales person in the company has been enrolled into their academy. They have been issued with their own academy learning folder which contains all of the relevant information and the modules they are required to complete to progress in their careers with Citygate. All new starters are issue with the Academy folder on their first day and their file will grow with them as they attend and complete each of the modules / stages contained within the academy. The modules are designed to allow career progress from sales executive to sales management. The learning journey is a mixture of on e-learning, on job coaching, classroom style training and off site training at the national learning centre.

CGL implements a number of initiatives to support managers, and to provide development opportunities in the context of the CGL Career Paths. At project junior management level, implementation of formal team structures and clarity of roles and expectations have been set out, and allow the managers to operate within a common framework. They are supported by guidance from senior managers and through the company's quality management procedures. For newly chartered staff, CGL has developed a Management Training Programme, in conjunction with the Chartered Management Institute, which gives these aspiring middle managers an in-depth insight into the practice of management in a live environment. This is a cross office initiative, which has benefits in enhancing communications at this mid-level. The outcome of the programme is a Certificate in Management and Leadership. Line managers from each of the offices gather on a quarterly basis for formal competence training interventions from an external trainer. This is also a forum for peer discussion and mutual support. Senior staff similarly undergoes competence training, and are encouraged to gain accreditation of their management experience through application for Chartered Manager status. Board members participate in formal IoD training programmes for their roles. The Board has a programme of inviting senior managers to participate in meetings. All of this development is set within an environment of twice yearly appraisals, regular updates, mentoring and coaching relationships and feedback surveys which allow a culture of continuous improvement.

From staff surveys there is a clear belief by staff that the SMT are committed to CGL values. The repeated checking each year is a strong message reinforcement. The commitment to openness, honesty and integrity is perhaps best illustrated by the CGL Pulse poster placed each month in public areas in each office which allows every member of staff to see trading performance, recruitment, training key knowledge indicators. Health and Safety is clearly of paramount importance in the work and near miss/incident reporting in a weekly engineers meeting together with new joiner tool box talks and the buddy system all led by the SMT are also a clear messages. CGL invests in technology and people to give them the edge. CGL are committed to listening to one another, whether face to face in regular appraisals, at road shows and team days or via annual questionnaires where we test the feedback from all. Staff is involved with both sustainability and environmental issues and CGL SMT lead from the front in this as final arbiters of the technical consulting output and within the operation of individual offices. Finally, CGL is very aware that to bring in and retain staff it has to provide a fulfilling experience. In this SMT both lead by example and mentor colleagues to progress on the CGL Career Pathway. The 2015 successes in professional exams, the promotions that resulted, and the development of team structures that give aspiring staff a taste of business responsibility have all been crucial.

Communication Day On the first Wednesday of each month the company hold “communications day”, led on each site by Senior Managers, these sessions are held to ensure all colleagues are fully aware of the Company's performance, are up to date with the latest projects and most importantly have the opportunity to ask any questions they may have and give timely feedback. Technology Roadshow, the technology division is diverse, both in terms of roles and geography. As such they hold bi-annual technology roadshows, giving members of the team an opportunity to hear about what all the areas have been working on, what the focus for the future is, demo new products, hear from subject matter experts, but also have the opportunity to network with their peers face to face. Fun@Work and PayBack The company is enthusiastic about colleagues enjoying their time at work – they do lots of things to encourage teamwork and teamplay, including sport days, Halloween fancy dress and even a 50th birthday party.

The PayBack Foundation Ceridian UK established their own registered charity, The PayBack Foundation, in 1997. Colleagues are passionate about the Charity, as they know that 100% of all donations go directly to PayBack grant recipients. They feel a connection with the charity as the company share the details of where all of the donations go to. The company help local disabled and disadvantaged children! Colleagues are always thinking of bigger, better and more unusual ways of raising funds. In 2015 the company participated in 3 Tough Mudder events, 2 10k runs, a half marathon, Adare to Survive, a 12 hour Boogie4PayBack as well as the more usual cake bakes, small change donations and more. MacMillan Coffee Morning as well as supporting PayBack, Ceridian also supports a number of nationally recognised charitable events. Each year the offices bake cakes for MacMillan coffee morning, with all donations going to this worthy cause.

CDI AndersElite is fully committed to the provision of quality training and development to enable all staff to meet the business goals and objectives. The job mapping templates is a great example of how the organisation supports employee development; they currently have this in place for recruiting / sales function and are in the process of developing for other areas of this business. This enables staff to easily identify where they fall within the job mapping with regards to experience, performance, qualifications and training and where their development areas are which may be requirements for promotion. These ‘gaps' then becomes the basis of their development plan. A huge part of the employee development is through the undertaking and achievement of professional qualifications. The company believe they offer a "Best in Class" training offering as all of their training is delivered by industry leading organisation who are deemed to be the market leaders in their respective field. Year to date over 70 members of staff have undertaken a professional qualification and it is anticipated this figure to grow over the next 12 months. Finally, the company have recently introduced an apprenticeship scheme and have targeted every office with taking on two apprentices. Apprenticeships are a tried and tested way to recruit new staff and provide the company with a future workforce. It encourages a culture of learning and provides a strong foundation to the staff base whilst demonstrating our commitment to employee development at all levels.

Small, simple changes to lifestyle in the workplace and at home represent a huge opportunity to reduce sickness absence and related costs, improve performance, increase engagement and attract top talent therefore The company endeavour to support their employee's health and wellbeing in a number of ways - encompassing physical, emotional and financial wellbeing: Working Parent Support includes savings on childcare through salary sacrifice as well as Advantages and Parent Hub through Eden Red which is a combination of household expenditure savings and an online resource of information and advice on all things parenting. "MyWorkOffers" helps staff fend off the stress of financial pressures through thousands of savings on household expenditure. Ride to Work Scheme which has health, environmental and financial benefits for all employees who wish to enter the scheme. Eye care Vouchers offer eye health support as well as a tool for managing expenses efficiently. Quite Smoking, the company are also looking at initiatives to help staff quite smoking. ‘Lunchtime learning' sessions encourage employees to participate in their office weekly session which is geared around learning a new skills, a language, or fitness etc. One of the company's goals for 2016 is to invest in wellbeing programme for staff whereby they can teach them how to lead a healthier lifestyle and promote wellbeing within their lives personally and at work.