Overbury have various channels for feedback and continuous improvement. The most direct is through Delivering Exceptional Experience Tours. These are run fortnightly and give members of staff an opportunity to visit their sites and see how sites are being managed and run. The tours facilitate and promote the sharing of ideas and best practice. Another important source of feedback comes from their clients. Customer Experience Questionnaires (CEQs) are completed on every job and the feedback is shared across the business so others can see what the client has liked and not liked. Ideas can be filtered to management through team meetings, forum meetings or in ad hoc one to ones. Culturally they consider themselves to be an open organisation where innovation and challenge are encouraged. This is manifested physically in the open plan nature of each of their offices.

Delivery teams are rewarded on customer feedback and perfect delivery metrics as well as annual recognition awards. In addition to an annual pay review pay is constantly being monitored and adjusted to reflect the market and individual staff members contribution.

Optimum utilises an employees innovation reward scheme which they feel encourages their employees to work in a proactive and innovative manner. Employees are asked to email their ideas for ways of improving their services to a central email address and every 3 months these are collated and viewed by the senior management team. Any of these ideas which are deemed practical to be utilised and rolled out by the business wins the employee who suggested the innovation a prize of £150 of vouchers of their choice. There are also site incentive schemes put in place such as Employee of the Month and individual rewards for going above and beyond.

Following last year's engagement survey Optimum implemented the following: increased frequency of social functions to improve engagement, increase in senior management attendance at team meetings to ensure their visibility to all levels of staff, concentrated on making an open door policy environment in areas of the company that scored lower than expected to give an opportunity to discuss areas of concern, added an additional section to the company newsletter which names individual's in the business who have been commended either by peers of by customers to give recognition of their achievements. In addition, this year was Optimum's 25th anniversary and so as a celebration of this they gave each member of staff a ‘birthday' present of a watch and also made a presentation to their longest serving employee of a certificate and £200 worth of holiday vouchers.

OpenBet supports employee development via a plethora of activities, such as, Brown Bag sessions to share knowledge across the organisation, workshops for hands on programming activities, supervised Google hangouts with subject matter experts at hand to explain specific subjects and topics, internal and external training sessions on soft skills, managerial skills as well as methodologies and technical skills. Traditional classroom training is used in conjunction with e-learning activities and remote teaching via conference systems and remote internet meetings. Training plans are developed for specific roles within the organisation to help new comers or people being promoted internally, handle their new role within OpenBet.

OpenBet supports employee development via a plethora of activities, such as, Brown Bag sessions to share knowledge across the organisation, workshops for hands on programming activities, supervised Google hangouts with subject matter experts at hand to explain specific subjects and topics, internal and external training sessions on soft skills, managerial skills as well as methodologies and technical skills. Traditional classroom training is used in conjunction with e-learning activities and remote teaching via conference systems and remote internet meetings. Training plans are developed for specific roles within the organisation to help new comers or people being promoted internally, handle their new role within OpenBet.

The company doesn't have bag carriers and their senior managers put in a shift – all of the senior managers are working in the business, understanding what their teams are doing, their clients are buying and the wider industry is offering. They are normally first there, last to leave and leading the team by example. The company is a sleeves rolled up organisation and everyone there will get involved to help out those around them – that starts with their management and flows down through the organisation.

As they have grown it's inevitably harder to keep an ear to the ground and understand how everyone in the company is really feeling. They have also recognised that it's harder for newer or perhaps younger people in the team to feel confident giving them their ideas or telling them what they really think. To provide an anonymous platform for people to give the company their ideas and point of view, and to allow them to keep a finger on the pulse of how people are feeling they signed up for a service called Tiny Pulse. It's a micro survey service for internal engagement, a single question is sent out weekly to all staff and in a couple of minutes they can answer that, recognise some of the people they want to thank (Cheers for Peers) and give any ideas and suggestions. Sign up and participation is voluntary, though they regularly promote the initiative to raise awareness, and 89% of the team are signed up. Each week half to three quarters of those people tend to take part.

As a contract catering company, Olive is committed to healthy eating and offering healthy eating choices to their customers and staff. In 2012,Olive signed up to the Department of Health's Responsibility Deal pledge to reduce the salt in the food they produce. As part of this pledge they have put together communication packages to educate both their employees and their customers about the dangers of excessive salt levels in food and the benefits of reducing salt usage. Their Operations teams also periodically run Healthy Eating Awareness days at their sites which enable their customers to learn more about general nutrition and health awareness.

In July 2014 Olive Catering Services employed their first ever L & D Manager. Their role is to support business retention and growth by identifying and designing L & D solutions that are focused on the achievement of the business and people strategy. By investing in this new internal role they aim to further demonstrate their ongoing commitment to people development.

Ntegra offer a company-wide bonus scheme of 10% based on employee and company targets, along with company-wide engagement events such as lunches. A reward is given to recommendations of talent to the organisation of £500 for every successful placement. Rewards are also given to staff who bring in new business to the company.

Ntegra offer a company-wide bonus scheme of 10% based on employee and company targets, along with company-wide engagement events such as lunches. A reward is given to recommendations of talent to the organisation of £500 for every successful placement. Rewards are also given to staff who bring in new business to the company.

Northwards Housing promote better health and offer quarterly health initiatives such as free flu jabs, signposting people to health websites, raising awareness of mental health linked to national campaigns, providing advice on healthy eating and tips to prevent colds and flu. The company also run a Global Corporate Challenge – this 100 day challenge is the opportunity for their teams to sign up to compete against each other and other organisations around the globe in trying to achieve a daily target of 10,000 steps of physical activity. Access to wellbeing support is available from their Employee Assistance Programme and includes a 24/7 helpline available to everyone.

Northwards Housing promote better health and offer quarterly health initiatives such as free flu jabs, signposting people to health websites, raising awareness of mental health linked to national campaigns, providing advice on healthy eating and tips to prevent colds and flu. The company also run a Global Corporate Challenge – this 100 day challenge is the opportunity for their teams to sign up to compete against each other and other organisations around the globe in trying to achieve a daily target of 10,000 steps of physical activity. Access to wellbeing support is available from their Employee Assistance Programme and includes a 24/7 helpline available to everyone.

During the last year North Star have involved all staff in the launch of new services and initiatives including new ways of capturing feedback, their new maintenance services, their approach to value for money, invited all staff to their 40th year celebrations, designed, developed and delivered their Leading and Growing Staff conference with another planned for October 2014. During Octobers event staff will help them to further refine their strategy, funded an annual xmas event and use this occasion to present their “ Staff Oscars”. Staff were nominated by their peers and winners receive an Oscar and a prize. The team of the year receives £200 to organise an event to celebrate their success. The business closes for this celebration, provided £200 per team to enable staff to host lunchtime social events. The first one took place in June and was really well attended with around 80% of the organisation taking part in a “ pub themed “ event with pie and peas and a pub quiz. They also raised £200 for charity. Staff from dispersed offices hosted their own event and connected to the main event via video link, supported the staff nominated charity of the year including the hosting of a big lunch which raised £300.

The senior team are visible, proactive and committed to developing behaviour of good leadership within the organisation. They are role models for their values of collaboration, flexibility, integrity, professionalism and ambition. They show evidence of this by operating an “ open door “ policy so that they are easy to access, avoiding e mail wherever possible and walk the floor as a way of being visible and human within the business, stopping to chat to people about their families and the work that they are doing. This helps them to understand what is going on for people, attending every team meeting twice a year and do not go with an agenda but simply ask staff to be prepared to tell them what they would do if they were boss for a day and be ready to ask anything. They have not been short of any suggestions or questions sponsoring every cross functional project team. This helps them to remain engaged and enables a wide variety of staff to come into contact with and work with them, participate in all social and charitable events, coaching staff as a way of helping them attain or embed new skills, mentoring junior members of staff, being curious and interested in the business and the people who work within it and being authentic.

NHH has an active Health and Wellbeing programme called Nutrition Health Happiness. The programme supports and improves the health and wellbeing of their employees by offering a wide range of activities promoting positive links between health and work designed to reduce absence rates, improve performance, motivation and morale and create a positive working environment. This helps attract and retain the best staff. They deploy a mobile health monitor across their workplaces that measures height and weight, calculate body mass index and blood pressure. It is fully automatic and produces a print out. The printed ticket carries reference information regarding the normal body mass index reading and World Health Organisation recommendations on blood pressure. NHH offer fun ‘tasters' leading to more substantial programmes. The most recent have been Pilates, salsa and yoga, combining fun, team building and health benefits.

NHH has an active Health and Wellbeing programme called Nutrition Health Happiness. The programme supports and improves the health and wellbeing of their employees by offering a wide range of activities promoting positive links between health and work designed to reduce absence rates, improve performance, motivation and morale and create a positive working environment. This helps attract and retain the best staff. They deploy a mobile health monitor across their workplaces that measures height and weight, calculate body mass index and blood pressure. It is fully automatic and produces a print out. The printed ticket carries reference information regarding the normal body mass index reading and World Health Organisation recommendations on blood pressure. NHH offer fun ‘tasters' leading to more substantial programmes. The most recent have been Pilates, salsa and yoga, combining fun, team building and health benefits.

At the end of every month each of Networkers International's offices gets together to round up the month. Within these meetings they recognise those who have performed particularly well over the month as well as those who have hit personal milestones, be it someone who is new getting some success for the first time, those who have been promoted, or someone with a significant achievement. Within these meetings they also promote social activities, charitable events and everyone gets an update on the progress of the business. The event will culminate in an early finish for the staff and a few drinks together. It's a great opportunity to get everyone together and share news.

At Networkers International they have a dedicated internal training team that support their staff across the board. Experts in their field, they have a detailed programme that supports new starters from the moment they walk in the door. New employees have a course that essentially spans the first year of their time in the business. It's incredibly interactive, using lots of differing learning techniques to suit a diverse group of individuals. The organisation have an offering for every person at every level within the business and it's their goal to support people with their personal development plans and allow them to progress through the business. They offer one on one coaching to as many individuals as they can and all their mangers are trained to effectively coach their staff. They also spend a significant amount of budget on using carefully selected external training sources as well as supporting people with professional qualifications. Many people join the business because of the learning and development that the company offer.