My Team - Employees' feelings towards their immediate colleagues and how well they work together
My team benefits from a high scoring My Manager factor as the manager is key to creating and sustaining a productive and positive work environment.
An employee’s perceived team will be those they work with on a daily basis.
A mini MBA programme is a bespoke training scheme, created with London Business School, in which 20-25 future leaders take a two-week residential course to develop their leadership style and understand their future role in the agency, in terms of building internal and external relationships and acquiring enhanced management skills.
The agency has launched a BBH Parent Network, an advice site with its own interactive feed for working parents to connect and share tips and advice based on their own experiences of working from home. BBH Satellite was launched to connect colleagues living in the same area for non-work-related chats.
With many new recruits joining remotely, the People Team created a Virtual Onboarding Programme to help new employees to settle in their new roles despite not physically meeting their line manager or future colleagues. They were also paired with BBH ‘buddies' to assist their integration.
Leaders became reliant on video calls during the pandemic, but made sure to not just chat or write emails to employees, but to engage in weekly socials, consistent team meetings and quick calls to discuss an issue or concern. The company believes in the lead-by-example approach.
Bark offers secondments to all its departments. The aim is to make sure there is a smooth transition from one role to another and that everyone is happy with the transition. A variety of internal or external training is available to encourage staff to increase their skills.
Weekly one-to-ones take place with all employees and there are also weekly team-building events, along with six-week and quarterly town hall meetings, which have been moved online. There are also online socials.
Nine homes are ranked “outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission and Barchester has been placed in the Top 20 Large Care Home Groups on carehome.co.uk for four consecutive years. In-house Barchester Care Awards recognise excellenct performance in teams across the company's 236 homes and six mental health hospitals.
With training crucial to safe operations, training specialists were instructed on Zoom and Kahoot to use whiteboards, breakout rooms and polls to keep their courses intact online. An Advanced Carer programme was adopted with 400 people accessing training, including giving medication, in case of a qualified nurse shortage.
Employees share in the commercial success of their care home/hospital through an annual profit share scheme. A Rewarding Excellence scheme financially recognises the contribution of every employee in receiving a good or excellent regulatory rating. More than 1,000 key nursing staff had their NMC membership fee paid.
During the pandemic, the chief executive Maria Mills and director of care Jade Vallance worked many shifts in residential service and used video calls to ask teams about how best they could be supported. Employees' contributions were recognised by Maria Mills delivering hampers by hand to each service. Gift vouchers were sent to all staff.
During the pandemic, the staff newsletter and awards scheme moved from monthly to fortnightly. The executive team also organised celebrations to mark events such as VE Day, Easter, Christmas, Eid and LGBT+ month. The team has also contributed to fun events such as quizzes, dance competitions and lip-sync challenges.
During the pandemic, more than £300,000 was reinvested in the community. Money went to the Surrey People's Group, which enabled those with learning disabilities to support each other; technology to help service users connect with friends and families; and sensory and communication equipment to help manage anxiety and challenging behaviours.
The chief executive holds virtual All Company Update meetings twice a month to stay in touch with team members across 1E's locations around the world. All managers have been encouraged to increase their interactions with colleagues and hold more frequent team meetings using video.
A new company event called Lightning Speed was accompanied by a gift box for each employee, including a 1E hoodie and socks and a chilli plant kit. The event included a motivational speaker, employee awards and presentations on company strategy. It was so successful it will now be held annually.
The company has made it a priority to encourage staff to take breaks, and blocks out time in all employee calendars to reinforce the point. Health and wellbeing workshops, run by external providers, are given. Flexible working is available for all employees.
After lockdown started, the managing partners divided a list of staff names between them and did weekly check-ins. It was an opportunity for employees to take a little time out and talk about whatever was on their mind – anything from the latest advertising trends to Strictly Come Dancing.
Christmas parties are a big thing at S3, and the pandemic didn't stop the fun. Staff were given vouchers to buy drinks and snacks for the online party, which included a magician. A thank you gift was added to their December pay packet, recognising their efforts during a tough year.
After lockdown started, S3 took over a billboard space in Cardiff for month for its #CelebratingCreativity campaign. The billboard carried a series of ads, designed by agency staff, thanking people for the creative ways they were responding to Covid-19. Public nominations for the ads included whole streets doing sing-a-longs.
To give employee an engagement a boost during lockdown staff created videos of themselves covering the famous Beatles song Here Comes the Sun and competed in a virtual Olympics. When the videos were premiered Prestige sent everyone popcorn to enjoy as they watched them.
Staff have a well-equipped breakout room to unwind in, complete with a newly stocked games console, ping pong table, air hockey and an arcade games machine. At the weekly online quiz a name was picked at random from a hat to decide who would be quizmaster next, a tradition that Prestige has kept.
For every pound of weight that employees lost during an eight-week fitness programme this year, Prestige Telecom donated £5 to charity. Senior managers and directors also took part in a ration challenge, in which they ate the same food a Syrian refugee is allocated, to help Concern Worldwide raise over £1.5m.
Having a mechanism for employees to anonymously ask questions and for every question to be answered during its townhall meeting reflects Hamlyn Williams' principle of transparency. Employees are also regularly encouraged to share their feedback and concerns through their managers and speaking to the human resources team.
The pandemic has brought the UK team closer together with employees reaching out to colleagues who they wouldn't usually spend time with, exchanging messages and best practice. Video calls have also helped building global relationships and camaraderie through sharing good news stories and introducing new starters.
Hamlyn Williams rewards staff with benefits including medical, dental and vision insurance, free vacation between Christmas & New Year, a 40 hour working week which finishes at 3:30pm on Fridays as well as an in-house training programme and clear promotion targets.
The first company-wide virtual learning summit was such a hit it that senior leaders kicked off a whole month of learning, bug hunting and phishing for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Employees could learn something new and show off their skills in a challenge – and won swag for participating.
To strengthen team bonds while working remotely, Auth0 has tried out new ways for people to interact to beat isolation. One successful aid used by employees has been Donut, a Slack tool randomly connecting three people for a meeting to get to know each other.
Employees at Auth0 have the option of donating money or volunteer hours to causes close to their heart. Throughout the pandemic, when so many people in the community were struggling, Auth0 gave its software product free to organisations on the front line fighting the effects of the coronavirus.
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