High Speed Training: Learning to Scale Culture and Nurturing Wellbeing in a Remote-First Business

When High Speed Training first partnered with Best Companies in 2019, the online learning provider was a team of around 40 people working from their Ilkley Headquarters. Seven years later, the organisation has quadrupled its headcount to 116 employees, navigated a complete transition to remote working and became an employee-owned business. Throughout this period of significant change, High Speed Training has consistently maintained its top-tier 3-Star Best Companies Accreditation, a testament to a workplace culture that puts people first.

Establishing a Clear Methodology for Growth

In the company’s early days, gathering employee feedback was an informal process. As Melaina West, Reward & Engagement Specialist at High Speed Training, explains, "Before, it was more fragmented. We had an anonymous suggestion box or designed internal pulse checks to gather colleague sentiment, but we didn't have a consistent framework. That’s why we started looking for proper methodology".

Choosing Best Companies gave High Speed Training the granular insight and external benchmarking needed to support its expansion. "It’s not just getting the data, but understanding how you compare across the sector and industry", Melaina notes. "Having common language across the organisation and getting team-level data allows us to filter results as granularly as we want."

Navigating Remote Work and Organisational Clarity

The onset of the pandemic in 2020 prompted High Speed Training to pivot from an office-based setup of 50 people to a fully remote model. Over the following 18 months, headcount doubled. Maintaining leadership visibility and organisational clarity across a distributed workforce became an immediate priority.

To ensure communication remained transparent, High Speed Training built a structured internal communications framework:

• Dedicated Internal Communications: Managed by an internal comms business partner within HR.
• Centralised Hubs: Structured Slack channels, an intranet portal featuring news and a bi-weekly newsletter featuring team updates.
• Opportunities for Dialogue and Relationship Building: Through quarterly all-company meetings, twice yearly in-person all-company events and regular live project showcases.
• Leadership Transparency: Monthly newsletters from CFO sharing financial updates and board-level strategy.

"We try to be as transparent as possible through the channels we've adopted", Melaina explains. “Ensuring our channels are simple to access is equally crucial so colleagues can readily follow updates from senior leadership and other teams, particularly during peak times."

Championing Wellbeing and Flexible Working

High Speed Training’s survey results highlight exceptional performance in employee wellbeing, scoring 11% above the sector average. This achievement is driven by intentional strategies embedded directly into daily operations.

Responding to employee feedback for greater flexibility led to the creation of seasonal working patterns. "Colleagues asked for a shorter working week, so we introduced Summer Fridays, where colleagues start at 9am and finish at 3pm in July and August", says Melaina. "We do the same in December with Festive Fridays. Providing colleagues with a shorter day has yielded really positive feedback and improved our wellbeing scores."

Beyond flexible hours, High Speed Training supports individual wellbeing through its Mental Health Champions network, adoption of the Mindful Employer Charter and Employee Assistance Programme support. All managers have received dedicated coaching from our Learning & Development Business Partner, including how to lead holistic one-to-one conversations. "We've coached managers to have wellbeing conversations as part of monthly one-to-ones”, Melaina emphasises. "We're not just talking about work and updates; we're talking about the individual."

Empowering Employee Voice Through Ownership

In 2023, High Speed Training’s founder transitioned the company into an employee-owned business to safeguard its mission and secure long-term job stability. Employee voice has since become central to company operations. "Because we're an employee-owned business, every colleague has a part in that collective success", Melaina points out. "The employee's voice has only become more critical."

This peer-led philosophy underpins High Speed Training's committee structure. "We see a growing enthusiasm among colleagues to participate in employee-driven groups. These teams focus on making meaningful enhancements across areas like inclusion and belonging, charitable and volunteer work, environmental initiatives, and overall colleague wellbeing. When work comes from one of your peers who is genuinely passionate about something, it’s much stronger and more meaningful than coming top-down from HR or leadership", Melaina notes. "It helps colleagues feel proud to work for High Speed Training."

Fair Deal and Peer-to-Peer Recognition

Recognising hard work fairly is another area where High Speed Training excels, scoring 7% above the sector average for Fair Deal. Melaina highlights that "It's about striking that balance between monetary reward and the actual feeling of being recognised", which High Speed Training delivers through several structured layers:

1. Everyday Peer Recognition: Integrated via Reward Gateway and synced directly into a dedicated Slack channel for sitewide visibility.
2. Quarterly Budgets: Senior leaders hold dedicated budgets to reward exceptional performance within their teams.
3. Length of Service: Milestones at 2, 5, 10, and 15 years are celebrated with monetary vouchers and extra annual leave.
4. Annual High Speed Training Heroes Awards: Peer-nominated awards featuring fun video celebrations, such as custom superhero animations, with main winners receiving £500 prizes.

Investing in Personal Growth and Future Skills

High Speed Training provides comprehensive learning and development options for its workforce. Employees enjoy unlimited access to High Speed Training’s full e-learning course catalogue, an annual £250 personal development budget for external qualifications or conferences and structured eight-week coaching cohorts. This level of access has resulted in 27% of employees completing non-mandatory courses through the organisation’s catalogue.

Looking ahead, High Speed Training is taking a proactive approach to emerging technologies like AI and actively encouraging employees to experiment with tools like Claude and Gemini through peer-learning sessions called Unlocking AI. Melaina states. "Over the last 18 months, we’ve seen a huge positive shift in how colleagues use AI to support their role. It’s all about experimenting and learning together."

Leveraging Best Companies to Support the People Strategy

Partnering with Best Companies gives High Speed Training an objective, external lens to continuously evaluate and refine its people strategy. Rather than relying on guesswork, the Best Companies survey provides structured data and sector benchmarks that validate what is working well while surfacing hidden pain points.

Melaina emphasises that the framework is fundamental to keeping leadership aligned with colleague sentiment. "Best Companies give us that external benchmark to know we're doing the right things for our people", she notes. "The granular team-level filtering allows us to tailor specific interventions where they are needed most, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach across the entire business." By integrating these survey insights directly into executive planning, High Speed Training ensures its people strategy evolves hand-in-hand with its operational growth, helping maintain its 3-Star Accreditation year after year.