About Bibendum Wine Ltd

Michael Saunders, the MD, has an open door policy and is genuinely open to ideas from everyone in the business. He gets out and about to all the teams in the business and gets involved in projects from the largest to the smallest. Once a month Michael hosts a group discussion where a small number of randomly selected employees get together to ask him questions about the company and make suggestions. Michael has a policy of sharing as much information as possible with the whole company which many employees have noted that the level of transparency is reassuring and they feel like trusted and valued members of the company.

Every other year Bibendum offers all employees the opportunity to nominate a charity and then vote on the short list. All of the company fundraising is then directed towards the chosen charity for two years. The company are currently working with Action Against Hunger. From April 2009 to April 2012, Bibendum's nominated charity was the MS Society. Bibendum were their largest corporate supporter and raised over £100,000 in three years. The company has a charity committee called 'The Corkscrew' which consists of employees from across the business who give their free time and effort to organise fundraising activities on behalf of the company. One of their recent fundraising successes was a charity ball in March 2012 which raised over £50,000 for the MS Society. Bibendum fully supports all charity work done by its employees and every employee is entitled to one working day per year to work or fundraise for a charity of their choice.

Bibendum run regular group discussions which are chaired by the Managing Director. These sessions are open forums for a small group of employees to ask questions and make suggestions. A lot of their developments over the years have come about as a result of these sessions such as an increase to the holiday allowance and the introduction of long service awards. The MD has an open door policy and genuinely encourages employees to speak to him whenever they want. Bibendum run a series of values workshops where a group of employees goes away for a few days to discuss the company values and how they affect the day-to-day lives at Bibendum. These workshops are great ways of getting feedback from employees and as a result a number of group-led initiatives have emerged such as reworking the employee reward programme.