About Black Sun Plc

In the last 2 years Black Sun has invested heavily in the leadership team, providing Leadership training for all Team Leaders, resulting in an external trainer spending 2 days a year at Black Sun for intensive leadership/account leadership training. The Company has also produced a guide for all Team Leaders ‘Making our Business Better: A Guide to Exceptional Management at Black Sun’ which provides a raft of tips and information on how to manage staff, appraise staff, build relationships and become a better mentor and coach. Their Team Leaders also frequently meet with their line managers (the senior management team), either on a weekly or regular basis for catch ups.

Black Sun have a range of communications tools and activities to boost team interaction. These include:- Black Sun’s communications tool, ‘Shine’, which allows all employees to remain up to date with general news on ‘what’s happening’ around the business (including projects, new business, awards, and company news including new starters and employee promotions). This tool is particularly effective in the London and international offices remaining in touch with one another. All teams also have their own budgets for team development/social events. These budgets are primarily used to celebrate successes and are used for different events such as team lunches or other social activities such as bowling nights. Black Sun also hosts a range of social events including the very popular Company Bake Off, annual Tennis Tournament, Christmas Party, drinks evenings every month called ‘Thirst Friday’, Friday Breakfast every week, and other social events such as the annual Company Forum. The Company is passionate about enhancing employee knowledge and encourages regular knowledge sharing sessions, where employees can discuss a particular project they have worked on or a seminar or training session they have attended. The Company also meets monthly for a general Company Update led by the CEO where news from across the business is shared. Finally, Black Sun’s employee notice board is kept up to date with a range of internal communications including ‘Pat on the Back notices’ (thank you notes from clients), news on upcoming social events, formal employee recognitions and recruitment opportunities to name but a few.

Towards the end of 2014, Black Sun began the journey of reviewing how the company recognises and rewards employee achievements with the purpose of finding a more comprehensive and inclusive method of recognising and rewarding employee achievements in a growing business. This evolved into the development of a programme of internal communications activities called ‘Shine’. Part of this programme included the creation of a bespoke communications tool, a corporate social network, which included the ability to publicly recognise and reward employees. This system was designed for employees, team leaders and senior management to nominate or highlight employees’ achievements, not just for doing a good job, but a great job with behaviours that align to the company values – such as going the extra mile, supporting or helping a colleague, doing inspiring work or bringing a new and valuable idea to the business. At the monthly company update, the top 3 monthly ‘achievers’ are then publicly recognised by the CEO for their efforts by winning the monthly ‘Star’ award, which is an award where employees win an adventure of their choosing, paid for by the company. The company also maintains a monthly leader board of all posted recognitions on the staff notice board as another way of reinforcing and publicly recognising outstanding achievements. More recently, Black Sun commissioned a set of portraits and illustrative drawings of a range of employees who have embodied the Black Sun values and won monthly ‘Star’ awards. These drawings have been hung around the business to reinforce the outstanding achievements made by employees from across the business.