About Haygarth

The HR team proactively business partner with all managers across the company, through quarterly catch-ups with any individual with managerial responsibilities, to encourage conversations around team career development, training requirements, resourcing needs and providing support around appraisals, objectives and coaching around issues or difficult conversations. This is a really great way to get managers thinking about the additional support and resources available to them and their team. It also helps a more proactive thinking and approach to managing individuals such as identifying potential issues and Haygarth have a mentoring scheme in place for anyone across the business. They talk to the individual about what they want to get out of mentoring and then pair them with a suitable mentor within the business. Having additional support and guidance from someone who is not their line manager is particularly effective in helping individuals develop their career and management skills, resulting in enhanced leadership and coaching skills, higher levels of staff engagement and improved morale and motivation. Performance of managers is measured annually via the appraisal process, which includes a 360-feedback section. This includes feedback from managers’ direct reports, which is fed back anonymously during the review meeting. Exit interviews are conducted with all employees as they leave Haygarth and as part of this process, they ask for feedback on their current manager and any previous managers that they wish to comment on. Exit interview feedback is dealt with anonymously when requested, so the feedback they receive in most of the meetings seems to be honest, open and constructive. Summaries of exit interview data is shared with the board on a quarterly basis, with any pressing feedback being escalated more immediately.

Haygarth have recently reinvigorated Strata meetings and see these as an opportunity for employees at each level of the business, regardless of team, to come together on a monthly basis. Strata meetings encompass a finance and general business update, as well special interest presentations and group work. These sessions are great forums for cross-team working and communication, allowing employees to get to know those people that they may not necessarily work with on a daily basis.

Haygarth have a long-standing relationship with a local charity, The Wimbledon Guild, who do valuable work in the local Merton community. The Charity team work hard to plan a calendar of events to run throughout the year and are constantly coming up with new fundraising ideas. As a result, they run a large number of fund-raising initiatives for the Guild, from regular cake sales and sweepstakes, to themed breakfasts and charity raffles and auctions. One of the annual highlights is their charity auction which takes place at the Summer Away Day. This year the company raised over £350 at the event. Beyond fundraising, a team from Haygarth run a stall at the annual Wimbledon Guild Summer Fete – this year, Haygarth assisted with the jousting tournament, selling props and programmes, whilst in previous years, they have run the champagne tent.