About RICS

Managing Excellence is RICS’ internal training programme, which is designed to encourage Managers to talk about their performance with their line manager, to identify strengths and gaps in performance, to create and own their own development plan and build capability as a people manager. The process has been designed to be flexible, so that workshops and other development solutions can be added and updated according to the company’s organisational needs. This approach has also allowed RICS to package workshops into 3-4 day modules to be delivered globally, according to the needs of the management teams outside of the UK. They also have Elevate, a leadership development programme that is delivered over three, three-day modules designed for managers to take the next step from managing people to leading teams. It is based on three areas: Leading Self (self-awareness, emotional intelligence), Leading Others (transformational leadership) and Leading the Business (culture, vision and strategy).

RICS feel that by giving their management population the tools and training they need, the company ensures that they are having productive development conversations with their teams throughout the year. They measure this by how many development requests are entered into their system. There are a number of methods for learning that the company offer to their employees; job-shadowing, projects, mentoring programme, coaching, workshops etc. In addition, they have an online learning academy that allow employees to learn in their own time and they have free access to numerous courses from technical skills to time management, project management and leadership. Last year, they ran workshops for employees on presentation skills, personal impact, customer service, Microsoft excel intermediate and advanced. RICS also offer psychometric profiles for individual employees and teams; they mostly use MBTI and StrengthsFinder. The company’s corporate sponsorship programme provides financial assistance to employees seeking professional qualifications in their role; they are currently funding MBA’s, CiLEX, Prince 2, SQL Service Training, CAP Design and Development and German and French language courses.

With a dispersed workplace across many time zones, digital collaboration is becoming a major part of RICS’s regular working day. They are pursuing a ‘Digital Workplace’ approach throughout the business. Skype for Business has been installed across all computers and is accessible via company mobiles. Video calls - Skype has transformed the support that colleagues receive through screen-sharing and allowing shorter catch ups to happen on demand. Facetime via screens is a great way for RICS to build stronger links across teams, with putting faces to (often very remote) names. Direct messaging – Skype DM capability allows immediate answers within meetings from absent colleagues, and has been used effectively to solicit questions during presentations and online training, allowing more voices to be heard and presentations to run more efficiently. VideoConferencing: VC facilities are in all the company’s major offices and all staff can Skype into VC meetings using the BlueJeans bridge. This is great for large meetings with dispersed participants, and is allowing wider participation on big projects. Meetings can also be recorded and replayed later – this approach was used to support a big IT rollout this month with short ‘how-to’ videos shared online. Sharepoint is increasingly used to enable project and teams to share information and work collaboratively on single-source documents. In-house ‘TED talks’ are available to all teams and projects to host, before colleagues in their London office. They promote greater awareness and understanding of major initiatives. Selected talks now are filmed and will be shared via RICS’ new intranet.