About Workplace Systems Ltd

The executive team at Workplace Systems Ltd initiated and sponsored the development of the company values, though they were very careful to leave the selection of the values to the wider company who voted for the values at the company’s global offsite meeting held in Edinburgh (The Gathering). The leadership team have also initiated the 'Values in Action' programme, which sparked an employee led initiative to embed #Kudos within the company’s TribeHR system. The 'Values in Action' initiative rewarded employees by giving them an additional days leave on Christmas Eve for achieving the goal of 25+ examples of employees living and delivering the company values at work. The company actually achieved 50+ examples of people nominating their colleagues! The leadership team provide regular, unusually open, communication back to the company through quarterly All Hands Meetings and examples of people living the values are a regular theme on these updates. The leadership team also supported the foundation of the Employee Engagement Group and have provided a specific budget for the development of employee engagement practices and initiatives. The team espouses collaboration through the creation of cross-functional, global groups such as the Virtual Partnering Organisation. They participate in all Company events with passion. They lead by example in terms or openness and integrity, regularly and actively encouraging all staff to identify areas requiring review or remedial action. They participate fully in the company’s market-driven product definition group and challenge staff to innovate and challenge back. They also seek direct, monthly customer feedback against the measures of excellence.

Workplace Systems Ltd has written two employee engagement practices which focus on wellbeing. 1) Birtholiday: The Company gives colleagues an additional day of paid leave on their birthday. 2) Holiday Buddy: The company strongly encourage their employees not to send emails to their colleagues who are on holiday. The practice advises colleagues to partner up with someone in their team to act as a 'holiday buddy' who will monitor their inbox, deal with anything urgent and sort the other emails into different categories for attention of the person returning from holiday. Workplace Systems Ltd want their people to enjoy their holidays and come back refreshed and even more engaged!

Workplace Systems Ltd believe the key to communicating the vision is firstly to involve the entire company in the development of the vision in the first instance and secondly to regularly re-enforce the vision with both new starters and existing employees. Consistent with the company culture, Workplace Systems Ltd engaged the entire company in the development of their vision statement and values. They revisit the vision annually to evaluate whether they need to pivot in certain areas; again, feedback from the entire Company is considered when making changes. Workplace Systems Ltd believe the key to communicating the vision is to discuss it regularly and to make it available in multiple media formats. The company communicate it in a number of ways: Face-to-face: the vision statement and values are communicated at offsite company events, at CEO ‘All Hands Briefings’ and as a core part of the induction process, on the company intranet: the vision, business plan and values are all available on the intranet (called ‘The Bridge’). Workplace Systems Ltd use other tools, such as TribeHR, to bring the values to life using a recognition/ feedback tool called ‘Kudos’, which provides an ongoing opportunity for colleagues to publicly recognise each other’s efforts and identify which of the company values those efforts align with by awarding Kudos badges. During the last quarter of 2014 Workplace Systems Ltd held a ‘Values in Action’ initiative to promote and recognise the colleagues who had embodied/ delivered the values in the business. These were then promoted via an on-line ‘Values in action’ advent calendar.