How we are working with our staff to adapt and evolve.

Charterhouse is committed to listening to their employees and encouraging them to have a voice, sharing the areas the company is doing well in, as well as those that should be the focus for development going forward.

One of the tools we are using is engagement surveys, these help us measure employee engagement and the impact of the initiatives and work we put in place.

Anonymity is assured and employees are highly involved in giving their honest opinion making the responses extremely valuable to us,. We are a diverse group of individuals, working as a team and we want our employees to feel they can depend on our support in their development. We listen to our employees, adapt to their needs and evolve based on their feedback. We are not afraid of taking bold actions to ensure the best results.

We believe employee benefits, monetary and non-monetary, need to be flexible, adaptable to the employee’s needs and attractive to potential new employees. Our current benefits include permanent health insurance, life assurance, private medical insurance, health cash plan, instant spot rewards, quarterly social events, monthly mini socials, holiday trading options, flexible working, study support for professional qualifications, client and employee introduction commissions and dress down Fridays.

Over the past year, we introduced new firm wide initiatives, some based on feedback from previous engagement surveys and others as a result of companywide discussions. In order to measure the impact this work has had in the work place we ran another engagement survey in April this year to review our new initiatives which included:

• New Vision and Values, new branding, new website
• We took on KCA (Kids Can Achieve) as Charity of the Year and launched the Charterhouse Foundation
• New contracts and policies were introduced. With a significant change in flexible working arrangements, increased flexibility in working hours and ways of working
• A bigger focus on Health and Wellbeing
  • We are working with SuperWellness who are supporting and educating our employees on diets, sleep, mental and physical wellbeing
  • Raised awareness to the benefits we provide, including those for wellbeing and especially Mental Wellbeing and the impact of stress and anxiety
• Greater emphasis put on 6 monthly appraisals, training for both managers and employees where we raise awareness to the importance of the motivational aspect of appraisals, regular feedback and especially positive feedback
• Employees are having more regular meetings with their manager
• We held Behaviour in the office training to raise awareness of how our actions and words can affect our colleagues

The numbers and feedback from the Engagement survey overall have been very positive.

Summary of results from the engagement survey

Our engagement levels in April 2020 are at 83% which is an increase of 4.2% since our last survey, taken in August 2019. This is a great improvement and we hope to keep this up.

The areas that came up as the most positive are:

Health and wellbeing, teamwork and support, awareness of benefits, engagement to the firm and understanding of what is expected of employees in their roles.

Employees are more positive towards communication within the company, we have had an increase of 4.7% in this area and we are now at 82%.

Areas for development and improvement include regular feedback, training and development, we are improving in this area, but we are focusing on it in 2020. We are currently at 77.8% average, which is an increase of 2.6%.

We are already working on improvements in this area, with the work we are doing related to appraisals, training and the introduction of a new management module and further focus on coaching. We are continuing to train employees and managers to regularly provide positive feedback for motivation and constructive feedback for development.

Further to this, we have some positive results relating to sickness absence and turnover:

When we look at sickness absence compared to the same time last year, it has decreased by 2.8% and employee turnover has been dramatically reduced by 41% compared to the same period last year.

We had some greatly appreciated feedback from our employees regarding Mental Health and Wellbeing awareness and support. This feedback also included the actions taken during the COVID-19 crisis as well as general appreciation for the workplace developments and changes we made following the last engagement survey and the culture of the firm.

Receiving this great feedback encourages us to continue our great work together.

To find out more contact us.