Intro
Recently, my employer announced an “Employee of Choice” scheme. It wasn’t clear if this was an official award or a self-awarded title. Essentially, they want to improve a few key aspects so that current employees would recommend working here.
There were a few key pillars: Culture, Leadership, Employee Rewards and Terms, Work Environment, Processes, and Branding.
Many people were sceptical that there would be any meaningful improvements.
A post was recently published, detailing the current and upcoming improvements. I feel many aspects are just “clutching at straws”; it just feels like they are blagging aspects. Although some points are nice sentiments, they don’t offer real value or a long-term change.
Claimed Improvements
CULTURE
1. For the Employee Of The Month/Quarter awards, we shared video testimonies from nominators.
2. Webinars, and suggested further reading.
Coming Soon:
- Comprehensive induction for new starters, and a “New Starter Pack” of company branded items (drinks bottle, pen and paper etc).
- Improve support/recognition for long term employees (7+ years).
- Provide examples of ‘collaboration’ (which was one of the lowest scoring attributes on the survey)
Verdict: I’ll probably write a blog on Employee of The Month, but I think they often get unfairly awarded. Making someone (who nominated the winner) record a video could just discourage people actually providing nominations. The webinars could be appreciated by some people but it’s basically a motivational talk which not everyone will care about.
GREAT LEADERSHIP
1. Webinars.
Coming Soon:
- Comprehensive induction for new managers.
- Consolidate materials from across departments to increase consistency.
- Calendar of events.
- Improve training resources
Verdict: Basically everything is just “coming soon”, so no changes here.
WORK ENVIRONMENT
1. Delivered DSE (Display Screen) Assessment presentations to all departments.
2. We’ve analysed employees’ postcodes to see if they are in reasonable travelling distance to an office.
Coming Soon:
- Promotional videos for our offices
- Presentations for hints/tips on the O365 software suite.
- Review of office usage
- Exploring different approaches to support more social interactions
- Exploring options to support colleagues wellbeing
Verdict: We used to get asked about our equipment on a regular basis, and you could request a new monitor, ergonomic keyboard/mouse, chair etc if you stated your current equipment wasn’t suitable. Weirdly, I don’t think our department was asked this year despite their claim (I hadn’t heard of it and asked several colleagues too); so that is a step backwards. After claiming the majority of colleagues were in traveling distance to an office, they announced the closure of a couple of offices. How can you say “we’ve analysed employees’ postcodes” is a delivered thing – it’s just analysis for a potential improvement, and they removed an office option for a group of employees.
EMPLOYEE REWARDS AND TERMS
1. Amazon vouchers for employee rewards
Coming Soon:
- Maternity Returners’ workshop
- Improved “Benefits Portal”
- Flexibility in the Working Week
- Maternity and paternity leave are being reviewed
Verdict: Managers can award prizes that you can redeem for vouchers. There’s plenty of options already, and I suppose Amazon is gonna be a popular choice.
PROCESSES
1. Successful completion of Security training
Coming Soon:
- Process Improvement Framework
- Considering the blockers
Verdict: How do you determine if training was successful or a failure? Surely you need to test people on their knowledge, or ask for feedback. I actually thought one (of two) of the presentations was abysmal and I couldn’t believe these guys were security experts and charging for these presentations. He was supposed to show the basic steps that hackers would take to hack a website he had created himself (and therefore had basic security flaws), but many of the attacks he tried didn’t actually work.
I asked some colleagues if they turned up to the session:
“We didn’t even book a place on it. we never have to consider security stuff. Everything’s done in the safety of our framework. I’ll let someone else worry about it”
colleague
With that attitude, that shows that we do need training!
BRANDING
1. Updated main website
2. Booked into a few careers fairs
Coming Soon:
- Guides on how employees can promote the company on their own social media.
- Reviewing our recruitment practices and processes.
- Enhance the Careers section of the website.
- Blog posts/testimonials from employees to share across social media.
Verdict: Basically just “coming soon”. Booking careers fair is an upcoming thing with an unknown benefit.
Conclusion:
When you look through what has been delivered of actual value; I would say very little change has happened so far.
Stranger Coding Tings 