BW employees, our most important asset

Company culture has become an increasingly popular point of discussion over the last 20 years. This is largely due to the increasing millennial workforce, who are driving workplace change. Just as the physical working environment has adapted to meet the changing needs of those entering the workplace: a greater variety of work settings, more emphasis on well-being, so the race to attract talent has to be reflected in non-visual factors such as how much staff feel aligned with their employers and whether the company’s values reflect those of the individual.

These days, it’s not just salaries and holiday provision or even perks like a generous pension or private healthcare that prospective employees are looking for when joining an organisation. A company’s reputation could play a major part in the hiring process, attracting a more diverse base of highly qualified candidates and holding onto the best people once they join the organisation. After all, retaining the right people who are a good cultural fit can save significantly on recruitment costs as attrition rates lower and employee referrals increase. Data from LinkedIn states that strong employer brands cut their cost per hire by up to 50%.

We at BW believe that our employees are our most important asset. To us, they are number one and even come before customers. We put employees first because we truly feel that happy employees are not only engaged and productive, but will go above and beyond to make our customers happy if they feel a strong sense of company culture. Don’t just take our word for it, research from Deloitte reveals that 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.

At BW our focus for 2019 was to define exactly what our culture was and to improve the employee experience at BW. We define ourselves as being experts in the field of fit out and refurbishment. We take the time to understand what our clients want to achieve and build strong relationships with them, ensuring communication is always transparent and our work is Defect Free. We pride ourselves on being easy to work with and straight talking and we also encourage a sense of curiosity within our workforce. Part of examining the BW company culture meant looking at the role that our senior executives could play in promoting it from the top down. We know this is important as Culture IQ, an organisation that specialises in collecting and analysing data about culture employee engagement, has found that 90% of employees at firms with a successfully embedded company culture are confident in the leadership team.

Part of developing our employee experience also involved partnering with feedback specialists Culture Amp to understand the current level of our employee engagement. BW performed well with over three quarters of employees saying they were fully engaged. An impressive 88% of our workplace experts are proud to work at BW and the same number think we are in a position to really succeed over the next three years. The feedback also found that 87% would recommend BW to a friend or colleague while 80% felt that we act on promising new and innovative ideas.

We felt it was important to not only look at where we currently are in terms of company culture but also identify what challenges there are regarding employee engagement. The benefits to be had are great as management consultants Bain and Company reported an impressive revenue hike of 2.5 times for companies with more engaged workers. We’re committed to evolving our company culture to help us continually improve.