We are the Best Company to Work For*

*Well, that’s really just my view. But, The Sunday Times has revealed the Best Places to Work in the UK for 2023 and guess who’s in the Top 10 among companies of the same size? That’s right, Ancoris !

Yes, I’m shamelessly bragging about ourselves**. However, I am incredibly proud of another independent proofpoint which shows Ancoris as one of the very best employers out there. What makes us particularly happy is that this is the result of an intentional effort by our leadership and the involvement of every single Ancorian (yes, that’s what we call ourselves) who lives and breathes our culture.

When I joined Ancoris just over two years ago, I mentioned how great our culture was. What we’ve done since is ensure we have remained (and continue to remain) intentional about retaining that great culture as we grow. Culture is owned and lived by everyone; not something leadership talks about or that “HR” does. But we do need to make sure we are purposeful about it, that we embed our values and our ethos in everything we do.

Our culture is one of openness, candid feedback and continuous improvement. And that’s an important part of being a great company to work for. But it can’t stop there, we also need to make sure we look after our people by providing the right benefits, support and, most importantly, an environment to accelerate their careers - in ways that are meaningful for our employees.

And that’s where we made incredible progress in the last couple of years. We launched initiatives to enhance work-life balance, such as improved holiday allowance or volunteering days, to mention a few. But we also made significant improvements to things that are more impactful to people’s careers such as improved parental leave, or robust learning and development as well as career development processes.?

We have hired at a fast pace, including building our own talent academy, but we have also promoted dozens of people internally, trusting them to stretch themselves into more senior jobs for the first time. We have also worked hard on getting honest and confidential feedback from our employees, which we then communicate transparently and use to shape our priorities.

The last thing to mention is that, as opposed to other awards where the most cynics question whether you “pay to play” or “everyone gets a prize”, the Sunday Times process is rigorous, independent and it’s based on a confidential survey they send to our employees, so it’s really out of our hands!

This is why we are very proud of yet another milestone on our journey to what we set out to do from the very beginning - building a great business. The road is long and often hard, but these moments definitely help us get validation for the great things our teams are doing.

Please come and talk to us if you’re looking for a great business to join!

** This is a topic I intend to come back to in a future post.