We’re delighted to announce that TopLine Comms has ranked 18th in Real Business’ 2019 UK SME Culture Leader table. The award recognises our UK and South African teams and our commitment to putting a culture strategy in place.
Real Business, in association with Breathe, designed the awards to champion UK SMEs that put company culture at the heart of their businesses. In the second iteration of their SME Culture Leaders campaign, they identified the UK’s top 25 small business pioneers dedicated to building impactful, positive culture that lasts.
We’re particularly pleased with this award because we’ve been working on our culture strategy for a while. As a B2B PR agency, our jobs are fast-paced and we’re all busy. But a healthy work culture is so important for staff happiness and retention, that we’ve made a concerted effort to improve it over the last year.
Creating a happy work culture is a job in itself and we wanted to work with those in the know, to make sure we got it right. We now work with an organisational development consultant to measure and improve career development opportunities, employee feedback and benefits. Having insight from a third party has been crucial for us – you need some impartial advice to get it right.
We also make an effort to speak directly to the team about what they want to see from their workplace. For example, on World Environment Day this year, we surveyed our team to get an idea of their position on sustainability, and to see what ideas they had for our new sustainability policy. They asked for better recycling facilities, a ban on single-use plastic in the office, and volunteer days for environmental causes – all of which we implemented right away.
But our most successful strategy is definitely flexible working. Everyone is allowed to work from home up to twice a week, and we regularly get feedback that this is one of the best benefits we could provide. The policy is based on trust and respect, as well as efficient, cloud-based infrastructure that everyone can use from wherever they are. Introducing flexible working has absolutely revolutionised the business-boosting employee satisfaction and turning the company into an award-winning employer.
We take workplace culture seriously because we want our team to be happy at work. It keeps them motivated and productive and makes the office a better place to be. Getting an award for it is just an added bonus.