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October 2021

Thank you to all of those employees who took part in the Best Employers Eastern Region survey in June/July this year. It took some time for the data to come through but now that the data analysis and awards ceremony have been concluded, we want to share with you our results.

554 businesses in total took part across the region, varying in size and industry with 42,395 employees completing the survey. We received 185 responses from our employees, giving us an overall completion rate of 31%. To be entered into the overall awards and to be accredited to Silver, Gold or Platinum status you had to be in the top 25% of the scoring within each area and have a minimum completion rate of 60%. Unfortunately, with only 31% completion across our group, we were not invited to become accredited, however we have achieved some results to be proud of.

The survey focuses on 3 areas; Organisational Culture, People Values and Task Values. Scoring highly in each of the 3 areas will ensure success.

We need to improve on our encouragement of open, honest feedback. There should be no fear felt by anyone in expressing their opinion and perception of the business. Without your valuable feedback we cannot work to identify areas for improvement to make the overall employee experience better, be a company of choice and work collaboratively to achieve our overall business aims.

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The scoring you will see here in the teal colour is the scoring based on our employees’ perception of our business with a comparator average from the 554 other businesses across the eastern region shown in purple. As you can see, we scored an overall average of 7 against 7.3.

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For the purpose of this summary, we will identify what area you felt we were best at and what area needs the most improvement from the three overall areas being assessed (Organisational Culture, People Values and Task Values).

Organisational Culture What we do well In the Organisational Culture area, Organisational Wellbeing was our best performing area when compared to the regional average. This is defined as ‘the extent to which people feel the organisation has a helpful and effective policy on wellbeing and supports its employees in this respect.’

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This year we have appointed a Mental Health First Aider for the Group (Kellie Catton, HR Business Partner) and launched a dedicated wellbeing page on our intranet.

These are positive steps and as you can see from the data we are performing above the regional average when it comes to our employees knowing how to access our wellbeing policy and who to go to for mental health support.

We have some work to do around the perception of people not being held back in their career as a result of mental health issues, raising awareness on how to spot the signs of someone suffering and reinforcing the message that we are concerned about our employees’ wellbeing.

Our overall average perception for this area was 6.9 compared to the reginal average of 7.2.

Area of Focus In the Organisational Culture area, Organisational Engagement has been identified as an area of focus. This is defined as ‘how engaging the organisation is to work for as a whole in the opinion of its employees, together with their views on how it treats others’.

The results tell us that we are falling somewhat below the regional average in our involvement in community projects and charity events with a score of 5.8 against a regional average of 7.2. We have some ideas for greater involvement in 2022 and for encouraging employee participation, details to be released before the yearend.

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Among those who work for the organisation, the general feeling is that they are treated pretty fairly. They are reasonably well rewarded, feel that the organisation cares for them to a satisfactory extent and that there is a supportive structure in place to allow them to do their jobs. Overall, people are generally satisfied but we need to improve in this area; we aim to achieve a very satisfied result.

Our overall average perception for this area was 6.6 compared to the regional average of 7.3.

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People Values What we do well In the People Values area, Personal Wellbeing was our best performing area when compared to the regional average. This is defined as ‘the degree of wellbeing experienced by the people who work for the organisation and how much they minimize their stress levels.’

Here we outperform the region when it comes to people not feeling anxious at work with a perception of 6.3 against the regional score of 6.1. We are also on a par with the region in relation to stress and how people deal with it at work.

The data tells us that people do not experience high levels of stress and anxiety at work. What pressure they experience from the demands put on them should be manageable and it would be rare for them take their problems home with them. By and large, the level of wellbeing within the organisation is an acceptable one.

There is potential to improve on how valued people feel – the organisation scored 7.2 compared to an average score of 8. A very simple, “well done” or a “thank you” to recognise what has been achieved goes a long way to ensuring people feel their contribution is valued.

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Our overall average perception for this area was 6.2 compared to the reginal average of 6.4.

Area of Focus In the People Values area, Integrity has been identified as an area of focus. This is defined as ‘the emphasis on colleagues being honest, open, trusting and fair with each other.’

People are prepared to reveal their real objectives and agendas, generating a certain amount of trust in others. They are likely to accept the motives of the organisation and of each other. Time is therefore not wasted playing politics and trying to identify the hidden agendas of others.

Communication is the key here. We need to ensure that we are as transparent as we can be with all employees, making sure that they know exactly what part their role plays in making the business a success and supporting them to achieve their full potential.

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Our overall average perception for this area was 6.8 compared to the regional average of 7.3.

Area of Focus In the People Values area, Personal Engagement was joint with Integrity on our scoring and has also been identified as an area of focus. This is defined as ‘how engaged people feel working for the organization and how much they are inspired to do so.’

It is extremely pleasing to note that we have outperformed the region in terms of having employees that are committed to going the extra mile in their job with 8.8 compared to 8.5; however, there is large difference between how our employees perceive the personal inspiration received from the leaders in the organisation compared to the regional average.

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We are consistently focused on reviewing and improving our communication channels, including the Company’s Intranet. Thurlow Nunn recently held a Line Managers’ Conference and there is a New Year’s Conference planned within TNS. Personal engagement is something that we will be looking into further and this will form part of our overall action plan to understand more about this data and how we can improve this. Focus groups will be created at each site as we would like to hear more about what you as employees would like to see from your leaders to enable their ability to inspire you.

Our overall average perception for this area was 7.4 compared to the regional average of 7.9.

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Task Values What we do well In the Task Values area, Autonomy was our best performing area when compared to the regional average. This is defined as ‘the freedom of colleagues to work in their own way, take the initiative and implement their ideas.’

It is very pleasing to see that people feel encouraged to take the initiative and that our score of 7.7 is very close to the regional average of 7.8 and is classed as high.

A tendency to let people have freedom can bring about initiative and trust. The results show there is sufficient empowerment for a generally good morale.

Our overall average perception for this area was 6.9 compared to the reginal average of 7.

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Area of Focus In the Task Values area, Innovation has been identified as an area of focus. This is defined as ‘the encouragement of new ideas and approaches, original thinking and creativity.’

There is work to do across all of these areas but innovation is encouraged was the lowest score against the regional average. We must ensure we encourage suggestions and feedback, embrace new ideas and challenge ourselves. Being creative and forward thinking is what will help the business achieve success.

Our overall average perception for this area was 6.5 compared to the regional average of 7.1.

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In Summary The overall analysis achieving a perception of 7 against the regional average of 7.3 tells us that the employees taking part in the survey have identified a higher than usual collection of aspects of our culture and values that make the organisation an attractive place to work. There is likely to be a slightly greater than average level of job satisfaction. That is fantastic news and something to be proud of, however there is always room for improvement.

An action plan of next steps will be created. Kellie Catton will be meeting with the General Managers of each site to go through the full data collected in order to identify any specific areas at specific sites that need additional focus. Following this, Kellie will be asking for volunteers from various departments at each site to join focus groups to assist with moving forward improvement ideas and new solutions to enhance the overall employee experience within the Thurlow Nunn Group.

We need you all to be working on the relationships with colleagues and encouraging them to give their opinion and not be fearful of doing so. There will be no repercussions on anyone for doing so. We need your feedback as actions that need to be taken cannot be identified without it.

We intend to run a short online pulse survey at c. 3 months intervals focusing on the areas of improvement highlighted in this data, which should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. This will enable us to ensure that any action plan is having the desired aim of positively increasing employees’ perceptions. As part of this, we really need to improve the completion percentage rate to ensure that the data the survey produces represents the broadest range possible of employee feedback. We therefore ask that as many colleagues as possible respond to the request (sent by email) to complete the surveys.

The full report from this exercise is available for you to view on the Intranet home page in the Our Results section and in Our People.

If anyone has any specific questions about the data please feel free to contact Kellie via kelliecatton@thurlownunn.co.uk or by telephone at 07826 552670.

James R Thurlow Sally Tew Chairman and Chief Executive Officer HR Director