How Our People-First Culture Drove a Glassdoor Rating Spike in 2020

This year has forced us to think about “people” through a new lens. While our focus has always been on creating an extraordinary experience for people, this year more than any in recent memory demonstrated how challenges can come out of the blue, but also how adaptive we can be.

We’ve focused on inspiring and engaging people to make small, achievable changes in their daily routines. Through all our pandemic response initiatives we’ve focused on people’s wellbeing above everything else.

During the worst pandemic of the last millennium, we’ve increased our Glassdoor rating from 3.5 to 4.1. This is how we did it.

Communication and Transparency

From the start of the pandemic, we understood the importance of regular and transparent communications to the Unit4 community. Everyone was plagued with uncertainty. We increased the frequency of communication to the business immediately, so our people knew exactly what was happening with office closures and safeguarding, and understood their wellbeing came first. We’ve continued this throughout 2020.

We wanted to really understand how people were feeling, so we rolled out our own Talent Management tooling which lets us conduct anonymous weekly pulse surveys. We can see real time if people are struggling based on the scores and plan in response.

Employees invest their life and time with us, so we want them to feel involved in every major decision.

A Focus on Purposeful Leadership

We prioritized helping our leaders manage through change, ensuring decisions are made quickly, and driving to quick resolution. We’ve developed new training courses to give them new and enhanced skills in managing from a distance and motivating employees in a calm and clear way. Managers are encouraged to check-in with people often and to be very transparent in discussions about burn out, inviting ideas that will help.

A lot of organizations talk about culture and putting people first but fail to drive impactful initiatives. People have to feel the passion and see how important they are. That’s why our values dictate everything we do.

Inspiring People and Taking Action

The launch of our Fit4U program was key to helping people stay mentally, socially and physically fit. We run various exercise, yoga and wellbeing classes during the day as well as activities for people’s children.

We’ve also started a new podcast series called Inspiration4U where we focus on topics like mental wellbeing and finding inspiration at work. We are now offering our Fit4U program and Inspiration4U podcasts to our customers.

We also understand that people need to be recognized for their great work. Our Kudos4U program ensures company-wide acknowledgement and reward.

We’re empowering our people to be their best selves in all aspects of their lives, and to give back through ACT4Good, the volunteer scheme we rolled out with our new CSR program this year.

Work Life Balance

At Unit4, we have a work/life balance policy which supports people to take time off when they need it. This year we’ve gone a step further, empowering our colleagues by letting them know that they are in control of their work-life balance, career, and wellbeing. Many of us have had to become teachers or carers, lives have been impacted. People have needed flexibility to get to the shops at a time when it’s less busy, and to take a walk and exercise.

More recently, we’ve become concerned with the topic of pandemic fatigue, and we responded quickly. We developed a guide to working to help people reclaim some valuable time and create the space for taking care of themselves and others.

We’re encouraging a change of behaviour and mindset to create better ways of working. This includes ways to ensure that the calls and meetings our colleagues participate in really count, making space in the day, through virtual transit time and Focus Fridays.

Just Put Your People First

These are just some of our people initiatives that make Unit4 a great place to work. But it’s the people themselves, their resilience and tenacity that has played a significant role in managing change and driving necessary innovation during the crisis. We’ve seen what we’re capable of when we all work together.