JCB group's ambitions for first-class staff collaboration and participation have been cemented following a win at the prestigious national employee Engagement Excellence Awards.
The family owned Group is proud to announce that HR Manager Anna-Lisa De Voil won Engagement Leader of the Year, celebrating the substantial contribution she has made to nurture a motivated and productive workforce.
Held at the Natural History Museum, London, the awards were hosted by comedian Russell Kane and judged by a 20 strong-panel made up of Human Resources and Reward leaders from companies all around the UK. The awards attracted a shortlisting of national and global brands such as Vodafone, L’Occitane, Ladbrooks, AXA UK, Specsavers and many more well-known charities and education establishments.
Group HR Manager, Anna-Lisa DeVoil, said: “As a diverse business with some 300 staff across 12 sites split across three counties, Employee Engagement is extremely high on our agenda, particularly as we have grown so significantly in recent years. One of our solutions to help increase our employee engagement was to fully adopt and embrace a ‘Listen and Act Culture’, carrying out annual employee engagement surveys and making it our top priority to act on the feedback from those surveys. We’re very proud that many of our engagement initiatives have been introduced as a direct result of our employees’ feedback. In addition, we have designed and introduced (with the help of our employees) an interactive internal social media-style platform, or ‘Smart Hub’ which played a critical part in us refocusing our Internal Communications Strategy, plus provided a platform to launch our brand new reward and benefits scheme to our employees.
“By adopting this approach and introducing our internal Smart Hub, we found we could consistently share our messages with everyone, turning our vision of transparent, inclusive communication culture into a reality. Our live news blog ensures that important updates are accessible to all staff in real time, from all devices from anywhere; everyone can see their colleagues’ achievements on the News Hub, or as part of encouraging peer-to-peer recognition, employees can also send each other eCards to say thank you or well done. In addition to all of this, we also have an interactive ‘Ideas Hub’, to continuously encourage our staff to be creative an innovative with their ideas to help drive the business forward and to make JCB an even better place to work.
“With these plus many more initiatives we were delighted to see a significant increase in our Employee Engagement score for 2016. We’re really proud of everything we’ve achieved with our employees over the last couple of years, so to be awarded Engagement Leader of the Year is the icing on the cake!.”
Managing Director, Jonathan Bischoff said: “Since embracing a ‘Listen and Act Culture’ the Group has won four national awards from Volkswagen (one of five top automotive manufacturers we represent). Though it’s difficult to prove a hard link, the national Customer Care, Quality of Service Awards and Business Leadership Accreditations we’ve scored of late are no doubt connected to our commitment of engaging our workforce, making them happier, and subsequently boosting productivity and business performance.
He added: “I am absolutely thrilled that Anna-Lisa has been recognised for her hard work and focus on staff engagement. The awards win emphasises my dedication to nurture a motivated and productive workforce that will ultimately contribute to meeting both the aspirations of our customers and the group as a whole.”
