Dec 31, 2023
Connective3 Response
2yHi thanks for taking the time to leave feedback. Our people are the most important area of the business to us, they are the reason we have achieved the growth we have and investing in our people’s development and well-being is our top priority as a business. Without more details, we are unsure which specific training you are referring to but all our managers have completed ‘Mental Health for Line Managers’ training to help spot the signs of burnout or mental ill health as early as possible. This was based on survey feedback that our team would prefer to go to their line managers when they are struggling, and it is important they are equipped with how to manage those conversations and support their teams. However, our wellbeing support goes much further than this; We have unlimited therapy sessions through our private health care, and we offer a tailored support programme for anyone who is struggling. This is made up of paid leave, staggered returns to work, changes of clients and workloads and access to our HR team for support – we have been available on evenings and weekends to support members of the team when they have needed it. Everyone in the business also gets 5 well-being days a year in addition to their annual leave to help manage work life balance to help reduce overwhelm and stress. In our last staff survey, 100% of our employees said they get the support they need from their line manager, 96% of our employees said they have someone they can talk to if they need help and support and 92% of our employees said they feel the company supports their mental health. We are sorry you feel our wellbeing offering wasn’t sufficient and if there are any specific areas where we can improve this offering please let us know as it is a key area for us to continue supporting as we grow.
When it comes to diversity and inclusion, we are very open with our employees on the areas we need to improve and believe every company should be. With regards to gender diversity, the split for the whole agency is 52% women and 48% men. We also have 50% men and women as managers across the business and we are proud of the gender balance we have achieved and the ongoing work we do to progress and develop all our employees. Promotions for the year have been 50% men and 50% women as well. We ask our employees to please put forward any ideas they have to promote inclusivity and we build that into our annual plan. The key area of diversity we are working to address is ethnic diversity and we presented our action plan for this this year. This includes launching our diversity and inclusion committee, building out our onboarding training so we can hire more people with no experience to improve the diversity of the talent pool at connective3 and wider industry, and headhunting for roles to build out the diversity of our shortlists. We have also launched our parental and faith room to remove any barriers for people who want to come into the office which has been received really well. We are open with our employees about diversity challenges we have and the areas we are doing well - we think this is the best approach and it is an area we are fully committed to. If you have any further ideas of what we can do in this area, please get in touch.
Our flexible working policy is fully hybrid. We offer office space for anyone that wants to come in but our team can work remotely as much as they like. The only requirements we have for being in the office are once a month for the agency all in, once a month for our team innovation session and any face-to-face client meetings. During the covid pandemic, all legal obligations were followed at all times. The office was closed fully for a time and then opened for a maximum number of people - if you wanted to come into the office you needed to book so we could manage numbers. We introduced 2 days a week after restrictions were lifted but that was not enforced, and we now have a fully hybrid and flexible working policy.
When it comes to rewarding our employees, this isn’t focused around drinks and we are sorry you feel this way. We do have an active social calendar for our team with some of these events including alcohol but we also run a lot more events that are not focused on drinking such as wreath making, snowboarding, and go-karting to name but a few. We reward our employees financially and through promotions. 50% of our team were promoted in the financial year to Oct 23 and many others received pay rises through their annual pay review due to their hard work and contribution to the business. We also delivered a Christmas bonus to the team. Our people and culture team is currently conducting a salary benchmarking review and this is something we will be doing every year. We also record all the salary expectations of anyone who applies for a role at connective3 to enable us to build up a bank of data for ongoing salary reviews.
With regards to surveys, each year we run an employee engagement survey and the results from this form the basis of our people and culture team’s strategy for the year. This started in 2023 so this may have started after you left the business. Some of the things we have implemented so far from the last survey include neurodiversity awareness training, changing our socials from team socials to company socials to better integrate the teams, changing our monthly all in structure to reduce the travel requirements for our Manchester team, investing in management training, completely redoing our whole recruitment process and company onboarding, increasing our working from abroad policy from 6 weeks a year to 6 months, introducing a formalised structure for 121s, introducing a company-wide mentor scheme, building team innovation days to help advance what we do….the list goes on. We also have introduced ‘Your Voice’ which is an anonymous way for employees to ask questions or give feedback which we can then action – again this may be something that has been implemented after you worked for connective3.
It is hard for us to comment on individual circumstances without knowing who you are and if there are areas we can improve, it would be really beneficial for us to have a confidential chat. Please reach out to Rachel Perry if you feel comfortable doing so – as with all HR discussions your identity will be fully protected.