How We’re Creating a Thriving Culture

Our culture is important to us. Not only does a good culture make us a good employer, it also helps us to serve our customers better.

Our mission is to help the people we work with to thrive. But this also goes for our employees. By creating a culture where people can thrive, whatever their career
aspirations, we know we will always do our best for our customers.

Kate Bates, our Chief People & Culture Officer, has been with us for just over a year. Here she explains the progress that’s been made.

How would you describe the culture in Workwell?

Progressive. Everyone is working towards achieving the best service for our clients and workers. The values across the business are embedded and the teams’ behaviours are aligned with these. Find out more about our values here but in a nutshell, they are: to go above & beyond, to be curious & capable, to be collaborative & kind, and to say as well as do.

Why is culture so important?

It is why people stay in the business. Engaged and talented teams perform better, people want to come to work and they enjoy it. If the culture isn’t right or is misaligned with people’s values then they will leave.

How do you go about creating the right culture?

Being open, sharing information and listening to our people’s needs and wants. This helps us to make changes and improve. Our mantra, Together We Thrive, was born from working collaboratively and kindly across the whole company.

What have been your biggest challenges?

Capacity. We are all so busy all the time. Prioritising the time to deliver some big projects has been challenging and also hugely rewarding!

What has been your biggest achievement to date?

There are so many from this year. We have implemented positive changes in many areas but significant steps have been taken to build better foundations for our people. Especially with improved group-wide communication and systems that bring everyone together. These changes support the company to be more successful and enable our people to perform better.

How do you measure success?

Although we have seen improvements in our People Function KPIs (for example: agency spend, turnover), our peoples feedback is an essential measure of our success and delivering against the plans and strategy.

What next for Workwell, what are your priorities for the year ahead?

The year 2023 is all about talent! Talent attraction, development and retention, enhancing our new HR System (Hive) to enable talent to be captured and supported better. Delivering people conversations that encapsulate behaviours, performance and personal aspirations. It’s an exciting time!

What’s it like to lead the people and culture team within Workwell?  Find out more about Kate Bates and Christina Poole who champion this area of our business.