Progressive earn Investors in People accreditation
Reaching new heights isn’t just about the size of the projects we work on, it’s about supporting our employees and helping them to reach new heights in their career too. For a long time, we’ve been committed to developing, training and retaining the good people we’re fortunate enough to employ. We’re delighted to announce that we have been recently awarded the coveted Investors in People accreditation. Read on to find out what this means and why we’re so proud of it and our amazing staff.
What is the Investors in People award?
In essence, it’s recognition from the Investors in People organisation (IIP). IIP seeks to make work better for employees by guiding business on ways to increase engagement, promote career opportunities and retain their staff. They assess companies to make sure they are doing right by their staff. The process includes interviews with employees, assessment of current processes and measuring the impact of development initiatives.
To become accredited, a company must demonstrate 3 key things:
- Are the strategies of the business to develop its people fit for purpose?
- Is the business taking effective action to develop its people?
- Can the business measure the impact of their actions and work to improve them over time?
You can find out more on their website.
Why does it matter to us?
At progressive we are people who know design, materials, quality, delivery, efficiency, economy and much more. We are people who know, but if you strip this back a step further, what we are is people. Our people are the backbone of everything we do, and we want to be sure we’re looking after them as well as they look after our suppliers, partners and clients.
Earning the IIP award demonstrates that we’re doing exactly that. We’ve always been very focused on making sure our employees are happy and supported in work, but we decided to seek out the accreditation to make sure we’re covering all possible aspects of this.
What we found
We were delighted to find out that we scored above average in all categories the assessors looked at. Even our weakest area was above average! From speaking with our staff, the assessors noticed…
- Our staff feel properly looked after
- We’ve successfully fostered a strong “family feel” at work
- We’re welcoming and approachable
- People have real opportunities to develop and progress with us
- There’s a great sense of teamwork and collaboration here
- Great progress is being made at documenting and improving our performance
And not only that, people are genuinely proud to work for us. They like feeling part of a growing business and actually enjoying coming to work every day! Perhaps one of our proudest achievements is that the report displayed a culture of transparency and trust throughout the organisation – something we have always tried to maintain with our staff and our clients.
Proud to be progressive
IIP provides a benchmark score to each business they assess and compares this against industry and IIP averages. We scored 775 out of a possible 900. This is 47 points higher than the IIP average and a full 51 points above the average for the construction industry!
We learned some valuable information from the results of our staff surveys too. Here are some highlights…
- Over 90% of our employees feel free to use their initiative in their role
- 93% know exactly what the expectations for them and their role are
- 88% believe we have a positive impact on wider society
- 86% have total faith in the leadership team here
- 84% totally agree that progressive is a great place to work
Honestly, it’s almost enough to bring a tear to our eye reading just how passionate and committed our incredible team is to the ongoing success of the business.
Our benchmark score puts us in the top 10% of similar businesses, but we’re aiming to be in the top 1%. Thanks to the insights we gained from the report – we now know exactly how to get there.
A bright future
The report also highlighted some areas we need to improve, and we’re committed to doing that too. This is the reason we chose to go through the accreditation process and we’ve taken all the feedback firmly on board. These include…
- Clarifying the skills and expectations required to lead and manage people
- Developing our training processes
- Defining our goals for people management and creating an even greater employee experience
- Using our values to reinforce behaviour and culture
Gaining the prestigious Investors in People award was never the goal. It’s the start of a new journey for us – one on which we’ll work hard to make sure that the glowing feedback from the report becomes the minimum our staff can expect from us as an employer, and we exceed these expectations at every possible opportunity.
We are people who know. We are progressive.