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Transparency Breeds Trust.
It's a saying that's been close to our hearts for a long time at Bright Purple and one that we officially included in our new Purple Principles earlier this year.
We believe in being transparent with our clients, candidates and our own people, so that they can make informed decisions that are best for them. In cases of our people, it also holds us accountable when we say we are going to do things. That's why we have chosen to share our decided actions following our recent staff survey.
What did the Bright Purple staff survey include?
The staff survey consisted of 27 questions, covering support, communication, training and development, health and wellbeing, benefits, social responsibility and working from home.
The survey was conducted through Google Forms completely anonymously, and results were collated by our Head of Marketing (who is fairly new to the team), as a neutral source to ensure that individual responses were not identifiable by writing style/tone of voice.
The overall feedback from the survey was incredibly positive, and we are delighted to know our team on the whole are happy and excited to be at Bright Purple.
Of course, there will always be areas that we can improve! We've taken the key sections from the survey and summarised the results and our decided actions below.
Support
The key questions around support were:
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"How supported do you feel in your role by the management team?"
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"How supported do you feel in your role by your peers?"
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"How well do you think Bright Purple have supported you throughout the pandemic and working from home?"
The team were asked to choose from 1-5, where 1 is not at all supported and 5 is very supported.
Regarding support from management, we are thrilled that 88.3% of responses chose 4 or 5, with just under half choosing the highest option of very supported.
Responses regarding support from peers was similar, but with a more even split between average, good and very good.
Work from home support was also very positive with 64.7% saying that our support was very good. There were however a few responses that shows that we can do better, and as we continue with home-working we continue to do everything we can to offer ongoing support to our team.
Communication
We asked two main questions around communication:
Again results were mainly positive on these questions, with 58% feeling very confident approaching management with grievances, and 100% feeling they are kept up to date with goings on in the business. There was as you can see a couple of responses that shows there is still work to be done in making sure that everyone feels they are kept up to date and also to ensure a transparent and open work environment where staff feel comfortable discussing any issues with us.
Training and Development
While over 64% of the team felt ongoing training and development was sufficient for their needs or to a high standard, just under a quarter said they would like more ongoing training and development. This is something that has been difficult throughout the pandemic and with onboarding new staff remotely, but we have been working on an ongoing plan to improve this moving forward (see action points further down).
Health and Wellbeing
We wanted to know how our team have been feeling in general regarding their mental health, especially throughout such a hard time. This included their working hours, as research has shown that typically people are working over their hours when working from home.
While a good number of the team said they were feeling good-very good mentally, around 35% said they felt only average, with one less than average. The strain of the pandemic has affected us all, and we are continuously doing all we can to try and offer ongoing support, compassion and a friendly ear for our team.
The survey showed that 35% of our team have been consistently starting and finishing earlier and later than 9-5. Whilst there is no hiding from the fact that recruitment isn't a typical 9-5 (the nature of speaking with candidates who are also working 9-5 means that often our days start and finish later to reach them), we obviously want to make sure that our team aren't burning out, and that they are able to take time in lieu where appropriate.
Benefits
Our survey showed that the team were very happy with existing benefits, with our flexible working, Vitality Healthcare and paid days off between Christmas and New Year (out with holiday allowance) proving very popular.
100% of the team thought that our pay and commission structure was fair, with 73.5% saying it was good-very good.
Social Corporate Responsibility
We asked the team how important the following areas of SCR were to them:
The most important areas voted by the team were Health and Wellbeing and Diversity and Inclusion.
Working from Home
We asked the team how they have enjoyed working from home, and how much they would like to continue working from home.
It's safe to say they are big fans!
We've taken these results into consideration when looking at our hybrid policy for the rest of the year.
Based on the survey results, the senior team reviewed and discussed what actions we could implement to help improve and maintain staff morale and satisfaction.
There are also a few points that are still under review so have not been included in the below.
Hybrid Working until at least 2022.
Following the success of working from home for our team, we are continuing a hybrid working policy until at least 2022, and most likely further into the future.
The majority of our team will work to an 80/20 model, only required in the office for 1 day of their choosing per week. Resourcers and junior staff will work to a 60/40 model, coming to the office twice a week as agreed with their line manager. Of course the team are welcome to come in more often if they choose, and we've already seen a few team members doing so.
An extra day of leave for your birthday
Beginning at the start of next year, we'll be giving the team an extra day of annual leave for their birthday.
We asked the team what extra benefits they would like, and while this was not mentioned, we decided to add it as an extra perk.
Quarterly Team-Building Activities
With the team having worked remotely for over a year, and with ongoing hybrid working in place, we felt it was important to arrange set days each quarter for the team to get together. We hope these days will help with a few of the survey action points, including peer to peer support, communication, mental health and wellbeing and general team social activities which was requested by several team members.
More training workshops
Admittedly, training is something that probably suffered throughout the pandemic, with a lack of ability to get everyone in a room, and Zoom training proving difficult.
Before the survey went out, we'd been working on a variety of training such as advert writing, sales and business development. New training documentation is coming together and we will be utilising the wealth of experience in our senior team to host in-house workshops and training in each area. Before the pandemic we also did regular training with external companies, and will continue to do so where necessary,
As has always been the case, the team are also welcome to propose specific external training courses that they feel would benefit them in their job, which we review and fund on a case-by-case basis.
Vitality Healthcare
Our Vitality Healthcare plan has been a staple of Bright Purple benefits for some time for anyone past 6 months in the business. While many team members use this frequently, we are going to work on reminding and encouraging the staff to utilise the benefits of Vitality, which include numerous mental health tools and support, active points and rewards such as coffees, cinema tickets, and numerous discounts for necessities like glasses and contact lenses.
Flexible Working
While Bright Purple has always been a flexible business, the pandemic has obviously made this even more essential. We don't want our team to feel restricted by a 9-5 working day, and encourage flexibility. If our team need to take an extra break at lunch and work it in the evening, that's fine! They work when it works for them.
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These are the key action points from the survey, however as mentioned there are still some larger pieces under review that we hope to be able to implement as we look towards 2022.
Finance Director Jemma Brown said:
"As a business who have hired a lot of new faces in the past 18 months, the Bright Purple staff survey was something I was extremely keen to get across the line to help us understand our people's views. I am extremely happy with the outcome of the survey and our action on the results!
As the majority of our staff are really supportive of home working, it's good to see that our new hybrid policy fully compliments this.
I for one, am now looking forward to having my birthday off every year and excited for the quarterly team building days!"
Overall we were thrilled by the results of the survey, and hope that our action points are good steps towards improving in key areas as we move forward.
The Bright Purple Team.
August 2021.
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