Survey results offer valuable insight into employee engagement

As the co-founders of Best Employers, alongside psychometrics experts eras Ltd, Pure understand the importance of gathering feedback on employee engagement. Chief operating officer Gill Buchanan explains what Pure learned in 2021 from its own survey. 

What makes Best Employers’ awards particularly special is that companies are judged by the people who know them best – their own employees. 

We've previously run two Best Employers surveys, and we were keen to see how the results compared, considering the challenges of the pandemic.

More than 85% of our people took part in the survey. Which enabled us to gain an accurate insight into how our team were feeling. We were delighted to see such a high participation rate and how three of Pure’s key values came out as the strongest personal values of our team. 

Our scores were extremely positive when compared against similar-sized businesses in the eastern region. We’re really pleased with the way the Pure team have responded to the last 18 months – focussing on our customers and working together. It is important to recognise that each organisation has had to deal with their own unique situation. 

After our survey results in previous years, we’ve introduced Jostle, an employee forum, mental health and change champions, a virtual suggestion box, and awards related to our values.  

We would like to build on our communication channels. We’ll also be focusing on diversity and equality and improving our sustainability and environmental impacts.  

We’ll be looking at how our new approach to hybrid working helps our team stay connected and collaborative, while keeping a quality recruitment service at our core. 

Motivations 

The top three areas our team believe are most important to our success are: 

1. Customer focus 
2. Quality  
3. Teamwork 

Working from home 

We believe it’s really important to understand what our team think about the way work has evolved over the last two years. The survey told us that most of our staff prefer a hybrid way of working. 

Corporate social responsibility 

Our people recognised that we have several wellbeing initiatives in place, including mental-health first aiders. They also appreciate the way we give back through charity fundraising and other activities. 

Personal wellbeing 

We scored slightly lower in this area than in our previous survey, although higher than the comparison group. We believe this is probably down to the pandemic when people might be struggling more with their wellbeing.  

To combat this, we have lots of initiatives in place. Our Vitality and mental-health first aiders, virtual coffee mornings and our interactive intranet lets us highlight good work and share ideas. 

Areas we can improve 

We’d like to increase awareness of Pure’s goals and vision as an organisation. We’re confident we can do this by building upon our existing communication channels.  

We’ve always been proud to be an inclusive and diverse company and we want to look at ways to improve our approaches both internally and externally, so we’re putting equality and diversity firmly at the top of our agenda.  

Our environmental approach is also a key focus. 

Want to know more? 

You can read stories from other Best Employers. And if you’d like to take part in the 2023 survey you can register your interest.