Culture
Every day, we rely on our employees to deliver our promise to excite and entertain. In return, our employees rely on us to deliver what they need. Culture isn’t a one-way street.
That’s why in Q2 we asked if our values (Service, Teamwork, Ambition, Responsibility and Solutions) are still the right fit. The overwhelming answer was yes.
There were some “buts…” But that’s why we asked the question in the first place. So, over the past year we have:
- updated how we describe our STARS values;
- created a culture dashboard;
- increased internal engagement through focused employee sessions and the Group’s intranet; and
- reviewed the Group’s ambition, purpose and strategic pillars to ensure they are relevant and appropriate.
As part of the transformation programme, for example, we have focused on ensuring our employees have the capability to work in, and contribute to, a high-performance culture. By that we mean an environment where colleagues strive to do their best and take ownership in delivering. Such a move should help us to achieve our ambition, purpose and strategic goals.
The Group already has established cultural attributes, such as ensuring our customers are provided with an experience that is both safe and fair. This culture is underpinned by sub-cultures across our businesses respecting diversity and difference, so workplace transformation and transition can occur more effectively.
During 2019/20 we will continue to focus on boosting engagement and embedding a high-performance culture across the organisation
Employee engagement
The Group takes employee engagement very seriously and is always looking at ways to ensure that colleagues have a chance to share their views on what works well and what could be improved. There are a variety of forums for employees to participate in throughout the year.
Employee voice:
Employee voice meetings are held bi-annually and are attended by elected representatives from different areas of the business. They are also attended by John O’Reilly, chief executive, and other members of the Rank executive committee who are there to listen and assist with any required action planning. Subjects discussed included working environments and Group policies.
Talking STARS and Leading STARS:
The Talking STARS and Leading STARS forums are new forums created to supplement the already established employee voice meetings. Key individuals from across the business were invited to debate key strategic issues impacting the Group.
Talking STARS participants included colleagues from across the business whereas Leading STARS was aimed more at colleagues from Rank’s leadership community.
Following these meetings, the following were identified as areas that required attention going forward:
- improvement of cross Group communications centrally and by managers;
- greater awareness needed of personal development opportunities; and
- issues around attracting talent to the Group.
Employee opinion survey:
During the year, the Group moved from running two full Group-wide employee opinion surveys to just one in July 2019, however a high level ‘pulse’ survey was carried out in January 2019 to ‘temperature check’ engagement across the Group.
Outputs from all the above forums are shared with the Rank executive committee and the Rank Board.
The results from the 2019 opinion survey are currently under review and were not available for this report.
However, the pulse survey, carried out in January 2019, showed employee engagement fell by 8ppts to 66%.
The results from the 2019 engagement survey are under review and further detail will be available in the 2020 Annual Report and Financial Statements.
Health and safety
The key objectives within the 2018/19 health and safety (H&S) plan were to:
- improve H&S awareness across the Group;
- reduce paperwork by introducing a computerised system for assessing display screen equipment, and using a central database for training, for example in knife handling, and ensuring that chemical and food allergen training is completed for all 134 UK clubs; and
- reduce the number of employee and customer slips, trips and falls (STF) as well as burns accidents in the UK by 5% compared to the previous year.
Over the year we ensured that general managers were trained in the Risk Assessment process; that data sheets and assessments were in place for maintenance chemicals; and that our fire door training project was prepared and signed-off with a start date of 1 July 2019.
We launched the display screen equipment project in July 2019, and all other training including knife handling, COSHH and allergen training has been put in place.
We looked to reduce both burns and slips, trips and falls (STF) by 5%. Year to date we have exceeded our objectives, with burns reduced by 26% and STFs reduced by 29% across the Group.
Diversity and inclusion
When it comes to enhancing diversity, our actions need to be… well, diverse. And during the year we have:
- partnered with Global Diversity Partnership to deliver unconscious bias workshops across the business;
- appointed diversity champions across our business to help roll-out diversity and inclusion and unconscious bias awareness training;
- implemented a diversity dashboard;
- improved recruitment processes with a focus on gender;
- integrated diversity into our key development programme, ‘Managing at Rank,’ and Leading in Rank course; and
- made Enhanced Paternity Pay available to senior employees.
In addition, we continued our partnership with WiH2020 and our employees took part in their mentoring programme and masterclass series. We also created a new family network group to provide support for employees who have recently started a family and for those about to have children.
Disability
Rank is committed to ensuring that people with disabilities are encouraged to apply for roles with the Group and are supported while at work.
Human rights
The Board agreed that it is not necessary for the Group to operate a specific human rights policy at the moment. Our policies already comply with relevant laws and respect the human rights of our employees and other stakeholders in the business.
