-The Royal Star & Garter Homes receive first award –

13 April 2015 – Agenda Consulting, helping not-for-profit organisations achieve their missions through better understanding their people, has launched an ‘Employee Engagement Award’ to recognise clients who have demonstrated high levels of employee engagement.

To qualify for an award, organisations will have participated in an Agenda Consulting Employee Engagement Survey. They will have achieved a response rate of 50%, and 80% of respondents will have agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I would wholeheartedly recommend this organisation as a good place to work,” signifying very high employee engagement.

Roger Parry, Director of Agenda Consulting said: “Our new award will recognise our clients who have demonstrated outstanding practice in employee engagement in the not-for-profit sector. Increasingly, not-for-profit organisations are surveying their staff and volunteers to measure their engagement and identify areas for improvement.

“An engaged workforce will deliver many benefits to an organisation including higher retention levels, reduced absenteeism and higher individual performance and we believe it’s important to highlight organisations that are doing it really well.”

The Royal Star & Garter Homes, a charity that provides nursing and therapeutic care to the ex-Service community, is the first recipient of the award.  The charity has been through a sustained period of change over the past ten years, including moving from one single care facilitate to new cutting edge homes.

Siobhan Creighton, Director of HR at The Royal Star & Garter Homes said: “The strategic transition was only possible with the support and dedication of staff across all disciplines and their commitment to employee engagement.

Key to success was focusing on three key elements of ‘engagement’: communicate the big picture and everyone’s part in the plan; make the time to consider people’s views and concerns; and treat people as you would wish  to be treated.  As Mangers, we also developed this ethos through leading by example.”

To monitor staff engagement the charity has been using staff surveys, which until recently were paper based. This year it partnered with Agenda Consulting to run its first ever online survey. The management team played a pivotal role in ‘active encouragement’ to ensure high participation levels as they wanted to find out how everyone felt so they could  address any issues and make changes in response to people’s views.

Siobhan added, “We are delighted with the survey results. We are committed to making positive changes where areas of improvement were identified. Our engagement result really demonstrates that staff want to tell us how they feel and they trust that we will act on the results.  We are really pleased to receive this award and want to thank everyone who participated,” adds Ms Creighton.

As recipient of the award, The Royal Star & Garter Homes will receive a trophy, an Agenda Consulting Employee Engagement Award logo which can used for marketing and to support recruitment, plus a listing in the awards section of Agenda Consulting’s website.

For more information about Employee Engagement awards visit:  http://www.agendaconsulting.co.uk/surveys/agenda-consulting-engagement-award/