2 weeks Ago By Megan Davies
BUSINESSES are competing for the title of “Jersey’s Best Workplace” as part of a new initiative launched by the Jersey Evening Post’s parent company, All Island Media, which will help them unlock insights about their teams. In partnership with CompassJersey, the employee engagement award seeks to identify the gold-standard of employee satisfaction in the Island. To identify a winner, businesses will be benchmarked against each other and receive detailed analysis.
Before the analysis gets under way, we spoke to several businesses which have decided to take part in the process. Valla Ltd director Grainne McGinley told the JEP what the trust company hopes to learn from the awards and what a good workplace culture means to them..
. What motivated you to take part in the Jersey’s Best Workplace initiative? At Valla it has always been one of our core motivations to oversee the career development of our staff so that they grow with the company. We wanted to test if the people that make our company tick believed in that initiative, which we think entering Jersey’s Best Workplace would support.
What three words would you describe as the key tenets of a positive company culture? Nurturing, hardworking and fun. Why do you believe fostering a great workplace culture is essential in attracting and retaining top talent in Jersey? There is so much more to wanting to come to work in the morning than just remuneration, and it is essential to provide beyond the tick-box benefits and truly foster a partnership with our staff, and extending from this belief is to foster a great workplace. As a smaller organisation, we face the same challenges as the larger firms, which we meet collaboratively, but what sets us apart is really knowing our staff beyond their name and address and ensuring we provide support to them when they need it most by providing additional emotional support and additional time off to deal with health and family matters, which should always take priority.
We strive to provide an environment where a work-life balance really is achieved, which was our approach even before Covid. We don’t create a positive and nurturing workplace as a reaction to market trends – we have always done it this way. We are only as good as the people we employ, they are our biggest asset, so it’s simply crucial to protect and grow that asset, which is why we have an extremely low staff turnover, with the nucleus of our team having been with the company on average of ten years-plus, and our longest serving employee with us for over 28 years.
What sort of insights are you most eager to gain from taking part in Jersey’s Best Workplace? To see if we are getting it right and, if not, where we can improve. How do you see the results of this initiative shaping your internal practices or influencing your future strategies? It will give us an opportunity to see if our team agree that we are providing a positive workplace and if we are, to then build on that success and continue building on our culture of a supportive, nurturing and fun working environment..
