Engaging with our staff
We provide a variety of communication to staff in order to ensure that everyone is engaged in our business strategy and objectives. We do this through clear communication cascaded by team briefings, large employee events, intranet sites and regular e-newsletters.
Each month, our executive directors deliver business briefings to the senior management team. These briefings provide updates on the company’s performance and give managers the opportunity to ask questions. This information is then communicated out to all head office employees by directors and senior managers.
As part of our employee engagement programme, our directors also host informal meetings on a quarterly basis that are held over breakfast. This is offered to a small group of staff who are randomly selected from both our Swindon and London offices. They are given the opportunity to meet with one of our directors to discuss any subject they wish.
We want to ensure that all staff are regularly updated on activity across the business. To meet this aim, we circulate a fortnightly e-newsletter in head office and distribution centres that contains articles on business activity, staff recognition and new recruits, policy updates and store promotions and events. Across the year we hold strategy briefings for head office and store employees, briefing on our progress and the launch of new initiatives, as well as covering other topics including Corporate Responsibility. Once a year, conferences for stores are held to communicate messages that are pertinent to our total business strategy, performance and the running of WHSmith stores. These conferences offer detailed information on products and the direction of the business.
Last year, we carried out an extensive review of our head office internal communication programme, which identified five key areas where our staff felt there was scope for improvement. This year, our focus has been on implementing those five key commitments. Changes made as a result include increasing the number of forums where staff have the opportunity to speak directly to our Executive management team, providing more channels for staff to send their questions to management and also reviewing the content of our internal communications to ensure they are more tailored to the specific interests and needs of employees in different parts of the business.
We want our employees to feel engaged in the business from the very beginning, so this year, we launched an improved induction process for new starters across Travel and High Street Head Offices to ensure that it remains engaging and relevant.
Living our values
We share four key business values: Customer Focus, Drive for Results, Value Our People and Accountability.
VIP - Values in Practice
The WHSmith Values are actively pursued by employees across the business, and it is important that we recognise this work. To do so, we offer a head office ‘Values in Practice’ or ‘VIP’ scheme. Launched in 2004, this successful programme is an opportunity for any member of our team to nominate a colleague who has set a leading example in demonstrating one of the values. Each month a VIP nominee is selected as ‘VIP of the Month’ by the Executive team as an example of how to live our values. Each nominee’s story is published in our staff newsletter and the VIP winner is rewarded with free tea or coffee for a month, a special VIP mug and three extra days’ holiday.
Store Heroes
Our store staff work tirelessly to delivery our business plans and strategies. In recognition of this work, we celebrate the achievements of our store staff through several awards programmes. During November, December and January, we run the WHSmith Store Heroes scheme. The scheme recognises hundreds of employees based on their accomplishments at work. We also offer an Annual Store Awards programme, including Most Improved Store, Store of the Year, Store Manager of the Year and Area Manager of the Year.
Valuing our people
As people’s lifestyle patterns change, it is important that WHSmith provides a workplace and benefits to promote a good work life balance. Our ‘School Starter’ scheme grants working parents half a day paid leave to take their child to their first day at school. We offer phased retirement plans to allow employees to voluntarily reduce their working hours as their retirement date approaches. ‘V-Time Working’ enables employees to voluntarily reduce their working hours for a defined period, to cope with life changing events and in so doing reduce the levels of stress they face.