A spotlight on people and culture
Delving into different aspects of people and culture from the past year, we recently sought insights from Chief People Officer, Liz Rose.
Liz Rose joined IMI as Head of Group Reward in 2011, and in 2020 joined the Executive Committee. In her role as Chief People Officer, she is leading a global HR team to develop the company culture, engage employees, attract and develop talent and drive business growth and performance through people.
You're the Executive sponsor of the Global Pride Network that a small group of people at IMI started in 2022. How has the group grown and what are your highlights from their continued activity?
The Global Pride Network is a collaborative, group of allies and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. This network provides education, understanding and a safe space, enabling IMI to be a truly inclusive environment as well as empowering all employees, particularly those from the LGBTQIA+ community, to be themselves at work.
By going beyond symbolic gestures, there are many different ways that the Network is making a real impact at IMI.
Inclusivity and Empowerment: The Global Pride Network has created a safe and supportive space where employees can be their authentic selves, helping create a sense of belonging for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and allies, and allowing individuals to connect with others who share similar experiences.
Quantitative Impact: The Network has made tangible differences, such as sharing ideas on what it means to be an ally and bringing guest speakers in to engage all employees on what we mean by inclusive language via our internal communications platform.
A campaign was launched prior to the release of our One Big Voice annual survey, encouraging colleagues to respond to the ‘About you’ section of the survey. The Network helped colleagues to understand the value in responding to these questions. We subsequently saw a significant increase in the response rate, allowing us to better understand potential inequalities in the workplace and enabling us to take action to make things better.
Celebrating Pride: Participating in Birmingham Pride in 2023 was a huge celebration for members of the group and IMI, coming together as One Big Team in support of the LGBTQIA+ community. The Network continues to organise company-wide events, host external speakers, and encourages everyone to be their authentic selves.
What are some of the key takeaways from our annual One Big Voice employee survey in 2023? How will we be using the results to drive positive, impactful change at IMI?
For the third year running, we sought unbiased feedback from all of our people through an individual, all employee survey – One Big Voice.
We had a 12% increase in responses compared with 2022, with 89% of people completing the survey, leaving over 14,000 written comments, ideas and suggestions.
In partnership with the Eden Reforestation Project, we committed to planting a tree for each completed survey which amounts to 9,354 trees planted and 2,884 tonnes of CO2 being sequestered – demonstrating a better world in action.
The One Big Voice survey gives us valuable data to drive meaningful and positive transformation right across IMI, with leaders analysing this data to create dynamic action plans, addressing ways to make improvements.
Health and Safety: We are intent on creating an environment for our people to speak-up when they observe unsafe behaviours. In 2022, 15% of people didn’t feel able to speak up. Our most recent survey showed that 79% of people feel comfortable challenging any behaviour that may be unsafe, with only 7% feeling unable to speak up, which is a great improvement.
Communications and Engagement: The sense of connection and engagement with our purpose remained positive at 79% in 2023. Despite having a strong position in this area, a focus area for this year will be on encouraging a more regular cadence of site-based updates and townhalls from managers and leaders. We want to also maintain progress on clearly articulating our strategy, connecting to our Purpose, sharing new product and customer wins, and explaining our investments and decisions.
Wellbeing: As part of our purpose of building a better world, we are committed to helping our employees and their families also build better lives. In 2023, a favourable 77% of our people agreed that they are able to cope with work related stress, surpassing current benchmark. As we seek to build a better working world for all of our people, we will continue to roll out the Global Wellbeing framework, ensuring all employees are aware of the Employee Assistance Programme and the support available.
How are we continuing to make the training and development of our people a priority?
Investing in employee development remains paramount. Fostering a culture of continuous learning and upskilling to meet evolving industry demands is critical to supporting our growth strategy.
From mentoring opportunities and 360 colleague feedback, to development frameworks such as MaxIMIse which is creating a learning culture within business support, and our twelve month Catalyst programme for high potentials – we support a wide range of development opportunities. Ensuring equal access to opportunities, we have also recently made improvements to our eLearning platform, IMI Learn, enhancing our offering of different forms of development across a wide range of areas even further.
In 2022, we also launched our Better World Growth Leadership Programme in partnership with IMD Business School with the overriding aim of supporting IMI’s ambitious growth and transformation agenda. So far, this programme has helped develop the strategic business capabilities of over 50 leaders across IMI in the first cohort and is now continuing to do so in the second cohort.
We are truly focused on building an inclusive organisation, where all our employees contribute and grow – connecting as One Big Team to solve some of the world’s largest industry and societal problems.
