Employee Appreciation Day: Why employee appreciation is more than just a day at Credera

Employee appreciation at Credera is not just about pay and reward mechanisms that drive motivation and outputs. We believe that financial renumeration is the minimum that we can do. For us, employee appreciation is about celebrating each and every individual, their achievements, and their value, not just on one day, but every day of the year. So how do we show appreciation for our employees?

Celebrating new joiners

Our approach begins with new joiners to the company as they enter day one of our onboarding and recruitment process. On joining the firm, new starters can typically expect a flurry of friendly welcome messages from their new colleagues via LinkedIn and emails as a celebration of their arrival. During their first week, we build relationships and aim to make every interaction genuine and sincere, setting up meetings between the new joiners, their future teams, and other senior members of the business to ensure that they remain well-connected. We have also implemented a buddying system, which pairs our new joiners with other members of the company who act as mentors and help to ensure that new starters are settling in. At the end of each month, we set up a dedicated breakfast session between our Board members and new joiners. These sessions allow new starters to not only meet our Board members but also to share their observations, and every input is valued.

Read next: New year, new starters: How we support our latest joiners

The importance of communication and recognition

As a firm, we celebrate communication and feel that it is important to recognise the individual achievements of our people. On a fortnightly basis, the firm is brought together on an all-company call which comprises an update from our management on any recent company developments. Q&A sessions are fundamental to these communications and are a great opportunity for us to listen to and acknowledge our employees’ views. In the same spirit, our regular all-hands update meetings are a celebration of our company-wide progress and allow employees to recognise their colleagues’ individual achievements through our values awards. These awards are 100% peer nominated and presented to individuals within the firm who are seen to embody our core values. In all of the work that we do at Credera, it is never just a one-person effort but rather a collaborative effort. Our delivery team awards serve to recognise and highlight an entire team’s effort and output in this light.

Valuing internal contributions

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone in different ways. Despite us not being able to all get together during this time, we have seen a number of our internal events, activities, and employee-managed clubs continuing to run on a virtual basis for our employees to enjoy outside of work. As a company, we want our employees to associate their employee experience with more than just work and give them the opportunity to create meaningful memories with their colleagues. Our social and events teams have therefore made it their mission to organise a series of activities to help keep our people engaged and connected. During this particularly challenging time, we have also seen our Directors, appraisers, and project managers going the extra mile to ensure the wellbeing of our employees, scheduling calls with people at every level of the organisation to ask them how they are coping and offer their support.

Recognising internal successes

As a company, we recognise that progress and promotion are equally important as of all the above. Despite the economic difficulties, we have continued to reward individual successes with promotions and we are continuing to grow at pace. Our performance appraisal framework means that our employees have room to progress and rapid progression is not uncommon. We take great pride in celebrating our promotions with a combination of internal and external announcements, as well as congratulatory gifts.

In a nutshell

When it comes to showing appreciation for our employees, compensation and benefits are really the minimum of what we can offer in return. Whilst is true that everyone should be compensated fairly for their expertise and where possible, good performance will be recognised with bonuses, employee appreciation to us has never been a single act or programmed series, but a daily commitment. We don’t think of our firm as just a place to work – it is also a home to our employees. So, to any Credera employees reading this, thank you for building a community of which I’m proud to be a member.