Insight: What it means to me to work at a values-driven company

Keeping our company values at the core of everything we do helps us to deliver services that truly transform lives, writes Shirley Allen, Operations Director at Reed in Partnership.

Our company has three core values:

• We are fair, open and honest
• We take ownership
• We work together

These values inform every decision we make and every contract that we deliver. Since I began working for the company in 2008, much has changed. We have grown significantly, delivering a wider range of contracts for multiple commissioners. There are more of us, with over 2,000 co-members in the company today. And our services now span the full length of the country, from Cornwall to the Shetland Islands. Throughout this time of exciting change, our values have remained the same.

It’s reflective of the fact that our values are the Reed family’s values. Last year, we celebrated Reed in Partnership’s 25th anniversary, and this year is Reed’s 65th year in business. The Reed family’s commitment is for the long-term and this channels through our operations. Many of the co-members who I worked alongside when I first joined the company 16 years ago are fellow co-members today. Like me, they have progressed and developed within the company, and there’s a reason for that: at Reed in Partnership, the fact that we hold our values dear and deliver on them is a large part of the reason why so many of our co-members choose to commit significant parts of their career to us.

Every year, we recognise and celebrate both our values and our co-members’ commitment to them at our annual Values Awards. We held this year’s ceremony just last week – it’s always a fantastic occasion, bringing people from across the country together and underlining why who we are as a company matters so much. The awards are more than a one-night event; earlier in the year, we recognised outstanding contributions across our five divisions with our divisional awards, the winners going through to last week’s finale.

Whilst recognition and celebration are critical parts of the journey, they are reflective of earlier stages in the values process. Our values are embedded in performance reviews, so that we can capture how co-members are delivering on them in their roles. We use our values as a way of driving innovation, with our continuous improvement team referencing values alignment with new services development, to ensure that we grow alongside our values.

I’d like to think that this comes together as a cohesive whole - we are very proud that our co-members' rating for inclusion and belonging currently sits at an all-time high of 9.1/10, for me a major reflection of how working at a values-driven company increases the feeling that we really are all in this together and can be our genuine selves at work.

The strength of our values not only benefits the company internally. It helps ensure that our offer to our commissioners is high quality and exacting. Throughout my time at Reed in Partnership, I’ve reflected on many moments when I can attribute a successful business outcome to our values proposition. One that most recently springs to mind is with our successful bid for the Ministry of Defence’s Career Transition Partnership contract. Putting together a winning proposition involved digging deep across teams, drawing on all our expertise and talent and being innovative in order to respond to the expectations of our commissioner. I was incredibly proud of our approach, the collaborative working, the honesty about the challenges faced and the resolve to deliver a plan that could take us where we needed to go.

Delivery of the service begins this October, and it is testimony to every single one of our co-members’ involvement that we will proudly roll out the Career Transition Partnership contract, helping thousands of Armed Forces Service Leavers every year gain employment, training and new skills.

What I really love about being at Reed in Partnership is the feeling of giving back and of evolution. We deliver services that transform people’s lives and as a company we are always looking to the next challenge. Our values are in sync with this. Being 18% owned by the Reed Foundation means that one day per week we work for charitable causes. This year across the Reed Group, to celebrate Reed’s 65th anniversary, we are holding a draw every week for one co-member to donate £10,000, on behalf of the Reed Foundation, to a charity of their choice.

Giving back is in our DNA. More than that, it’s an extension of how we operate – every Reed in Partnership co-member is now able to nominate three days per year for volunteering, directly benefiting charities taking part in the Big Give initiative. Our values matter, they are who we are, what we do and how we deliver our services. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else!