Purdicom Receive Silver Award from IIP

We are proud to announce that Purdicom have received the silver accreditation from Investors in People.

 

“We expect only the top 5 percentile of organisations assessed to be awarded Silver” Jeff Pullen, Director, Future Business UK ltd – IIP Specialist.

Purdicom as a company is defined by its success and method. Anyone who has ever worked at the company will say what a truly unique experience it is. What makes this company special is not its rural location or distinctive business style but the people who drive it forward day by day. They, as in any company, should be listened to, developed and treated with respect. So in addition to the usual annual reviews, feedback surveys and 1-to-1 meetings, Purdicom decided to see how they fared by undertaking the Investors in People audit.

One challenge that is commonplace in most working environments is that the management might often assume that their staff do feel appreciated and are happy with their working environment, but this intangible is difficult to contextualise. This is where IIP come into play. The company analyses the performance of the management team when it comes down to developing and training their staff, whilst also assessing how the company’s ethos filters down to all employees.

Purdicom has experienced massive growth since its inception in 2005. Since then the office space has grown over 625% and in the last 5 years the number of staff has more than tripled. Hugh Garrod, the founder and Managing Director, has always wanted to maintain the strong company culture and a consistent level of guidance to employees from the management team. In this period of expansion, it is important to implement measures that assess the strengths and weaknesses the company has in order to preserve the atmosphere that everyone who works at the company enjoys, whilst continuing to overcome any internal issues that may arise.

Ensuring the engagement, growth and happiness of all employees, is clearly a priority for any business, including Purdicom. Expectations had been set prior to the IIP assessment by the senior management team, hoping to earn a bronze award on the first attempt at the accreditation.

The IIP team came into the Purdicom offices for four days in early March, where they selected 20 members of staff to be interviewed. Those interviewed were asked about their role, welfare and how they felt Purdicom facilitated their professional development, in order to gain an overall impression of the staffs wellbeing and outlook.

Jeff Pullen from IIP, who hosted the interviews, went on to say “Now knowing Purdicom rather well after spending two days talking to people I can understand why Hugh wanted to go for the challenge of being assessed against the full Investors in People framework, aiming for the top rather than starting off slowly.  As Hugh said ‘we would rather know our failings and what we need to do to be the best’.  Being awarded Silver against the Standard for a young organisation that is growing rapidly is remarkable, most organisations that achieve this level are mature and have had systems and process in place for some time.  Helen has used her experience to put these in place in just a few months with the help of everyone at Purdicom. 

I absolutely expect Purdicom to take on-board those areas they need to address in order to become a “Gold” organisation and that it will be sooner rather than later”.

Becoming a Gold partner would mean that Purdicom would be ranked in the top 2% of companies, and from the feedback received it seems that this is a likely result going forth. The entire team at Purdicom are very proud to work for such a unique company and for the company to be recognised as one of the best.

“We can all feel very proud of what we have achieved in attaining our Silver Investors in People accreditation.  We always thought that Purdicom had a great company culture and values but in receiving this stamp of approval we now know that we can legitimately be proud of where we work and what we have all achieved.  I am so appreciative of all the employees and managers and their hard work and commitment while still managing to retain the outstanding if not unique company ethos throughout.” Helen McNulty, HR Manager, Purdicom.