Great people and place to work
At VIVID, we pride ourselves on our high performing, modern and vibrant culture
Attracting and developing talented people and providing the environment to help them achieve their best is important to us. We ensure our people feel valued, supported and gain recognition when it's due, whilst also being positively challenged to grow. This means we can provide the best homes and services for our customers.
We're proud of our culture, one that attracts the best people to come and join us, and with the right support, one that provides the best services to our customers. The culmination of the year was being rated an "Outstanding" company to work for, which acknowledges that we have a culture where everyone feels they can give their best."
- Duncan Short, Group Director of Resources
Over the last year we’ve focused our business and individual performance, and related communications on 3 specific service areas that customers have said are most important - ensuring services are easy to use and access, keeping customers informed, and improving the speed at which routine repairs are completed. We’ve increased visibility of how we’re doing to make sure everyone is aligned on delivering exceptional experiences at every touchpoint. We keep this front of mind as we believe everyone in the business has an important role to play. We also held a “VIVID Connect” colleague event to get everyone united in this, and understanding the ambitions in our new corporate plan which centre around building trust, pride and impact.
Learning and development
To support our high-performance culture, our in-house Learning and Development team delivered hundreds of courses to individuals last year, and offer many bespoke and accredited development programmes, as well as:
- Our learning hub enables everyone to book and manage their own development and complete e-learning
- In-house management development programmes
- Apprenticeship and graduate programmes to new and existing staff which we want to do more off. We also created a series of videos to hear direct from those on the programmes and to promote the benefits of working here.
Hear from our graduates and apprentices about what it's like to work here.
An “outstanding” company to work for
We’ve been certified by Best Companies and recognised for our commitment to our employees, with an ‘outstanding’ 2-star accreditation rating in their UK 100 best large companies to work for category. The insight we’ve gained from our employees has given us a real understanding of the engagement our people are experiencing and we believe this is a significant driver to delivering great customer service. The level of honest feedback received is invaluable in shaping where we want to be to continue making a real difference to people’s lives.
We’ve reduced our median gender pay gap from
to
0%
This means that for every £1 earned by men, women earned exactly the same. This is a huge achievement, of which we’re incredibly proud.
We value and recognise the importance of a diverse workforce to deliver our business objectives. It’s our aim to have an equal representation of gender at all levels and similar roles across our business. We’re working hard to encourage more women to apply for trades roles through our links with local schools and colleges and our inclusive recruitment approach.
We currently have
15
women in trade management roles
An inclusive culture
We strive to create an environment where everyone feels they belong, feels welcome and can contribute their best work. Our Diversity and Inclusion Group and Stigma Busters are key in helping us make progress, driving awareness and our “one team” value on important issues amongst our workforce.
Hear from Tamara and Malc about our inclusive culture:
Over the course of the year we delivered a number of initiatives focused on mental health and wellbeing, and inclusion.
Here are a few:
My Whole Self
Our Stigma Busters group was formed in 2018 to challenge the stigma around mental health, and provide people with information to support their own mental health and wellbeing.
This year we wanted to evolve our approach by making use of an initiative called “My Whole Self” developed by MHFA (Mental Health First Aid) England. The initiative is about encouraging people to be “themselves” at work which fits well with our approach for Diversity and Inclusion. More specifically, the focus of My Whole Self recognises that people may have aspects outside of work that might impact them at work, and that by encouraging us to bring our “Whole Self” to work we can better understand each other and how we can work together supporting each other.
On My Whole Self day in March this year the Stigma Busters, Diversity and Inclusion Group and others shared selfies and some information about their whole selves on our internal social media. It sparked some great conversations and engagement across the business.
LGBTQA+ awareness
We wanted to raise awareness of the benefits of a trans-inclusive workplace, do more to show that our recruitment process visibly supports applications from the LGBTQA+ community, and that we appreciate everyone as individuals no matter what your sexuality or gender identity. We held a VIVID Pride Week in our offices with a host of information and blogs from staff willing to share their lived experiences throughout the week, which were particularly powerful ways of shining a light on challenges and solutions. We also supported Portsmouth Pride with information about our culture and what it’s like to work here, and became a Stonewall Diversity Champion giving us access to webinars, resources and support.
