It’s been over a year now since Creed became employee owned. In that time, we have made huge positive changes for our clients, communities, the environment and for each other.
As the Employee Trustee Director, my role is to represent the interests of the employees (who are beneficiaries of the Trust) to the Trust Board. As the concept of employee ownership was still very new to us as an organisation, I had to quickly navigate my way around the role and understand the details of my responsibilities as a trustee.
I was very keen for all employees to have a voice, so we set up two Voice Forum Groups from the start – Corporate Social Responsibility and the Work Environment. The groups are made up of employees who expressed an interest in joining and they meet regularly to discuss EOB related topics and business improvements.
Over the course of the past year, we’ve implemented a number of suggestions ranging from a new recycling initiative in the office, an increased social budget, increasing the accessibility for our one-day volunteering benefit, improving the office environment and some members of the team even joining the stem cell register. And the list doesn’t stop there!
Employee ownership has been such a positive experience for all of us at Creed and it’s important to us that we continue to celebrate it and make improvements. Linking in with the Employee Associations annual EO Day, we recently held a Creed ‘EO Celebration Day’ in our office to come together as a team and appreciate all the positive changes we’ve made so far. The Nando’s lunch certainly helped too.
So, what’s next for us on the EO journey? A lot more of the same. Continuing with the Voice Forums and making more positive changes whilst really starting to build our community with other EOBs. The future is looking exciting. And the annual tax-free bonus certainly helps too
Gemma Stimpson
Projects and Operations Manager / Employee Trustee Director / Co-owner
