It’s safe to say 2020 has been a year like no other for all of us. Whilst we were all caught off guard by Covid-19 and its impact, the investment in our Great Place to Work journey in recent years, along with operational improvements, meant Team Woodie’s was well-positioned to face the challenges of the past 12 months. When we started our Great Place to Work journey in 2014 only one in six of our colleagues were actively engaged in their roles. Following an extensive change program which placed our values and our people firmly at the centre of everything we do, almost nine out of every 10 of our 1,500 colleagues are now actively engaged and have an all-time high level of trust in the business. With 99 per cent of our colleagues completing our latest engagement survey, it’s fair to say the results are truly indicative of how colleagues feel about life at Woodie’s.
Our journey to being one of Ireland’s top workplaces has required a relentless focus and significant investment in communication, reward and recognition, leadership, wellbeing and developing our colleagues to feel confident in their roles. If there was ever a year to prove the return on our investment in colleague engagement, 2020 was that year. Faced with unprecedented demand for our products both online and in-store, followed by a two-month closure of our stores across Ireland, Team Woodie’s rose to the challenge of continued high demand levels since re-opening and emerged from 2020 with a 17 per cent improvement in sales. The high trust culture built in recent years meant Woodie’s colleagues pulled together with a single-minded focus on trading safely and securing the viability of our business. As a Leadership Team, we quickly identified four priorities to guide us through 2020. These were:
- Colleague safety (physical and psychological)
- Having a viable business in the future
- Paying colleagues and suppliers
- Contributing to the national effort
These four priorities were underpinned and made possible by all of the work done on our people agenda in recent years. Whilst I could fill a whole newspaper discussing that journey, I’ll stick to just some of the ones I am most proud of. Here’s what I feel strengthened our bonds with our colleagues in 2020 and made us all proud to be part of Team Woodie’s.
Communication and recognition has been key
We began the year as usual with our annual Communications Day, briefing managers on our strategy and goals for the year ahead. Little did we know those plans would change so drastically.
With almost 100 per cent of our colleagues actively using our Workvivo communication app, once the pandemic became a reality our colleagues viewed this channel as critical in providing feedback and asking questions to our Leadership & HR teams. We responded with instantaneous updates from the leadership team in response to government announcements, sharing openly and honestly what each update meant for our business. We listened to colleague feedback and responded to their concerns around the clock. The frequency of our Colleague Committee meetings was increased, to ensure colleagues were kept right up to date and that their voice was heard loud and clear as we navigated through 2020.
We could have been forgiven for putting many of our engagement initiatives on hold. However, we weren’t going to let anything get in the way of our culture of “catching people doing the right thing and recognising it”, that we spent so many years building. We introduced enhanced rates of pay, colleague discount events, lunch allowances and doubled the amount paid under our colleague bonus scheme. Once we voluntarily repaid the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme, we implemented our annual pay review and increased wages across the business.
In the darkest hours of 2020, we recognised that the importance placed on a little humour in recent years was needed more than ever, to keep our colleagues feeling psychologically up to the challenge. We introduced our first virtual team-building event for all colleagues and their families, broadcasting Wacky Wednesday into colleagues' homes in April via Youtube and Workvivo.
As our stores re-opened the small gestures our colleagues have become used to began to flow across our business, with cupcakes and chocolates to keep energy levels up.
Our annual Woscars ceremony went virtual. Over the course of six weeks, through initial nominations for our 25 awards through to shortlisting and final award winners, we celebrated the efforts of individual colleagues and teams across 23 award categories.
With our Support Office operating remotely, we introduced new virtual events to keep spirits high (which was definitely the case when it came to our virtual cocktail-making session). Struck with the reality that our annual Christmas parties would not go ahead, we treated all 1,500 colleagues and their families to a take-away. To end the year, all colleagues received a gift from the company, along with their bonus and a personalised Christmas card from the Leadership Team to reinforce how thankful we are to have such amazing colleagues.
We grow leaders
At Woodie's our success relies solely on the enthusiasm, talents, competencies and skills that colleagues bring to work every day. That’s why we are passionate about our colleagues' professional and personal development. We deliver programmes that are designed to upskill all our colleagues continuously. Right from the start, in our induction, our colleagues are shown the importance of our brand values and how we live by them every day. We have a thorough training plan that the L&D team spent the latter part of 2020 moving to our virtual training academy. This development plan takes feedback from the business based on focus groups and a comprehensive return on investment analysis to create a suite of training courses delivered to our 1,500 colleagues; including a spring and autumn show, training roadshow, product bootcamps and our award-winning leadership development programme eXcellerate. In addition, Woodie's provides access to a retail apprenticeship and degree. Whilst many of our in-person training plans were placed on hold in 2020, we continued to on-board colleagues virtually. Over 1,100 colleagues completed elearning modules during lockdown. We introduced Diversity & Inclusion training for all Store and Support Office Managers and continued with our eXcellerate program via Zoom.
Heroes
Woodie's Heroes is our month-long campaign driven by colleagues each year. In 2020, in unprecedented times, our heroes showed what they are made of and raised over €400,000 for our charity partners, bringing the total raised over 6 years to almost € 2m. The charity partners are selected by our colleagues and the events to support fundraising are all decided locally by our teams. We’re determined for Heroes 2021 to be our best yet, so please keep an eye out in-store in July for your opportunity to be a part of this initiative.
Diversity and inclusion
At Woodie’s, we recognise the value of diversity in strengthening and improving our business. As such, we have worked hard in recent years to become an employer that is truly representative of the communities in which we operate. It may come as a surprise that 50 per cent of our colleagues are female. We encourage all of our colleagues to be themselves at work every day, which has resulted in a truly inclusive culture where 98 per cent of colleagues feel they are treated fairly regardless of their sexual orientation and 97 per cent feel they are treated fairly regardless of race. One of the highlights of 2020, for me, is seeing the business being accredited as an “Investor in Diversity”. Following the introduction of new D&I policies and training we took our colleagues feedback on board and celebrated Gay Pride for the first time in 2020. Later in the year we celebrated the many wonderful cultures and backgrounds that our colleagues come from.
In 2021 we intend on working even harder at ensuring that diversity and inclusion translates into more females and colleagues of ethnic backgrounds finding opportunities in senior roles.
Whatever uncertainty the remainder of 2021 throws at us, I am certain in one thing ... our business would not be as strong as it currently stands today were it not for the efforts of the 1,500 amazing colleagues that we are lucky to have working for us. And on that note I would like to finish by thanking each and every colleague for continuing to make Woodie’s a Great Place to Work. Whatever your background, whoever you love ... we love having you as part of our team!