Inside #TeamPelican, November 2022

Record-breaking award winners!

There’s only one place to start and that’s with our latest awards success! During a fantastic evening of celebration at the South West Contact Centre Forum Awards in September, #TeamPelican scooped two prizes: Contact Centre of the Year and Mental Health in the Workplace! I describe Contact Centre of the Year as the ‘jewel in our crown’ as it’s so coveted. Our victory this year is even sweeter given that we have set a new record for winning it for two years running, something no company has ever achieved before. This really is an incredible achievement, and I am super proud of our teams for continuing to go all out to serve our customers with the #expert, friendly and trusted approach that we are best known for.

What’s more, looking after our teams’ mental health is one of our top priorities. So to be recognised once again for our mental health support is testament to the supportive culture we have created inside Pelican Towers. This is thanks not only to the efforts of our superstar Mental Health First Aiders, but to all team members in recognising that we all have a role to play in keeping mental health a live topic of conversation.

The two new trophies are a very welcome addition to our jam-packed trophy cabinet!

Celebrating inclusivity: National Inclusion Week

One of the major events in our annual Culture, Inclusion & Diversity (CID) calendar, the last week of September was National Inclusion Week 2022. We talk a lot here about our people-first culture, where we strive to ensure that everyone belongs regardless of age, gender, social background, appearance or any other characteristic. Making #TeamPelican an inclusive place to work is at the heart of this approach.

This year’s theme was #ThePowerOfNow, which is about everyone taking personal actions now to support inclusion. As a business, we are leading by example by rolling out bespoke Culture, Inclusion and Diversity training for all our leaders over the next 12 months.

We used the week to reflect on what more we can do, and celebrate some of our achievements to date, which include:

• Raising our Disability Confident Employer standard to Level 2
• Improving annual leave pension
• Providing healthcare cover for all team members
• Working with Women's Work Lab (WWL) to help support women return to work after taking career breaks for a variety of reasons
• Supporting social mobility by offering mentoring opportunities for young people and raising money for charities in their communities

I'm extremely #Proud of our culture, and I'm so excited to work with our CID Champions to further develop our inclusivity over the coming months.

Recognising exceptional customer service

As a customer facing business, we were never going to let National Customer Service Week pass by! We chose to focus this year on improving the customer experience, investing in our people, and celebrating their wonderful achievements.

I really loved how our teams brought this to life with their creativity – we saw everything from bingo cards to achievement walls!

As our aforementioned Contact Centre of the Year victory shows, we are doing an exceptional job of standing out from the crowd when it comes to serving our customers, setting a shining example of how it should be done.

This is backed up by our quarterly C-MeX (Customer Measure of Experience) results for our clients, Wessex Water and Bristol Water. As I spoke about in April, we ended the 2021/22 financial year with another fantastic set of results, and we keep striving to better ourselves even further.

Having these open conversations with our teams and encouraging collaboration both within and across departments are key to achieving this!

Empowering our people

I’ve spoken a lot about culture in this blog, and with good reason! One of the pillars that supports our culture is our People’s Council, which provides our team members with the opportunity to contribute to the future success of the business by gathering feedback from their teams, and coming up with new ideas to improve how we work day to day.

By empowering them to contribute, we are showing our teams that everyone’s opinion matters, regardless of their seniority or how long they have worked here.

So I am always thrilled to welcome our new People’s Council representatives, as I had the pleasure of doing back in August. At their first meeting, I talked about the origins of the council, its purpose as ‘the eyes and ears of the business’, and how each representative has a meaningful role to play this year.

Our People’s Council has flourished since we introduced it in 2015, and I’m excited to see what ideas they come up with!