In this podcast Meg speaks with Angela Lewis, Head of People Transformation at Companies House. They discuss how our culture enables our brilliant people to flourish and drives high performance. This is the first podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals. 

Transcript

MH: Hello and welcome to another episode of “Meet the team” by Companies House. Today, I am joined by Angela Lewis, our Head of People Transformation. She's someone who has an extensive career in HR and has been at Companies House alone for nearly nine years. She is a ray of sunshine and I am so looking forward to speaking to her today. So, without another second to wait, welcome Angie. 

AL: Aww, I love the fact that Meg you called me a ray of sunshine. That might be my nicest thing all day. 

MH: Oh well, it's true. You okay?  

AL: Yes. I'm very good. Thank you. You are the perfect end to a long day.  

MH: Yes. Well, it is hard to find a tiny little gap in your calendar. So, it was the only gap in weeks, I think.  

AL: Well, I was definitely pleased to give it to you. That's for sure.  

MH: Thank you. So, I'm going to just kick off with my first question and it is to address our recent amazing achievement, which has been awarded to us from Investors in People, which is the Platinum Status. Can you tell me a little bit about the journey to getting there and what's next?  

AL: Okay, happy to do that and can I say I'm still you know a month on from finding out that we were awarded the Platinum. Still smiling about it because so few organisations are awarded this sort of level of assessment. So, it does really matter. And you know three years ago Meg, we were awarded the gold level which is amazing as well. But, we set ourselves a goal back then and I remember talking to Louise, our Chief Exec and saying, you know, wouldn't it be amazing for us to show in three years that we're a platinum organisation and she said, “Oh, I love the fact you aim high Angie.” and I said, “Well, actually this is about ambition, but it's also about, if we really do aim high, the only thing that we can have is a much better experience. But also, imagine what that would be like for our colleagues”. So, we've worked really hard over these three years to sort of focus on the things that we were given in terms of feedback from the gold assessment. Particularly around leadership and making sure that our colleagues could understand the sort of role and purpose of Companies House and to really focus on how can they bring their whole self to work and how can we allow people to truly flourish which has been brilliant because it links directly with our Companies House strategy. And this isn't sort of a surprise that our focus on the strategic goal of creating a culture where colleagues can come to work and flourish and drive high-performance. So, there's been this link for the last three years and to get that validated by an external organisation to say “you're on the right track. You've made huge progress”, and for us it's a continuum because it's not about sitting back now and saying, oh, well, we've cracked it. It's about maintaining those levels, learning from the sort of advice and recommendations they put in, celebrating where we've done really well and holding on to it. And you know, it's really exciting because it genuinely is an organisational wide achievement. And that was one of the main sort of comments from IIP, was that everyone they spoke to was with us in terms of understanding what we wanted to achieve but also felt part of this sort of very exciting transformation journey we are on, but also part of our culture change journey.  

MH: Yeah, I think what you said then about, it runs through everyone. It's not like a top-level thing. Those values are really throughout and I've definitely experienced that and I think it goes to show that everyone still feels it. We've been working at home now since March as have a lot of people and to still feel that you know feeling of being part of something at home, it goes to show how special it really is.  

AL: Yeah, I definitely agree, and I think you know, we've been in this unique situation. We've obviously had you know; our offices have been open, and we have been providing services in our you know offices as well with smaller teams and the large percentage of our workforce has been at home. But managing, you know, remote workers and those in the office has been challenging at times but actually all the work we've done before COVID hit us around networks and community and being able to be your true self have just reaped so many benefits and dividends over the last six or seven months that people I would say, ironically genuinely feel more connected now than they did before the pandemic, which quite frankly just goes to show that if you'll invest that effort in giving your employees a voice, building these networks under the umbrella of sort of culture change and diversity and inclusion. Actually, when it truly matters, you will see the rewards. And like you, you know, there's not a week goes by when I don't think, wow look at what people are doing here to drive change, to improve the experience for the customer, to support their colleagues, and to keep talking to us to make sure that we are making good decisions. You know, it is pretty, and I think I wrote about it somewhere to say it's magical and I know that sounds a bit naff to some people. But you know, I worked in HR for sort of 30 years. And I have never been in a situation where I've felt this sort of level of magic in terms of a movement and it is a movement. It's not just one or two people. You know, you're talking about a movement of people passionate about change and about delivering great services for their customers. I mean, it's amazing.  

MH: Yeah. Enchanting is another word.  

AL: I like that. Yeah, enchanted.  

MH: Another thing I was going to say, it's like people say there's nothing that could have prepared you for this year. But actually, as far as being prepared goes I think Companies House had it as prepared as you could be for something like the pandemic.  

AL: Yeah interesting, isn't it? Because gosh we would never want this. Of course, we wouldn't and I'm sure lots of other organisations feel the same. That you know in a sense you've had to respond. But it's these challenges, these horrendous challenges, that come left field or be at this is a much longer one that really show how resilient you are as an organisation but also demonstrate to me that if you invest in your people and you provide this infrastructure, and you really you live and breathe a sense of compassion and connection. Whatever hits you, you will come out of it stronger.  

MH: Yeah. 

AL: Now that's not too for one minute to disregard the personal circumstances of individual, which have all been very different. But what we've tried to do, is to say from a work perspective, we're going to try and really help sort of mitigate stress for you, we're going to try and support you so that you can carry on supporting your customers. Because actually we're all dealing with a lot of tough stuff personally as well while this is going on. So, you know our commitment to the sort of well-being and mental health and physical health has been even more important. But probably bigger than that to me has been the social connection. Making sure nobody's left behind, making sure nobody feels isolated, checking in with people to make sure they're all right, and you know as a compassionate employer, as Companies House is, we genuinely believe that that's our responsibility. And that matters to people.  

MH: It really does. Yeah. And that leads me on, you touched on our culture. But can you tell me from the start basically about our culture story.  

AL: Okay, so, you know, we've always had a great culture in this organisation. But you know particularly three years ago when we were looking at transformation and where we saw ourselves as an organisation, we brought that to life by engaging with the whole 

workforce in workshops to say what makes what do we want to cherish? What do we want to hold onto that makes us special? But what do we perhaps need to change? And we realised we had sort of three key behaviours we wanted to focus on, and they were adaptability, boldness and curiosity. That perhaps they weren’t as prevalent as they could have been.  

Okay, we did have the compassion and we had that sense of community, but we wanted to build on it. So, we've done a huge amount over the last three years around the adaptable, bold, and curious behaviours. And so, they have become our sort of link to things like our ideas hub where we encourage people to come forward with new concepts and things that are stopping them from doing their, you know, their work effectively. We've got our boldness, which is about actually challenging the way we do things and challenging the status quo. And just challenging because actually this isn't personal. This is about the best outcome for our customers and that's really helped. And then the curiosity, which is really been about you know, all of us looking outwards, being aware of what's going on, how that relates to our organisation, questioning and you know, all of these things have been gradual. But you're starting to see that change, and this is about building on that and also saying under the umbrella of the community, that's why our networks are so important. Which is we wanted people to have this passion for the organisation. And so, we've got probably I think it's nearly 30 networks in the organisation now which cover all aspects of diversity