FreeAgent, one of the UK’s leading accounting software companies, has embarked on a workplace culture initiative to gain a clearer understanding of employee sentiment across its different business functions and identify opportunities for enhanced employee engagement.
FreeAgent has partnered with Culture Amp, a leading employee experience platform, to provide reliable data from which informed decisions can be made and practical support for employee learning coordinated. This flexible and targeted approach will positively impact employees, the organisational culture and ultimately contribute to their continued success.
Created in 2007 by three freelancers who wanted a better way to stay on top of their business finances than using spreadsheets, FreeAgent now has 260 employees and over 100,000 customers.
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Since implementing Culture Amp in 2017, FreeAgent has launched a number of new employee-related initiatives and increased its employee engagement scores for ‘Learning and Development’ and ‘Feedback and Recognition’ by 11% and 10% respectively.
Early employee survey findings through Culture Amp identified that FreeAgent staff felt they would be happier if they had a clearer understanding of how their actions influenced their promotions and how their salaries were calculated.
To address this need, the organisation introduced salary bands and documents that detailed the expectations associated with each level. This has given staff clearer career pathways and progression frameworks in which to develop.
The survey findings also showed that while people at FreeAgent were generally good at focusing on their own development and training, they could have benefited from a consistent and easy-to-access learning resource.
In response various programmes were introduced to support learning and development across the company. This included personal development planning, the introduction of a learning management system, a dedicated manager training programme and strengths-based coaching.
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Donald Lindsay, people operations director, FreeAgent comments:
”Culture Amp is easy to use and, because sufficient thought has gone into how the platform will actually be used, people are more inclined to engage with it. Additionally, because it’s integrated with Slack, Culture Amp can be incorporated easily into our existing systems and culture, increasing its usability further.
“The platform has been a game-changer for our People Ops team, providing a good measure of what’s happening in the company. When the Covid crisis first hit, as part of our ongoing engagement survey cycles, we were able to use Culture Amp as a means of checking-in with our teams to ensure they were OK.
“This has helped us demonstrate that at FreeAgent we don’t just listen to people; we take practical actions to address what we hear from them. As a result, there’s a very high level of engagement among our teams and it’s great to see people across the company collaborating effectively to deliver a great product and service to our customers.”
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