Purley Park Trust and MAXX nominated for “A Great Place to Work”
Purley Park Trust in Association with MAXX has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Engage “Great Place to Work” awards.
Earlier this week we heard the fantastic news that our lovely client, Purley Park Trust is a strong contender to win the “Great Place to Work” category in the Engage Awards 2021 – the only customer and employee engagement industry awards in the UK.
Purley Park Trust is a charity based near Reading that works with adults with learning disabilities and has been a valued client of MAXX’s for many years. The award was entered in association with MAXX because of the close collaboration between the two organisations to raise the profile of the charity and to boost recruitment and retention.
Purley Park Trust CEO, Larry Grady worked with his team to devise a Vision and Values for the Trust and then worked closely with MAXX to bring this to life through rebranding, a company handbook, a new website, printed materials, internal and external signage, social media and a video (see below). The Trust started a process of visually stamping all that mattered about the Trust into the very fabric of the organisation and the outcomes have been exceptional!
In a recent survey, employee engagement was at an all time high at 92% and importantly the values instilled throughout the organisation played a vital part in the team’s response to the extraordinary challenges of the pandemic, which was exceptional, despite coping with very real fears and anxieties.
Said Larry:
“The V&V initiative has been a catalyst for fundamental change at the Trust. The exercise has gone far beyond effective internal communication. We have changed our foundation training so that it is based around vision and values, rather than skills and training. This is quite revolutionary in our sector but we have found that this way we attract and retain the right people, as skills can be developed if they have the right mindset at the outset; it is far harder the other way around! This is a human job so we spend our time on the people, not procedure – it’s all about culture, not strategy.”
When asked about the involvement with MAXX, Larry added:
“It is unusual to see marketing driving significant workplace change in our sector. Collaborating with MAXX to bring our vision and values to life has been fundamental to the change of working environment. The beautifully designed literature emphasises the things that are most important to us all; our signage and website are clear and attractive and the video is so powerful that it has brought people to tears! Our people keep sharing it and all in all this has had a positive impact on our recruitment. Our team has a real sense of pride in working for PPT and the website and video have really helped with this. The amount of positive feedback we have received has been incredible. People are often sceptical about values, but because we have brought them to life, they are not just words, it’s how it’s lived – it’s really powerful.”
On top of the added benefits of superb employee engagement and recruitment, the organisation has seen even more benefits by securing some hard fought grant applications, meaning the future of the Trust for clients and employees is secure.
Explains Larry:
“We know that the success of the funding applications is a direct result of funding bodies receiving the materials that we have produced for the V&V initiative and seeing values in action. The materials underline our reputation as an organisation and how we are perceived. It’s been easier to explain to the Local Authority what we are about – almost as if we are speaking a new language! “
By creating engaging tools Purley Park Trust has helped staff, the families of its residents and stakeholders to engage with them. Through Facebook alone, the video has been viewed over 5000 times and has been shared 58 times with 30 comments and 89 interactions.
At MAXX we are thrilled to see some substantial benefits coming directly from the collaborative work that we have done with the Trust. For us, making a difference to people’s lives is about as good as it gets for our own job satisfaction! If capturing the essence of an organisation visually and through social channels can turn around the way an organisation is funded it goes to show the true power of marketing when devised in true collaboration and delivered by both parties with vision and conviction.
If you have a project you would like MAXX to collaborate with you on, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can email us [email protected]
