We are delighted to announce that Capella has been nominated as Employer of the Year at the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2023. This nomination recognises the positive impact of the work we are doing to become the most employee-focused organisation in our field.

In 2022, we rebuilt our employee experience from the ground up, introducing a new strategy and values, which we developed in collaboration with our staff. This has allowed us to transform the fundamentals of how we operate as an organisation, overhauling how we communicate with, and invest in employees.

This initiative was vital to address outdated HR practices and has resulted in an enormous cultural shift, reducing turnover, and improving staff morale and job satisfaction.

Company Values

We created a new strategy and values through extensive consultation with staff. This collaboration resulted in the core belief at Capella that drives everything we do:

 

We believe that everybody deserves to thrive.

Our values are designed to ensure our people THRIVE;

Tailored, Humour, Resilient, Integrity, Value and Empathy.

Our culture is central to our identity, and we embed our values in everything we do. Last year, we changed our recruitment and onboarding process to focus on our values. Instead of recruiting on skills and experience, we focus on finding people who share our values. As a result, our culture is strongly evident in our team, and we have greater workforce diversity resulting in 10% of our workforce identifying as either BAME, LGBTI+, or having a disability.

Staff express how our values are evident in their daily experiences, reporting that they are actively encouraged to be themselves (VALUE, TAILORED), bringing their interests into work and sharing them with the wider organisation.

Staff are happy to be at work – 86% are enthusiastic about their work (+23% since Jan 21), and 76% often or always look forward to coming to work (+22% since Jan 21).

In their words, “you are guaranteed to get at least one laugh a day”, helping them through what can be emotionally challenging work.

The implementation of practices that recognise that workplace wellbeing has a positive impact on happiness, engagement, recruitment and productivity has been a game changer:

 

    • 92% of staff report that communication has improved
    • 95% would recommend Capella as a good place to work (+39%)
    • 98% are proud to work for us (+38%)
    • Absenteeism reduced from 3.89% to 2.99% (Dec 22)
    • Turnover reduced from 3.74% to 1.79% (Dec 22)
    • People are taking their learning further; all mid-level managers are voluntarily undertaking ILM Leadership programmes; 27 have signed up for mentoring.

Amid a national social care recruitment crisis, we are achieving our ambition of becoming an employer of choice. We are regularly overwhelmed by high-quality applicants, allowing us to operate at 100% as compared with similar providers struggling to attain 50%.

We look forward to the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2023, and we wish all the organisations shortlisted for the Employer of the Year and other awards, the best of luck!