We spend so much time at work, it’s important to love where we spend our nine-to-five.
A business’ success is often measured by its growth and profits, but equally as important is its treatment of its workforce. The Gloucestershire Business Awards has a category dedicated to the companies putting their staff first and ensuring their firm is a great place to work.
Last year’s recipient of this was Holiday Architects who will be joining other previous winners at a special winners’ dinner we are hosting early February. Read on to find out what caught the attention of the judges.
Holiday Architects – Winner of Best Place to Work 2018
Key business points:
- Travel company who arrange tailor-made tours: each holiday is unique and designed by one of their experts
- Trading for eight years, located in Cheltenham for seven of them – recently moved into superb new offices in the iconic Eagle Tower
- Founders Andrew and Damien both had an ex pat upbringing
- 26-strong team of experienced travel industry professionals
The winning entry:
Holiday Architects have quadrupled in size in the last four years. Their growth plan explicitly recognises two areas where the business has a competitive advantage: strength in pay-per-click advertising; and the ability and experience of their staff.
Clients are acquired digitally through pay-per-click, then the holiday is planned by phone and email, and by delighting them they make them repeat clients who are then key referrers.
Attracting and retaining great staff is top of Andrew’s priority list. Holiday Architects have a flexible working policy involving no set hours and uncapped leave. They allow people to work from home at least one day a week, and unusually for a sales team, work part-time – this is achievable due to very clear standards and expectations of performance. Over the last year there has been significant investment in training and development, mainly executive coaching.
The team have created an internal ‘Office Culture’ document which embodies behaviours and is regularly reviewed. As a result the team are fully engaged with what the company is trying to achieve.
