Our Take on Being Best for The World ™ for our Workers
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Baxendale has been recognised as Best For The World ™ for Workers out of 5,000 certified B Corporations and we’ll give you a little insight as to why we think that is:
Baxendale have been employee owned since 1983, making every single one of us a partner in our business. Employee ownership gives us as individuals a mandate to hold each other to account, to foster an inclusive and enjoyable working environment and to receive reward generated through our joint efforts.
Employee ownership helps us to run a business that has meaning and creates impact – for our partners and for our clients. We assign targets and objectives like every other business but what makes us unique is that this information doesn’t come from the top down, it is curated together, as a team, as partners. We carve out space and time to reflect on our mission and ownership structure, what they mean to us, and in turn our clients see the benefits because they are supported by a unified, empowered, and passionate team who love what they do.
Being a close-knit team means we all know each other well and have had the opportunity to work alongside each other on a variety of projects. This enables us to share skills and learning across our team and gives us an insight into how we all prefer to work, so we can accommodate for each other’s needs and utilize our skillset in a way that is most beneficial to the project at hand.
By working in this close-knit way, it reflects upon the work we produce because it is done with careful consideration, collaborative team effort and with a drive to ensure that we create meaningful impact in what we do. Because we all have oversight of our projects, it also means we can seek advice from more experienced colleagues or gain outside perspective of a colleague who is not on the project – by working in this agile way, the outcome is that we deliver work that is carefully thought out, tested, and refined to bring about impact in the best way possible.
By ensuring we keep our operating structure as flat as possible, it levels the playing field. This creates space for open and honest conversation and provides transparency, enabling our team to work with greater confidence knowing that they are heard and listened to. Important business decisions are also raised for group discussion, giving junior members insight into operational and strategic decisions and how they work and in turn creating a forum for senior team members to be challenged in a healthy way, gaining a better picture of the effects of their decision-making.
By not creating unnecessary hierarchy it also means we can challenge ourselves, taking on tasks and projects that test, enthuse, and develop us without having these tied to specific job roles or responsibilities – we all own the business and should be able to run parts of it that we are interested in, to gain experience and further our skillset.
Those are just three specific reasons why we think we are the best for our workers but ultimately our culture is what underpins all of this, the way we work, behave and what we believe in as a collective group fosters a culture that gives us the freedom to thrive and create a place that is great to work.
