Human resources and putting our people first

Our core purpose in the business is to contribute to its success. It’s about putting our people first. We lead the development of people strategy which is truly embedded within the needs of the business and the experience of working at Frontline.

We are proud of our culture and believe it is pivotal in driving our continued growth and innovation. Against this backdrop, HR works collaboratively, right across the group, to enable everyone to maximise their potential.

Staff well-being is a priority

We run a Thrive programme. This is about putting health and well-being at the top of our ‘to do’ list and this philosophy applies to absolutely everyone in the business.

Each month we cover a different aspect of health and well-being. Topics range from mental health and resilience workshops, eating more healthily, step challenges, from couch to 5K, and how we feel about ‘SAD’, the seasonal affective disorder. We time these to fit in with the relevant period of the year. There’s also ‘Giving something back’ where staff have two days a year to give to their registered charity.

In addition to Thrive, we have an Accelerator Hub. This is primarily a development forum where staff put themselves forward to be part of it and work on projects – this can be anything from a ‘people survey’ to helping out with one of our Thrive themes.

Mapping out individual plans

We listen to feedback and we act on it. There are no formal appraisals. Instead, everyone has a development map. They will usually go out of the business for a chat with their boss. One to ones are essential and communicating with each other to ensure everyone ‘gets’ the strategy and where we are heading as a business, is key.

We’re also big on reward and recognition; we have a culture of saying ‘thank you’ for doing your job really well. Bosses choose themselves how they want to reward their staff, as they know them best.

Learning and development

In an ambitious business like ours there is a lot of learning and development opportunities. Courses are announced for people to jump on and many of these are booked up in a matter of minutes. Staff are hungry for development which is fantastic.

Some courses are internal (learning lunches) as we want to lead by example and learn the Frontline way. We also organise lots of online learning (such as Ted talks). But when we need to, we will always invest in external learning.

Fun is part of the culture too

We have a ‘Mojo’ team who organise the ‘fun’ parts of work. That covers a multitude of social stuff from bake sales and charity activities to pub nights out, quizzes. These are over and above the Frontline annual awards, summer barbecue and Christmas party, of course!