“People want to know they matter and they want to be treated as people. That’s the new talent contract.”
– Pamela Stroko, Human Capital Management Leader
In line with this statement, the more you nurture and invest in talent, the more likely it is to remain with you, enriching the business with key skillsets, expertise and experience. At K2, we believe that a company is nothing without its people, therefore supporting our employees to grow by providing them with focused training is, and always will be, a key priority for us. By investing in our people, we give them the tools that they need to invest in our clients’ people, giving our clients confidence that their mobile population’s ability to work, as well as their job satisfaction, remains uncompromised.
Our people are our greatest asset, we believe this to be the same for most companies.
Our Global Training Programme
In 2023, we launched a global training programme which we are now rolling out across our 12 offices. Delivered by the Matt Hampson Foundation, the programme focuses on both challenges and successes. It assesses the way in which we perceive challenges, as this tends to dictate the approach that we take when tackling them. It also encourages us to celebrate successes, as giving ourselves the reward and recognition that we deserve helps us to feel truly connected to the work that we’re doing and lays the foundation for future successes:
“Celebrating achievements great and small is high octane fuel for further achievement. We don’t just celebrate the win; we celebrate to win.”
– Whitney Johnson, CEO, Disruption Advisors
The Aim of our Training Programme
Ultimately, the aim of our programme is to encourage our teams to challenge their mindset in relation to certain aspects of their working life. For example, can a challenge be perceived as an opportunity for growth or evolution, rather than as a time-consuming obstacle? Should ‘small’ successes be celebrated as fully – if not more fully – than the bigger, ‘news-worthy’ successes, because they are the critical building blocks which help us to achieve key business goals?
“Track your small wins to motivate your big accomplishments.”
– Teresa Amabile, Academic, Harvard Business School
The K2 employee and client benefit
By participating in our training programme, our teams have the opportunity to step away from the day-to-day and devote time to thinking critically about the way in which they work. Through a combination of exercises, activities and presentations, all aimed at challenging mindsets and so changing the conversation, our people are able to explore new, more effective and often more fulfilling ways of carrying out their roles. For example, they may be encouraged to unpick a reluctance to delegate, leading to increased collaboration and a freeing-up of time and headspace for strategic/creative thinking.
From a service delivery perspective, clients find themselves working with teams who have put the time into fully understanding what slows them down and makes them less efficient. Armed with this knowledge, they have evolved their mindset and their method in order to streamline processes and improve communication, thereby enhancing service delivery. Furthermore, as a result of their training, K2 teams feel more deeply connected to the work that they do, which for the client, means true commitment – a willingness to move mountains in order to deliver on our promise of industry-leading service excellence.
Interested in learning more about K2’s commitment to its people?
Kinetic is K2’s five-year (2022 – 2026) strategic business plan. Developed in order to give every employee and partner around the globe a clear and full understanding of where the business is going and how it is going to get there, Kinetic is built upon six pillars: People & Culture, Commercial Success, Partner Network, Marketing, Technology, and Sustainability. Within each pillar, there are key targets: in order to achieve these, constant collaboration and innovation across teams, disciplines and offices is absolutely critical. For our clients this means no matter who they work with at K2, they’re confident everyone is on the same path and journey to success, not just for themselves or K2 but for the client themselves and the partner network delivering assignee experiences.
Available to all K2 employees, the Kinetic Benefit is K2’s long term profit share incentive scheme. In the words of K2’s CFO, Andy Hayward, “the Kinetic Benefit forms part of our K2 employee offer and is just one of the ways we show how much we respect and value our people. It was important to K2’s co-owners, Nick Plummer and Richard Rutledge, supported by the Board, to introduce a scheme that would inspire a positive culture of long service and collective ownership.”
Q is K2’s soul. It is the way in which we invest in our people through training programmes and reward and recognition schemes. It is the emphasis that we place on protecting and enriching our culture through astute hiring and employee events. And it is the effort that we make to maintain and increase connectivity between our 12 offices through collaborative work and the use of our intranet, Milo. Q makes us both a family and a Great Place To Work®; without it, we wouldn’t be able to deliver on our ethos of because it’s personal. We really do practice what we preach, a great place to be and a pride in our brand is shared with our approach to our client’s value and pride they have in their brand and the people within.
True Q is the name of K2’s DE&I programme. Built around Q, the collection of qualities which make K2’s employees a family as opposed to a workforce, the True Q programme ensures that DE&I informs all aspects of company life, spanning ethos, culture and service delivery.
A high quality service offering is dependent not only on a comprehensive understanding of a client, but also on the talent, expertise and experience of those responsible for its delivery. Consequently, K2 nurtures its talent and invests in retaining it. The importance of these practices cannot be overstated: LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report revealed that 93% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers.
