5. At Ella’s Kitchen we care about each other, we care about the world we live in
and we care about making the absolute best food for tiny tummies.
We believe that if we’re all aligned towards a clear direction, grounded in the stuff
we’re passionate about, then our team will thrive; free to deliver amazing results
and feel rewarded doing it.
We’re guided by our values. They set the tone of our culture and we look out for newbies
who will be a natural fit to our values and complement and contribute to our business.
We believe to achieve strong business growth, we need to nurture our people, because happy
people do the best work. So we invest in our people to be the best they can be and encourage
a culture of leadership so that everyone feels valued and empowered.
6. Buddy is our friend who helps us understand what it means to work at Ella’s
Kitchen + guides us in our behaviours + relationships every day.
Our values are at the heart of Ella’s Kitchen, it’s how we recruit newbies,
it’s how we judge + reward success, it’s how we make decisions and it’s how
we make sure Ella’s Kitchen is always a super fun + rewarding place to work!
7. Invest in a happy, healthy
team
Engage the team in the
purpose and mission
Involve
everyone in
building the
strategy
Promote
autonomy
Build
development
opportunities into
individual
objectives
Have great managers
Ella’s ingredients
9. We passionately believe that businesses can and should be a force for good, so that’s
why we joined the B Corp movement.
B Corps aspire not only to be the best in the world but the best for the world.
As members of B Corp we actively contribute to solving social and environmental
problems as well as making sure that we are a super tip-top employer which promotes
the wellbeing of our people.
It’s what we’ve always been about, but now we have lots of other friends in the
business community who think that way too.
And we’re passionate about leading the movement in the UK to encourage other
businesses to become B Corps too, because then the world will be an even better place.
Being a B Corp means that we are focussed on, and driven by, Our Mission and
Our Dream.
10.
11.
12. Everyone at Ella’s has the opportunity to volunteer at local
charities that are related to our Mission. We call these
‘Mission Days’.
We also have ‘MAD Days’ (Make a Difference Days!) which allows
each individual to spend a day volunteering for a cause that’s
important to them.
16. We strongly believe in enabling a culture of leadership at Ella’s Kitchen.
We don’t believe that leadership is something which is defined by your
job title.
Leaders at Ella’s role model our values and support their team. With a
clear strategic direction and our mission and values to guide you, anyone
can lead at Ella’s.
We believe that encouraging autonomy enables people to grow and
develop and to feel fulfilled. It helps us create a sustainable business
where contribution and responsibility are spread across the whole team
rather than control being held by the few.
You should feel ownership of your projects and be clear on your roles +
responsibilities. You’ll be guided by our strategy, mission and values and
supported by your manager.
18. Our strategy is to ‘Invest in people to do their jobs well, achieve their
potential, and make a difference’.
Personal growth means different things to different people – it is
available to everyone, but not the same for everyone.
Your development is your responsibility. We support your self-
improvement and we’ll support you with a great working environment
(smart colleagues, challenges, honest + constructive feedback, fun) but
you control your development. That’s why we give everyone a personal
development pot of £1000 to help you achieve your aspirations.
As a small business, there may not always be enough growth
opportunities for everyone, so sometimes your personal growth journey
might lead you beyond Ella’s.
24. Having great managers is really important at Ella’s. After all, people are more
likely to stay happy and fulfilled in their jobs if they have a great manager.
We understand how much difference a good manager can make to a person’s
potential and that’s why we have created our own 4-day programme for all
our managers – we call it ‘Super Buddies’.
It’s great because it’s really valuable training if you are a manager, with
lessons you can take with you wherever you go, but it also means there is
consistency in approach as well as clear expectations set on what
it means to be a good manager at Ella’s.
And it’s great for all our Buddies too knowing that their managers are well
trained and focused on supporting and developing them.
25. Invest in a happy, healthy
team
Engage the team in the
purpose and mission
Involve
everyone in
building the
strategy
Promote
autonomy
Build
development
opportunities into
individual
objectives
Have great managers
Ella’s ingredients
Notas del editor
Thanks for inviting me. I am Head of Keeping People Happy at Ella’s Kitchen where I have been working for the last 6.5 years.
Hi everyone. I’m Catherine Allen, Head of Keeping People Happy for Ella’s Kitchen. Ella’s is an organic baby food and toddler food company – before I get going I’d like to do a quick straw poll of how much you already know about Ella’s?
All stand up – stay standing if you’d heard of us before today, stay standing if you’ve bought an Ella’s Kitchen, stay standing if you’ve eaten an Ella’s Kitchen.
In brief - Ella’s Kitchen started life 12 years ago and was founded by Paul Lindley who was looking for a healthy and fun way to feed his little girls Ella – a fussy eater – from this initial idea the brand was born and we’re now a £78 m turnover business that you’ll find in all major retailers and also within Europe. My role at Ella’s is Head of Keeping People happy and keeping people happy is a big part of driving great performance at Ella’s.
WE have a team of 80 people working in our beautiful barns in Henley. Everyone is based in the Barns (though people travel) and we have access to lots of lovely outdoor space. – all good context for the presentation to come.
It’s not just for the fun of it – ALTHOUGH IT IS FUN - it’s also because I believe that happy engaged people do the best work. It’s certainly been true at Ella’s – we’ve always focussed on Keeping People Happy (which is my job title and my raison d’etre) which has led to some fantastic business results. Working for a successful company and making a difference makes people feel satisfied and proud leading to more happiness and so on around a virtuous circle. It’s not rocket science..
Everything I believe about creating a great place to work is based around this simple fact that happy, healthy engaged people do the best work. So based on this, I am going to talk about my 3 top tips for engaging people at a small company though they all take work and are not magic wand solutions. I’m not positioning myself as an expert – I’m sure many of you are doing great things too – I’m just going to focus on what has worked for us and hopefully there will be things that you can apply back at your businesses.
This is from our Ella’s culture deck where we have outlined what working for Ella’s is all about and it summarises our core ethos for enabling people to do their jobs really well.
Our values set the context for everything we do. We have 5 simple values and everyone demonstrates them in their own unique way and they really do run through everything that we do.
I’m going to talk through the 6 ingredients (excuse the pun) which we mix together to help everyone do the best job that they can.
People need something to believe in and want to make a difference – this is a vital part of driving great performance.Does anyone work for a company who is a B Corps member already? B corps is a movement bringing together companies who believe that business can be a force for good. We were accredited 3 years ago and are really proud to be part of this community. People who work for us are really proud that we are trying to influence the world beyond Ella’s and feel that they are making a difference to this – this has been really motivating..
We have a compelling mission which all our team are engaged with. It inspires them to do the best job they can.
Some roles feel very close to the mission every day eg of marketing and product teams, but others may feel less directly involved eg our finance team. Sp to keep everyone close to the mission we give time off to have a Mission Day and a Make a difference day. Mission days are organised by us in partnership with local charities – at the moment we are supporting Ella’s explorers on the farm, readifood and Kitchen academy. MAD are time off to help with a cause that you really want to support which doesn’t have to be around children and food . Everyone tells us about their experiences and it makes sure people connect to what we’re here for.
We allow as much autonomy as possible for setting and delivering individual KPIs. We’ve found that autonomy can deliver great outcomes – melty sticks story.
If you can combine the activities that will help the organisation achieve their KPIs with a person’s development that is a win win - we aim to do this through our MBC process initially and then look for opportunities throughout the year.
We believe that healthy, happy people do the best work so we invest time and money in helping people get to their best physical and mental state. This is my Happies team who look after everyone at the Barns from an HR or a facilities POV.
We have all the usual benefits that you woulc expect including private health and an EAP. We also run year round wellbing events to increase individual awareness of their own wellbeing – this includes on site health checks, sleep workshops, mental health awareness with MIND and financial awareness training. We run weekly yoga and bootcamps and people regularly go for runs and walks in our beautiful surroundings and we encourage walking 121s. We’e just launched Ella’s clubs where team members can run their own clubs with budget support from Ella’s.
In this year’s My Big Chat (our appraisal) we introduced personal wellbeing goals and 70% of our team have set themselves 1 or more wellbeing goals – it’s different for everyone.
They really are the key to ensuring your team members do a great job. Training, super buddies revisited, automomy, open blend have all helped create a great team of managers – they make the difference between the team leaving or going
They really are the key to bringing all the other ingredients to life – we know that managers are the primary reason why people stay or go. S buds, sbudds revisited, open blend
I’m going to talk through the 6 ingredients (excuse the pun) which we mix together to help everyone do the best job that they can.
