I was excited to take on the role of Group HR Director for Sirius earlier this year, as I could see that the business contained so many passionate employees and that there was a real appetite to grow from strength to strength.

This is my first contribution to our Impact blog series, and I’m really looking forward to bringing you my perspectives as Group HR Director on sharing how far we’ve come on our journey of making Sirius a great place to work and how the ethos of ‘The Sirius Way’ is coming to life, making Sirius the place to be for a fantastic career!

Chief Impact Officer Kremena Wissel has touched on how our people are core to our success in past blog editions, but here I’ll dive into more of the detail of how we’re constantly refining and improving what makes this a great place to work, in both Germany and the UK.

The Sirius Way

The key being a great place to work and inspiring and motivating our employees, lies in supporting colleagues to believe in what the business is doing, why we are doing it, and to keep our colleagues wanting to excel for not only for themselves, but for the business too. This requires an interplay between autonomy, mastery and purpose and at Sirius, this manifests itself as ‘The Sirius Way’

Autonomy at Sirius represents that our employees are trusted and encouraged to take ownership for their own work, and are supported accordingly

Mastery represents that we see no limits to an employee’s potential and ensure everyone is given the tools needed to continue to develop true mastery in their work.

Finally, Purpose represents that everyone at Sirius feels a desire to do something that has true meaning for themselves, their teams, our customers and the communities we serve, and the world at large.

Working towards these three pillars guides our approach to creating a truly rewarding and fulfilling place to work for everyone at the business.

Now I’ll share some examples of how we’ve worked to bring these pillars to life:

Listening and engaging

We’re pleased that in the most recent employee survey conducted in April 2022, employee participation of Sirius employees was up 7.3% since 2018 to 89.2% and that 87.3% of BizSpace employees took part. It shows that engagement is on track and that we continue to have a robust process for receiving feedback and insights from employees.

Moreover, this level of participation gives us confidence that we’re taking a representational view of employee feedback across the business.

73.4% of those surveyed at Sirius felt positive changes had been implemented since the previous staff survey, and 73.1% of those surveyed at BizSpace felt the same, so although on the right path we’re conscious there remains work to be done.

Across both Sirius and BizSpace, the responses showed common themes in the changes our colleagues wanted to see, such as including more ESG and CSR projects, modernising IT systems and embracing flexible working opportunities, and increasing training and career development opportunities.

We’ve taken this on board and have worked hard to implement positive changes and improvements.

With a recent office move to our new Sirius Group Services office location in Berlin, for example, we ran a clear campaign to ensure all of our employees, regardless of location, felt informed of what was happening and when, that messaging was consistent and that the move could happen as seamlessly as possible with minimal disruption to business as usual, and perhaps most importantly, that the new office would feel like a welcoming and warm space for those located there and visitors. Providing a clear communications programme was an example of enabling colleagues to operate with autonomy during the whole process.

Launch of the Sirius Group Academy

A highlight of the year was the launch in October of the Sirius Group Academy to encompass a range of our training initiatives, covering all levels and geographies around the business, as well as supplementary events and seminars.

We knew from our employee surveys that training and development was and is a key area, and so significant effort was put into designing a programme that provides training for all employees, from core foundational training to bespoke training for specific teams or levels of employees.

Importantly, the Academy focuses not only on skills development but also on employee wellbeing – providing opportunities for mentorship, employee support services, education on healthy lifestyles and habits, and more.

Alongside all these great examples above, I’ve also been very excited to have personally delivered training to teams within both Sirius and BizSpace that have focused on Sirius competencies and behaviours and how that plays to the strengths within teams. it’s been fantastic to see teams learning how to further bring out the best in each other.

Closing thoughts

I hope that this blog gives you an insight to some of the ways in which we are striving to support members of the Sirius team in having a fulfilling and purposeful career at Sirius. I look forward to sharing more on how we achieve this in future blogs.