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University comes up with right recipe to get most out of staff – University of Reading

The University of Reading Commercial Services team has been awarded the Investors in People accreditation.

Commercial Services has a team of approximately 200 people who between them deliver the provision of catering for the entire University, operate Black Horse House residential conference centre and provide customer support via the sales and events team who market conferencing and hospitality services.

Commercial Services now joins some of the UK's largest companies – including BUPA, MacDonald's and Yell - in having reached the high standards demanded by IiP. More than 37,000 organisations of all sizes and sectors are currently recognised by IiP. The Investors in People Standard is acknowledged as a business improvement tool, helping organisations of every size, type and location to gain more from their people in support of business goals.



Colin Robbins, Director of Facilities Management, the department responsible for Commercial Services, said: "This achievement is a huge credit to the whole team. The values and principles have been developed in consultation with all members of the team.

"I believe it has been a dual process. I am sure staff have benefited from the development of the value of individuals, through improved management procedures, but the department has also become both more efficient and more effective through a greater sense of involvement by all staff in both the process and the delivery of service.

"I am sure that the experience and benefit gained by CS will encourage and inspire them to rise to the IiP challenge with equal enthusiasm."

Members of the team have already started to see what achieving IiP status can mean for them.

Amy Savage, supervisor of the Sales and Events team said: "As a sales and events team, we have always worked closely together and got on well with each other. However, now we feel that our opinions are valued more as we are involved in monthly team meetings where we discuss different issues and come up with solutions together. Team meetings also allow us to learn from each others experiences, as it gives us a chance to discuss feedback from our events."

Martin Batt, assistant catering manager, said: "The most effective change has been holding monthly team meetings. These have greatly improved communication between the whole team. I have spent some time helping other members of the management team by helping set personal objectives. This has been a huge task, but the rewards are endless."

Commercial Services needed to prove it was developing strategies and taking action to improve its performance. As a result of achieving the accreditation, which means people development is at the heart of the organisation, evidence suggests employees will now enjoy increased staff motivation, higher staff retention and lower absenteeism.

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