Staff will be stepping into each others shoes at a national travel company to experience first-hand the challenges involved in each others jobs.
The new ‘In Your Shoes’ initiative is being launch by serviced apartment company SACO to give staff an opportunity to find out more about the day-to-day roles and responsibilities of other employees across the country, as part of a work shadowing programme.
Chief executive Lesley Freed kick-started the programme when she left the Bristol headquarters last week and returned to the floor to experience life on the front desk as a receptionist at the company’s serviced apartments in Holborn.
Now a team at SACO will choose to swap roles with staff at one of the company’s other 20 locations across the UK.
In Your Shoes is designed to make employees more aware of the different roles and responsibilities that help shape the business and create more empathy between staff. It is part of SACO’s 20:20 Growing Talent Programme that aims to support the company’s ambitious development plans over the next ten years by giving staff the chance to learn and experience more in their day-to-day jobs.
“It was a real eye-opener dealing directly with our guests and a great opportunity to understand what putting customer service first really means on the front line. This programme offers staff a real insight into how other aspects of the company works and will hopefully encourage them to value other members of the SACO team in a new way. We want to create a company ethos that is more supportive for all our staff and I feel this is a great way of doing it” explains Lesley Freed.
“We’ve set ourselves significant challenges over the next few years and improving employee engagement is key to our success. The 20:20 programme will also help individuals to develop their skills, giving them the opportunity to progress within the company.”
The ‘20:20 Growing Talent’ programme, which launched this month (November), will introduce new training courses including one-on-ones, secondments, skills specific training, shadowing and management training.
The company has already demonstrated the strength of its employment practices having been featured in The Sunday Times Top 100 Small Companies to Work For list for the last two consecutive years.
SACO currently employs 110 people across its 25 location in 14 town and cities across the UK.
