Our people and culture
GPE is powered by people. Our ambition is to unlock and realise our human potential, creating opportunities for our people, and ultimately our customers to thrive. We aspire to be the place where the best people do their best work.” Carrie Heiss Human Resources Director
How we fulfil our purpose starts with our people
We focus our efforts on what we consider to be the key fundamentals: attracting and retaining the right talent, exceptional leadership, and the creation of a unique culture. Our culture is underpinned by a clear alignment of purpose, strategy, values and incentives.
These values are firmly embedded into our people practices. Each value has been translated into behaviours which support the value and conversely, behaviours which do not. In this way, we are able to assess and hold ourselves to account and this is a key feature of our annual and mid-year performance appraisal process. On a quarterly basis, we also publicly acknowledge and reward individuals who have demonstrated that they, in some specific way, ‘live our values’. Our CEO makes these awards, which are peer nominated, and recipients exemplify the ‘best of the best’. There were 40 individual ‘Living Our Values’ awards made in FY22.
Our values
Our culture
Our values are not simply words on a page. They define who we are and how we act, and they are at the heart of what we do and what makes us special. They give us direction and describe how everyone at GPE is expected to behave and how we do business.
Our culture is progressive. It comprises an entrepreneurial spirit and an open, pragmatic approach combined with innovative thinking and intellectual rigour to deliver compelling results for our customers. Teamwork and pulling together for a common objective are core to how we operate, both within and across teams and however large the task at hand.
Our people are the key to our success. Their expertise, performance and wellbeing have a significant impact on everything we do, and ultimately on our financial performance.
Collaboration, support, challenge and contribution
Innovation is also core to our corporate identity. Our Bright Ideas Committee meets monthly to review employee idea submissions which come through our intranet. Many of the 130 ideas submitted in the year have been implemented and all are followed up no matter how small the suggestion. We are constantly challenging ourselves to do better, and innovation is central to improving how we work and serve our customers.
Employer of choice Inclusion, openmindedness, and transparency
Diversity, diligence, focus and pride
Forward-thinking, energy, boldness
52 Great Portland Estates plc Annual Report 2022
GPE aspires to be the place where the best people in our sector do their best work. Unlocking potential and giving our people the tools and environment in which to do their best work, enables GPE to deliver its strategic aims. Being the employer of choice for the best people relies on our ability to hire and retain exceptional, diverse talent. We have successfully on-boarded 47 new joiners since the start of lockdown in 1 March 2020, including 35 in the last financial year. In the last financial year we had 22 leavers, including some very long servers entering well-earned retirements. Our workforce is simultaneously relatively new and very long serving. As at 31 March 2022, our workforce comprised 131 employees, 44% of whom had joined within the previous three years while just over 25% had worked for GPE for longer than ten years. This means that we have the benefit from each end of the tenure spectrum and this both refreshes and reinforces our unique and positive culture.
