Colleagues

At Thirteen, we firmly believe that every relationship matters, choices can make a difference and that we can change things for the better. We know that our people are fundamental to us being able to do this and that without them, we would not be able to meet our aspirations or our customers’ needs.

We’re clear that we want our ambition, energy and passion to make a difference and to be why people work for Thirteen, creating the best environment for success. We don’t just want co-workers. We want our people to be ambassadors who deliver fantastic services, and we want to support them to do this by creating an environment where it’s easy for them to be the best version of themselves at work and have a great day. We want them to feel energised, so they deliver high performance, live the values and reach the high standards we’ve set for ourselves whilst feeling proud, valued and happy to work for Thirteen. We also want them to feel connected, informed, challenged, yet in control, so they can play their part in continuing to raise our impact and reach in the Tees Valley and beyond. We’re confident that our customers can see the benefit of this approach, with 89% showing satisfaction in our services. In addition, our most recent employee survey scored a “very good” 38 eNPS score, which means many of our colleagues would happily recommend Thirteen as a place to work. We know we’re on the right track and will work together to tackle themes raised as part of the survey. We’re determined to raise the bar even further over the coming years and use the feedback we receive alongside our desire for success to ensure continued improvement. It will come as no surprise that our focus has been to ensure that we deliver services in a COVID safe way over the last year, and it’s to the credit of our people that we’ve been able to do just that. In March 2020, ahead of the first lockdown being announced, our colleagues worked hard to prepare our business for what was to come, giving us time and space to ensure that we had the right systems, processes and kit, alongside fully thought-out risk assessments and safe operating procedures. This meant that 52% of our colleagues were able to deliver great services whilst working from home ahead of the formal government announcement, and at the same time allow those working in the field to do so in ways that would keep both colleagues and customers safe. We’ve worked to ensure that colleagues have been physically and mentally well and fully engaged with our needs and aspirations and provide them with the additional flexibility needed to juggle caring and homeschooling responsibilities or the extra protection that might have been required due to individual health needs. Whilst managing the impact of COVID-19 on our customers and colleagues has been a key priority, we’ve continued to focus on how we can ensure that we can attract, develop and retain the best people to deliver on our promises within the strategic plan. We’ve introduced our “creating great days at work” people strategy and clarified the actions we’ll take through the six objectives that we’ve set.

Having the right workforce now and in the future: Workforce, planning, talent and succession

Having an engaged, skilled and diverse workforce

Valuing, promoting and supporting well-being Supporting inspirational leadership and management development Offering a competitive, flexible and equitable reward/recognition Delivering great services to enhance Thirteen’s performance

With these objectives clear in our mind, we’ve been able to:

• Reshape our staffing structures so that we’ve got the right people, right skills and capacity to deliver what’s required • Agree on what talent and succession means for

Thirteen and pilot our proposed approach in two of our business areas

• Develop the foundations of our “Great Leadership at

Thirteen” framework to support our leaders to be the best version of themselves. We’ve revised our tier profiles to provide clarity on our expectations and began rolling development experiences, including a 360-appraisal process, to our executive and service directors and have been able to gain great insight into strengths and development needs on an individual and collective basis

• Review our pension strategy to ensure that our offer continues to be attractive whilst affordable for the business

• Consult with colleagues on how they’d like to work in a post COVID-19 world and started to consider how to bring these aspirations to reality. It’s clear that many of our colleagues want to continue benefitting from the different and more flexible working arrangements that we’ve adopted during the pandemic and fully subscribe to our philosophy of “work is what you do and not where you go” • Launch T’dar, our online reward and recognition platform, enabling colleagues to give and receive a

“thanks” for showing that they care, for a job well done, or to recognise birthdays or life events; whilst at the same time access retail discounts to help their money go a little further • Take steps to integrate Gus Robinson into our culture, systems and processes to help them feel part of the

Thirteen family and remove any barriers to success • Look more closely at our approach to diversity, which has included introducing an LBGT forum and looking at the diversity of our workforce so we can set appropriate targets for the future • Promote our health and wellbeing aspirations even further, including offering flu jabs, a mindfulness programme, menopause in the workplace sessions and supporting key issues such as suicide awareness week • Begin consulting with colleagues and managers on what they might want from an HR IT system in the years to come and support an improved digital offer.

We’ve also improved our current systems, which has included fully automating key processes such as annual leave requests • Reduce our sickness absence to 9.2 days per employee, particularly long-term cases, with the average number of days lost from long-term sickness reducing to 5.6 per employee • Revisit our apprenticeship offer, alongside our approach to working in schools, inductions.

In the following year, it will come as no surprise to hear that our biggest area of focus will be to implement those working arrangements that our colleagues want to benefit from, as the Government restrictions start to be lifted. We aim to provide arrangements that support home working, agile working and give colleagues a choice about where to base themselves to get the best out of their day. That said, we’re fully aware that whilst the vaccine roll-out will undoubtedly have a positive impact on potential cases, coronavirus is something that we’ll have to live with and that we’ll have to be fully alert to its presence for some time to come. Because of this, we’re committed to ensuring all working arrangements are COVID safe and we’ll stay up to date with vaccine and testing arrangements, to ensure colleagues have the best source of protection when going about their daily routines. Firming up these arrangements isn’t our only focus for the following year. We’ve also got plans to: • Implement our approach to talent management and succession planning, organisation-wide, ensuring that we can plan more effectively for the future • Pilot new and improved ways to ensure that our workforce planning is effectively aligned to our strategic plan • Roll-out our “Great Leadership at Thirteen” approach to more leaders across the business

• Review our approach to change management to support service transformation in the best way possible • Implement the recommendations from our Pension

Strategy review and ensure that our overall pay and terms and conditions framework continue to be fit for purpose • Be clear on our HR IT system requirements and how we’ll be able to deliver these

• Firm up our approach to diversity, ensuring that we have suitable targets, support groups and ways of working that increase the diversity of our workforce • Support colleague well-being from a physical, emotional and financial perspective • Achieve Investors in People Gold • Reduce our sickness absence further.

Our ultimate aim is to increase the number of colleagues who would recommend us as a great place to work and at the same time deliver great services to our customers.