Case Study: Deutsche Post DHL



Certified Top Employer, Deutsche Post DHL Group (DPDHL), is the world’s leading logistics company employing nearly 600,000 colleagues and operating in over 220 countries and territories worldwide.To increase collaboration and interaction between their large number of employees within the company, DPDHL has implemented Smart Workplace, a mobile application designed to improve the daily employee experience. Developing the Smart Workplace was a challenge not only because it was a huge undertaking in scale, but it was also a challenge given the diversity of employees, roles, languages and places of work.

Download the case study to learn how: 

• The organisation customised this intranet as a mobile application using tools such as the Office 365 suite.
• The Covid-19 pandemic impacted the launch and need of the Smart Workplace platform for DPDHL.
• Smart Workplace has become one of the leading internal information sources within DPDHL, engaging more than 300,000 employees worldwide just 6 months after its launch.

Boosting Morale by Giving Back with CPFL Energy

CPFL Energy Fosters Goodwill by Creating a Sustainability Plan 

Giving back is an important part of a company’s presence in a local community and, for larger companies, the world at-large. Charity work improves a company’s image, creates a better place to live and work for employees and local residents alike, and fosters a sense of goodwill. With so many worthy causes, companies often focus their philanthropic efforts on an issue that resonates with their services, mission, and values. For CPFL Energy, a Certified Top Employer, that cause is climate change.

CPFL Energy is the largest energy company in South America. Headquartered in Campinas, Brazil the company was founded in 1912 and operations are supported by 13 000 employees. Their focus is on the distribution, generation, and commercialization of energy services to over 10 million addresses, which represents more than 22 million people.

The company recently implemented a Strategic Sustainability Plan with 15 commitments and an investment of R$1.8 billion from 2020 – 2024. CPFL’s plan is fully aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainability Goals. Some of their goals include maintaining at least 95% renewable energy sources in their generation portfolio, reducing greenhouse gas emissions – which they did by 24% in 2020, and generating carbon credits by assisting consumers’ energy transition with decarbonization and energy efficient solutions.

Three value pillars are the basis for CPFL’s sustainability plan: sustainable energies, smart solutions, and shared value. These values succinctly summarise how the company will focus its efforts on creating a smaller environmental footprint. It’s a clear way to share with both the global business community and the local community they serve how they are taking action.

In addition to the obvious benefits of combating climate change, this initiative contributes to greater employee cohesion and job satisfaction. Working for a company that gives back improves employee regard for company leadership and fosters a positive sense of connection.  Good morale is an important ingredient for successful operations and a giving back initiative is a great way to bolster it.

Rodolfo Nardez Sirol, CPFL’s Environmental and Sustainability Director, offers more detail about the company’s sustainability plan and what motivated them to devote so many company resources to it in this video. He describes how employees collaboratively developed the plan and what they are doing to keep up momentum. Check out the video to hear more about how CPFL finds fulfilment in giving back. 

Changing the Game: New Rules at Work



If there is one topic on the agenda in all organisations, it is undoubtedly to need to design – and implement – a new working model. While it is a priority it is also the topic that raises the most questions amongst HR leaders and decision makers.

Hybrid, flexible, personalised, digital we are all familiar these terms. But as we incorporate these terms into our organisations strategic objectives, we continue to look around us at the most cutting-edge businesses, to find ideas that work, initiatives that inspire us, and of course, the right results.

To begin with, we seem to have the dilemma of number – what is the optimum percentage of time to work remotely? Data shows that since the emergence of the pandemic 80% of the companies certified as Top Employers worldwide have defined a work from home policy for their employees that clarifies this working model. It also shows that for 21% of Top Employers, employees are able to work remotely between 80% and 100% of the time. Moreover, if we expand this range, we see that in 35% of them it is possible to work remotely more than 50% of the time, usually depending on the job position.

A Model of Total Flexibility

The debate on the number of days of remote work is beginning to become obsolete. Looking at certified Top Employers, we can observe that the most advanced organisations are opting for a total flexibility-type model in their working policies. Flexibility means personalisation and it prioritises the employee’s ability to choose. More than half of Top Employers worldwide place decision-making power in the hands of the employee and promote a high degree of autonomy and flexibility since they are companies based on a culture of trust and responsibility.

Obviously, there are practical limitations or restrictions that prevent the application of full flexibility in certain jobs, but in that case, alternatives are offered to employees to allow them to make decisions about how to organise their work. It is a cultural approach, which far exceeds a model based on percentages of working from home time. Companies that have a culture of autonomy and flexibility have indicated that employee satisfaction is very high, with these organisations report a score of more than 9/10, and short-time working has been noticeably reduced. Now the focus is on monitoring whether mental and emotional well-being improves in the medium term.

Physical and Virtual Spaces for Collaboration

As organisations look to incorporate new ways of working to be successful, they will need to redesign the workspaces, both physical and virtual. Flexibility and collaboration are the concepts that inspire this new work environment. In newer offices, flexibility allows you to choose the workspace you need at that moment, with quiet rooms for work requiring concentration, as well as rooms for connecting, sharing, chatting informally, and taking a break – and, of course, rooms for working together as a team. If flexibility is the first key to this new work environment, the second is the plan for collaboration.

The plan to optimise and encourage collaborative work among employees should be embodied in the new design of the physical company facilities and should extend to virtual spaces. Doing this work in the virtual spaces is done to make it easier for people to connect, share ideas and work collaboratively. Tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Suite, Slack, Trello, etc. are already part of our lives and are evolving rapidly, moving towards a more immersive experience which will undoubtedly arise in the years to come. Nine out of ten Top Employers design not only their virtual workspaces, but also their physical ones, to meet both needs – flexibility and personalisation, and collaboration. Moreover, companies have noted that the plans they have implemented are by no means definitive; these plans are constantly evolving because the needs of employees shape the setup of their workspaces. 

Initiatives for digital disconnection

Inevitably, in this new working environment, digital disconnection initiatives have emerged at an accelerated pace. 76% of companies certified as Top Employers explicitly discourage working extra hours and reinforce this particularly in the case of remote work. Half already have policies to discourage the use of email outside of established working hours, and it is a growing practice. Disconnection extends to the holidays, and a third of Top Employers have implemented a “do not disturb” policy during the holidays, and of course, paid leave for all. Alerts in the form of pop-up windows are already frequently displayed with an alert whenever any of the disconnection rules are about to be violated. This, by the way, is meant as a right, not an obligation. The goal is to significantly improve the well-being of employees, helping them to disconnect, freeing up time which can be used for personal care and enjoyment.

This reinvention of the working model generates new challenges; employers must learn to benefit from this new way of working while simultaneously limiting the risks involved. 

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Helvetia Case Study: The Impact of Internal Best Practices Sharing



Certified Top Employer Helvetia Insurance, established in 1858, is headquartered in St. Gallen Switzerland. As an organisation they currently have over 11.500 employees and more than 7 million customers across their different operating countries.

Helvetia have prioritised improving their people practices over the past few years as they joined the Top Employers programme. In recent years they have wanted to improve their practices not only through benchmarking but also through learning from the various Helvetia branches. This desire for improvement and learning lead them to create an internal best practice sharing session.

Download the Case Study to learn how:

• Helvetia have been able to create a unified best practice sharing session that has improved HR practices across their offices.
• They use the Top Employers programme to guide the improvement of their HR practices.
• Employees in Helvetia have experienced the internal best practices sharing sessions.

Mental Health Q&A: Bentley



In advance of #WorldMentalHealthDay, we caught up with Emma Humphries from certified UK Top Employer Bentley. Emma is co-chair of its wellbeing network BeAccessible – in this interview she reveals more about the network, how it contributes to positive change within the organisation, and how mental health has moved up the organisation’s priority list.

Tell us about yourself and your organisation?

I’m Emma and I work as a Technical Analyst here at Bentley Motors. Bentley has a proud 103-year history of building the most sought-after luxury cars, and we’re also on the most ambitious journey with our Beyond100 plans to become exclusively electric and end-to-end carbon neutral by 2030.

At the heart of Bentley are our 4,000 colleagues. Whilst those numbers might sound big, we’re a tight team with generations of families working here, which makes Bentley a very special place to be. I am proud to follow the footsteps of my late Grandfather who joined the business the day it opened its gates, followed shortly after by my Nan. Since then, there has always been members of my family throughout Bentley’s history; my father, working mainly in Security, and my three brothers working in Purchasing, Maintenance and Finance.  When I finished college, I knew I wanted to be a part of the Bentley brand and family. I’m proud to have just completed my 25 years of service, working predominantly in Logistics – a department and family that is full of drive and passion.

It’s our people that bring our vision for Diversity and Inclusion to life with our colleague led networks. I co-chair one of those networks, known as BeAccessible. It was launched following World Mental Health Day in 2021 and our ambition is simple; we support colleagues in all aspects of health and wellbeing to ensure our workplace is inclusive, and aim to create an equal environment for colleagues with disabilities. Other colleague networks include BeProud, who advocate for our LGBTQ+ community, our BeUnited network who represent colleagues of ethnic minority, our BeReady network, who support colleagues with a background in the army or other recognised force and our BeInspired network which brings together those with an interest in increasing the proportion of female colleagues across all of our business areas to accelerate our progress towards Bentley’s Beyond 100 goals of 30% women in management by 2030.

How has Bentley’s mental health strategy evolved over the past year, in what we all hope is a post-pandemic world?

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted us all in different ways, and we quickly realised that we could not deliver a one-size fits all approach to mental health. With the support of our Head of Diversity & Inclusion, the BeAccesible network established a Positive Mental Health Workstream, and evolved our strategy to have a range of touchpoints for colleagues in a way that works for them, whether that be at work or in new home office.

So, our multi-tactic approach means colleagues can get access to face-to-face peer group support through our regular Time to Talk sessions or get more tailored and personalised support through a trained Mental Health First Aider. But we have also evolved our strategy to focus on day-to-day mental health through BeFit walking programmes, BeFit fruit giveaways etc, as well as the opportunity for colleagues to join our allotment community to enjoy the outdoors because we know helping colleagues with positive habits can help mitigate the impact of mental health stressors.

Has mental health moved up your organisational priority list?

Absolutely, in fact it is being actively championed, from board level to factory floor. It makes me feel proud to work here and excited about what the future holds for Bentley.  

Bentley offers an array of resources for colleagues. This month, along with the network’s regular monthly Time to Talk sessions, we are promoting our Mental Health Traffic Light guide, which contains several useful resources – for example, a list of our Mental Health First Aiders and information on our BeFit programs, designed to get colleagues moving and exercising. We are also sharing colleague’s experience of Ben, the Automotive Charity, and the great support that they offer to colleagues from our automotive industry. The network chairs and members have regular opportunities to meet or ask questions with the Board where we receive full support, answers and guidance, ensuring that we are all striving for the same goal of improving colleagues’ experiences.

How have conversations around mental health changed?

I’m a firm believer that the more we talk about mental health, the more we can demystify. We’ve got a supportive communications team who help make health and wellbeing a priority across our messaging, and we’ve been empowered to host monthly MS Teams sessions to reach our remote colleagues, or those working at home. We also use national events to bring awareness, for example May’s Time to Talk was about Loneliness.

This constant conversation has seen the network reach 170 members, as well as engaging with many more thousands of our colleagues in some way.

Mental health is definitely becoming something that more and more people want to talk about and support and I am really proud that our BeAccessible network has been an enabler for this.

What will be your priorities in Mental Health in the year ahead?

The network has just advertised a companywide Movember campaign, we will be focusing on mental health during International Men’s Day with our Men’s Forum Workstream to ensure we continue our mission to remove taboo and stigma and encourage colleagues to start conversations and signpost. BeAccessible also promotes Bookboon, which is a digital learning service provider for corporate learning & development. In particular, we will be promoting titles linked to mental health and stress as a priority on awareness days and throughout the year generally.

UniCredit Bulbank’s ESG Learning Journey

Certified Top Employer UniCredit Bulbank is the leading bank in Bulgaria and a member of UniCredit, a successful pan-European commercial bank operating in Italy, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. It has a unique service offering and its purpose is to empower communities to progress, delivering best-in-class for all stakeholder, unlocking the potential of clients and people.

UniCredit puts integrity, ownership and caring at the heart of its decision-making in everything it does, and digitalisation and a commitment to ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) principles are key enablers for delivering this. Their commitment to their ESG values and the ambitious energy goals that have been set in the EU for 2030 and 2050 is what started their award winning ESG Learning Journey in 2021.

For UniCredit Bulbank, ESG is not the responsibility of one department, team or individual, but everyone’s duty.

Download the Case Study to learn how:

• UniCredit Bulbank Bulgaria used a pyramid approach to restructure their ESG principles.
• They created an integrated group and local learning offer for ESG that had targeted initiatives for different groups of employees across the organisation that addressed specific needs and accountabilities for them.
• UniCredit Bulbank Bulgaria created ESGpresso, an ESG education platform, for colleagues to have easy access to information about their policies.

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