It's official! Carrington West is named one of the UK’s medium Best Places to Work for

This week has seen the publication of The Sunday Times list, powered by WorkL, and Portsmouth-based Carrington West is at the top of the medium-sized business section.

The Best Places to Work list of Britain’s top employers is produced in partnership with the employee-experience platform WorkL, which helps organisations to recruit, and measure, track and improve staff engagement.

The list is based on an anoymous questionnaire, which uses 35 questions from WorkL’s employee engagement survey, developed by behavioural scientists, data analysts, psychologists, business leaders, academics and other independent parties to most accurately monitor employee engagement and wellbeing in the workplace.

James Credit: Carrington West

Unhappy employees are costing Britain millions of pounds, according to Lord Mark Price, the former trade minister and managing director of Waitrose. It is a state of affairs that WorkL, which he founded in 2017, has been beavering away to put right.

The list named Carrington West for their ‘regular social events’ that ‘reinforce the attitude that everyone is valued’ The 98 staff receive weekends away, private medical cover, uncapped commission and a company performance bonus, as well as hardship loans where needed.

Office Credit: Carrington West

James Fernandes, Carrington West MD says of the achievement, “We are immensely proud to be featured on this list and I would like to thank our employees for taking the time to share their thoughts and feelings. When we founded the company we set about creating a company that we wanted to work for. Our senior leadership team have since been on a steep learning curve to nurture a culture of trust. We have kept this goal at the heart of our vision and we truly believe that putting our people first has led to our commercial success.”

The accolade comes as Carrington West recently doubled its office space in Lakeside North Harbour, Portsmouth, to accommodate a period of rapid growth. Founded in 2011, Carrington West has grown to 100 employees and a £75m turnover, and is currently looking to expand further over the next few years.

Carrington West HR Manager, Emily Christmas says “Keeping employees engaged as the business grows is one of the biggest challenges we have faced as a business. Our culture has evolved and we have had to evolve our people practices accordingly. We have done this by listening to what our employees want and need to be happy and feel trusted at work.”

Other medium-sized businesses, with 50-249 employees, featured include Ancoris, easyJet Holidays, 11 Investments, Hamilton Barnes Associates, Itecco, NextWave Consulting, Quooker UK, SiXworks and Xalient Holdings.