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Britvic

How Britvic brought two-thirds of their people back to the office without compromising their values

 

Project overview:

Britvic partnered with Caraffi to deliver a culture change, moving and changing the behaviour and attitudes of their people.

Britvic wanted to encourage employees to see hybrid working as solution for work-life balance and to value working from home and in the office equally. But they wanted to do it in a way that aligned with their company mission and values.

Caraffi designed a Working Well manifesto, along with a communications plan and interactive e-book that would communicate this initiative to Britvic's people.

Britvic logo, text- Client: Kathryn Partridge, Director of Communications Product: Culture Transformation
 

The results:

2/3rds

Six months later, office working is back up to two-thirds of what it was pre-pandemic

80%

In their most recent employee engagement survey, Britvic scored over 80% in four key areas:

How hybrid is working in their organisation

Work-life balance

Strength in culture and relationships

Productivity

When Kate read the manifesto - it was the moment it all clicked. That was the moment when I had the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I knew that we’d hit the right answer.

 

The Creative:

In order to ensure that all of Britvic's 'ways of working' communications were aligned to a central vision, we created Working Well.

Working Well is a messaging framework that helped to communicate Britvic's vision for the future of work at their organisation.

The cornerstone of this framework was the Working Well manifesto which you can see opposite:

Working Well Manifesto:

What do you get when you count output, not hours?

When you mix open spaces, creative places and more meaningful face-to-faces?

When you have the time to consider and the tech to connect?

You have a high performing workplace where you can love how you work, as well as what you do.

You have the chance to try out new ideas and collaborate, unconstrained by location.

You reduce journeys and travel time, costs and carbon footprint.

And you build diverse, inclusive high-performing teams that share a purpose, not a desk.

You build one team: Team Britvic, whether together or apart.

In this environment, our people will learn and grow. They will thrive in a high-performance culture that is rooted in our Purpose, Vision and Values. And they will feel trusted and empowered to do their best work.

It’s much more than flexible working, it’s our own ways of working.

It’s Dynamic Working.

It’s Working Well.

Working with Caraffi on this has made me understand that so much more is possible than if we try and do things by ourselves

Britvic's struggle:

 

What were you struggling with before partnering with Caraffi?

Along with the rest of the world, we had to move from an office-based organisation to one that was 100% working from home - with the exception of our supply chain manufacturer employees, who were the heroes of the pandemic from a commercial point of view.

But for the office based employees, getting used to a different way of working was urgent and important. And as is often the case in a crisis, people adapted very well and very quickly. And we learned as we went along.

But from that point we struggled with the uncertainty of what would happen next, both with hybrid working and engagement more broadly. We wanted to make sure we actually had a vision for the future and a direction of travel to head towards, as opposed to just suck it and see.

While a lot of organisations were talking about The Big Return, trying to get ahead of that and talking about the future of work more broadly, we wanted to match our direction of travel with our company mission and our company values.

We knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know how to go about doing it.

We did underestimate how difficult behaviour change might be

What other solutions did you consider or try before partnering with Caraffi?

Our first attempted solve was to come up with a logo and strapline and write some compelling communications internally. We hoped that if we shouted loud enough and regularly enough, people would get it.

We did underestimate how difficult behaviour change might be. And therefore we were quite late to ask for the quality of help that Caraffi provided – a service provider that we could partner with to help us move and change behaviour and attitudes.

The brief:

 

What did you ask Caraffi to work on?

The brief was to design and devise a campaign that would encourage employees to see hybrid working as a solution for work-life balance. And to value working from home and working in the office equally.

We wanted it to be a balance. We wanted everyone to choose the option that best worked for them. On the understanding that it also needed to work for the business and for the stakeholders within the business.

So we needed to communicate very clearly that we’re all in it together. That we can all choose our % balance of working from home, the office or other locations. But that we absolutely wanted to make the right choice for the business, ourselves and our teams. In a way that was actually going to further the culture at Britvic.

What convinced you Caraffi was the right option?

I think the fact that Caraffi had been working with the company in a different capacity for some time (resourcing), they had an advanced understanding and appreciation of the unique challenges and opportunities that Britvic faces as a business. So it was really lovely not having to go back to the beginning and explain who we were and where we wanted to be in the world.

And more importantly than that, the fact that Caraffi’s lens was around people first and the understanding that we were trying to drive culture change from the get go.

I do really appreciate the amount of time the Caraffi team spent early on making sure that we were really clear about what it was we were trying to deliver – rather than just jumping straight to the solution.

Britvic's working well ebook

 

The impact:

 

How did it feel to work with Caraffi?

I found it very inspiring.

There was a breakthrough moment for me, which was the creation of the manifesto. Which of course gets back into core communications area which is my heartland – so that’s when I get really excited.

When Kate read the manifesto (and hearing it rather than reading it) - it was the moment it all clicked. That was the moment when I had the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I knew that we’d hit the right answer.

And from that manifesto moment onwards, the rest was plain sailing because we had a shared vision.

 

What has the impact of the work been so far?

So it’s early days and we worked very hard after the campaign to check progress and socialise – there was a lot of engagement activity that went on. So we’ve only really had this rolled out for six months.

But what I think is really interesting is rather than throw a lot of money at events and things and try to get people into the office in a slightly artificial sense, we’re staying true to the principals of the manifesto and the original campaign – and we’re letting people find that right balance for themselves.

The amount of time people are spending at the office is slowly but surely increasing. And we’re up to about 2/3rd of where we were pre-pandemic which I think is fantastic.

It has the advantage of keeping the buzz and keeping the culture alive. But at the same time it feels very ‘adult to adult’ and very trusted.

We’ve just had the results of our first full employee survey since launching this programme of work - we take the pulse of the organisation every 6 months.

There were 3 separate questions on ‘Working Well’ and the scores in each of these were very high. So around 80% favourability in terms of how it’s working, the personal choice we’ve given people around work-life balance, culture and relationships still being very strong and productivity.

So that’s a fantastic outcome. And I think it’s particularly fantastic that culture and productivity were both equally high.

It makes me feel hugely energised and optimistic for the future

Now that you’ve completed this piece of work and you’ve seen the impact of it – how does that make you feel about your role within Britvic?

It makes me feel hugely energised and optimistic and positive for the future.

Working across boundaries and silos in organisations is something I’ve always wanted to do. And working with Caraffi on this has made me understand that so much more is possible than if we try and do this by ourselves.

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