A COMPANY helping employees steer a career path through the organisation is bidding for success in the awards.

Britannia Rescue, part of the LV= insurance group, is the UK’s fourth largest road rescue operator in the UK. It employs 130 people at its Folly Hall Mills office, where staff receive about 110,000 calls each quarter.

The company has a “role progression” scheme that acknowledges the skills and abilities of each team member. As a result of this, 17% of staff were promoted or moved into new roles in the first half of this year.

Management co-ordinator Kelly Blagbrough said: “We believe in giving people the opportunity to take on responsibilities outside their role which will help them to develop or gain additional skills.

“We currently have 124 ‘add-on’ roles in place which employees can apply to be involved with. These extra roles are in addition to their core role, but form part of their performance development plan (PDP) so that they get support and recognition for the work they do.”

Each employee’s PDP outlines targets for the year and is reviewed with the line manager each month. The firm’s annual bonus scheme is based on how employees have delivered against their targets – and can be up to 30% of salary.

Employees are recognised for their hard work or for going the extra mile through an in-house My Recognition system allowing employees to send e-cards to each other to recognise a specific piece of work or a great performance. All the My Recognition nominations are reviewed quarterly and the top three receive trophies and certificates as well as a monetary credit. A similar scheme runs at group level.

In addition, the HR team runs an employee award scheme to pick out the best nominations and awards from the whole LV= business with the winners getting £500 credited to their My Recognition account and lots of promotion around the business.

Britannia Rescue has a dedicated training team of three based in Huddersfield supported by five line trainers from the call centre teams.

So far they have delivered more than 5,300 hours of training in addition to 287 hours provided centrally and 21 hours of self-study learning through online learning tools.

The company operates a Wellbeing Programme to look after the psychological, physical and social welfare of its staff. It provides flexible working and support for families with healthcare benefits, term-time only working, childcare vouchers, career breaks, home working and a pension scheme.

It also runs a company-wide, anonymous and independently run staff survey designed to highlight how employees feel about the company and how it is run – and identify areas for improvement. The 2011 survey showed consistently high satisfaction rates.

Living up to the motto of Work Hard, Play Hard, the company holds regular fund days, employee social events and bi-annual parties – a policy reflected in its low absence and turnover staff turnover levels.

“People are not only committed to their jobs, but happy to be here,” said Kelly.