Recently, we announced that Veramed was awarded a three-star accreditation by Best Companies, showing ‘world class’ levels of employee engagement. As part of the announcement, we were also ranked as the 5th best consultancy to work for in the UK. But how did we get there? Below I will reflect on the recognition and what it means for Veramed, our employees, and our customers.
Our employee experience is and has always been at the heart of everything we do at Veramed. This fact has been underlined even more clearly over the last 15 months with the disruption of the pandemic. To ensure we supported our employees through this period of adversity and change, we drew extensively on our well established and powerful community ethos. This was achieved by developing new tools and virtual events, such as online social events, regular pulse surveys and investment in our Veramed Excellence Programme.
We decided to formalise this commitment to employee engagement by participating in the Best Companies accreditation programme, the ‘B-Heard’ survey. Managed by the Best Companies team, this process is entirely independent, ensuring employees submit their responses confidentially and securely. This independence helped us achieve a high response rate and allowed our employees to share honest perspectives on their wellbeing, rewards, personal growth, team, and company leadership.
We knew that taking part meant opening ourselves up as an organisation to feedback, and this transparency is paramount in all our business dealings. Our staff’s day-to-day experiences define us as much as those of our customers.
How employee engagement helps us support clients
There is, of course, a well documented connection between customer and employee experience. We passionately believe that investing in our employees and culture delivers real benefits for our clients.
Our service requires significant human intelligence to understand data complexities and communicate their impact to clinical stakeholders. To help deliver on these complex projects, it is essential that we continue to attract, support and retain the best talent through employee-focused initiatives. We achieve this through the Veramed Excellence Programme, providing a flexible work-life balance, bespoke training, championing a nurtured culture, and providing supportive leadership.
Our core values of Integrity, Collaboration and Excellence run throughout the organisation and underpin our work, allowing us to tailor our services to the needs of individual clients. In providing such flexibility and enhanced support, we preserve employee wellbeing by resourcing our services realistically and forecasting accurately. This then translates to more efficient output and high quality work with a reduced risk of worker burnout.
Retaining our culture as we expand and grow
Of course, in a dynamic industry, no organisation or company culture stands still. We have successfully expanded our global presence over the last year with a thriving office in Kharkiv, Ukraine, a new legal entity (GmbH) in Germany to expand our team, as well as increasing our work with biotech partners across the US. All achieved during the pandemic. Commercially, we aim for controlled, sustainable growth that depends on taking on the right people in our new geographic locations.
However, no matter how we scale and expand our presence, employee engagement will remain fundamental to our business strategy. We believe that this focus will continue to set us apart as both an employer and CRO of choice. We are keen to continue our journey by listening carefully to the perspectives and ideas of our team and becoming the very best employer that we can be.
Do you want to become a part of the CRO with people at its heart? Click below to find available roles on our Careers page, or get in touch today to find out how we can support your business.
