Eden has long been a supporter of Engage for Success and the ethos it has for business success through employee engagement and listening to the Employee Voice. Like all organisations Eden has been through a very different couple of years with Covid and the recovery from that, the timeline also saw Eden turn 20 years old from opening to the public in 2001 and there was a key decision around this to revisit our Mission, Vision and Values to dovetail with the new 5 year strategic plan and ambitious growth programme.
Never more has Eden’s mission been more relevant and we’ve ‘grown’ (up) into a serious organisation and convenor in the space of the climate crisis and what we call all do to halt progress of this. Following hosting the G7 leaders, Eden were invited to COP 26 in Edinburgh to share our mission and how we could help both individuals and organisations have a positive impact on reducing the climate crisis. The time was perfect to return to what we said we did, refresh this and look at how we actively include our employees in this.
Earlier this year (2022) we developed a workshop around Mission and Values that all our employees were invited to attend so that we could hear their voice on this area and how we ensure that values are alive, embraced and fully support delivery of our mission. From that we have now got a summarised version of values statements that we will shortly be sharing with the team and to bring these to life, behaviour frameworks to show what good and great looks like. In addition, there will also be a leadership behaviour framework which are about to complete and sign off with our Senior Leadership team. Once these have gone live, we will be inviting all employees back to a further workshop to try them on for size and work with them for 3-4 months to ensure that they are right.
As part of this we have also refreshed out Internal Communications and Engagement Strategy, and our Learning & Development Strategy so that we can reflect many of the things we heard through the workshops and ensure that our values and behaviours are weaved through everything that we do. This will take time, we will keep returning to make sure that the fit remains right, and if it doesn’t, what we do to get things back in shape again.
As Eden grows both nationally and internationally over the coming 5 years, this will be a cornerstone of everything that we do when developing ‘Eden in a Box’ to take to other sites with new teams so that we are sure the culture we have developed and built at Eden can be seamlessly transferred to other sites, employees and partner relationships.
It’s going to be an exciting 5 year plan.Dawn S George, Chief People & Culture Officer, Eden Project Ltd
