Winning Hearts & Minds

Embedding TUPE staff into the Fortem culture, By Anne Morris

We began our journey as a small team of like-minded people, using our values as a basis for our core business, delivering repairs and maintenance contracts for social housing clients and public sector buildings across the UK.

Due to the nature of the industry and our contracts, when we are awarded new contract, we are likely to inherit a workforce that need to be ‘TUPED’ into Fortem. The ‘TUPE’ law protects jobs of people on contracts that change hands, it is essential that those affected quickly understand the Fortem culture and its importance in the workplace.

The operational success of a new contract is essential, our processes and procedures are well documented and tested, however, the main factor that determine success is people.

Anne Morris, Talent Manager, reflects on how Fortem works with staff affected in the TUPE process and how we ensure they are engaged in the Fortem culture.

The TUPE process

As you can imagine, transferring from one employer to another can be an extremely worrying and stressful time for people. “Moving to work for a new company can be a challenge. We know it creates a range of emotions and anxieties, which can sometimes be tricky to resolve. The best way to understand that feeling is to put yourselves in their shoes, imagine everything that is familiar changes overnight. We want new starters to quickly feel welcomed into the company and embraced by our values and culture, as this is key to being a highly functioning business.”

Fortem has a culture focussed on care. We understand that the size of change that affected colleagues are going through shouldn’t be underestimated. Through mobilisation we focus on helping people to understand their job so they can carry it out quickly as possible after transfer.

Anne Morris, Talent Manager at Fortem

Listening

“Creating a good start for the new employees is essential. To do this we need to really care about people, how they feel, what their experiences is, whether they understand what they are being asked to do, if the training has been effective, if we are really listening to what the new people are telling us”.

“We are a business that values and respects the importance of relationships at every level, clients, local government representatives, tenants, employees, trade unions, and subcontractors. We listen to all these stakeholders so that all employees are able to enjoy a healthy and progressive future with us.”

Since our formation in 2002 we have been working successfully with a variety of trade unions to both welcome new employees into our company under TUPE and maintain industrial relations so that all employees are able to enjoy a healthy and progressive future with us.

Mobilisation

We have worked hard over the years at developing and improving our approach to bringing people into the business, making them feel welcome, and helping them to learn what to do and supporting them to stand on their own when mobilisation teams move out. We strongly focus on supporting those affected, giving them the training, support and contacts to feel well equipped.

Effective workforce

According to Hubspot, 69% of employees say they would work harder if better appreciated, and Anne agrees, “the main components of a healthy culture is engagement, a feeling of belonging and empowerment. Once we are certain that affected employees are happy with their working conditions, environment, and terms of work we can start to explore their psychological needs such as belonging to a company and feeling valued, which they are!”

She concludes, “We want new starters to quickly feel part of the Fortem family. A strong culture, with hearts and minds engaged is very powerful. Our success at Fortem is due to our people, who are passionate, committed and care about what they deliver. We take pride in developing all our employees and supporting them to achieve their potential.”