People Awards 2024: Workplace Culture Award – Cove UK

Shortlist

• Cove UK
• Kerb
• Rick Stein Group
• Thomas Franks

The winner of the Workplace Culture Award impressed judges with the “breadth and depth” of its employee engagement.

Cove UK runs 17 holiday parks across the UK, employing 1,300 people in peak season. The business was built up through the acquisition of family-run holiday parks, each with an individual culture and way of working.

Taking values from its US parent company, the people team looked to formulate a culture that would unite its sites to the benefit of teams, guests and shareholders. Cove UK recruited ‘pathfinders’ from its teams to help embed this shared culture in their workplaces, through inductions, team events and social media.

The people team also held regular sessions with park managers and used social media channels, including Facebook and TikTok, to speak informally with employees at all levels.

The business’s values have been embedded in recruitment campaigns, annual reviews and learning and development. A key part of the business ethos is to develop talent and Cove UK works with the University of Chichester to provide leadership training and a postgraduate degree programme. The leadership development programme has been running for three years and all 21 employees who have taken part have since been promoted. The programme also saw each participant undertake a business project, with all ideas since implemented or in development.

Training schemes are also available to employees, alongside coaching and mentoring programmes.

When it comes to wellbeing regular drop-in sessions allow team members to contribute ideas, leading to the introduction of game nights, pizza nights, shopping trips for those working at remote parks, competitions, sports tournaments, charity events, wild swimming sessions and yoga. 

Recognition programmes see those living the values of the business celebrated in a monthly competition, with trophies, vouchers and annual prizes of £1,500 up for grabs. And at the end of each season two huge parties (one in the north of England and the other in the south) are held for team members to celebrate, with only the people team working on the night.

However, the team are not resting on their laurels and meet with the chief executive twice a month to track engagement and discuss feedback, retention figures and information from exit interviews.

Our judges recognised that Cove UK had its finger on the pulse of its employees and described it as a “well-deserved winner”.

Judges’ comments

Sally Beck, general manager, Royal Lancaster London: “Cove UK really impressed with its breadth and depth of cultural engagement with TikTok, LinkedIn and Facebook as well as more traditional cultural value communication. It had evidence of bottom-up inclusivity and engagement as well as top-down communication – a great entry and a really well-deserved winner.”