Building a Great Place to Work, Year After Year

For the third year running, Akkar has been recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services — here’s what it took to get there.

In March 2021, I walked into a small, grey office in central Brighton for my final interview in Akkar’s recruitment team. The surroundings may have been less than glamorous, but Callum’s vision for the business was anything but. I bought into it almost immediately, without knowing quite how much the business, and my role within it, would change.

There were few bells and whistles back then. Pipelines lived on whiteboards, aircon was a distant dream and taking the bins out on Friday afternoon was very much part of the job description.

Five years and a career change later, I’m Akkar’s HR lead, writing about something that would have felt fairly surreal then.

For the third year running, Akkar has been recognised as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services in the Small and Medium category.

A lot has changed. We’ve grown across the UK, US and Middle East, broadened our services, invested in our people and thankfully upgraded the office situation.

This year, 100% of employees agreed that Akkar is a great place to work, returning us to the result we achieved in our first year of certification.

Understanding the other 4%

In our second year, that figure dipped to 96%.

Most businesses would still be very happy with that. But Akkar has always had a high-performance mindset, so rather than celebrate the 96% and move on, we wanted to understand what the other 4% was telling us.

I think about it like Formula One. Once you’re operating near the front of the grid, small margins make the difference. We looked properly at the feedback, talked openly about where we could improve and focused on changes our team would actually benefit from.

Seeing that figure return to 100% this year is something we’re incredibly proud of. But I don’t sign up to the process each year for a catchy LinkedIn headline.

One message had been coming through increasingly strongly: people wanted greater flexibility.

So we listened.

Gradually, we introduced flexible working practices and built the infrastructure and frameworks needed to move towards hybrid working. In classic Akkar fashion, that also meant new MacBooks for everyone — great news for most of the team and a slightly steeper learning curve for some of us.

We also changed how we think about where we hire. We now have remote employees in Manchester and Bath while continuing to grow in the US, giving us access to great people without always being restricted by geography.

The results have been tangible.

Our work-life balance score increased by 25.9%, with flexible working and Summer Fridays coming through strongly. Flexible working was also one of the most frequently mentioned positive themes, particularly around morale, reducing the impact of long commutes and helping people stay with Akkar when circumstances change.

Recognition received 100% positive feedback too. Whether it’s acknowledging great work, celebrating promotions or our lunch clubs, high-rollers trips, incentives, commission and bonuses, recognition has always been part of how we operate. If you expect a lot from people, their success should feel worth celebrating.

And the improvements went further.

Perceptions of Akkar as a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace increased by 25%, management approachability by 18%, clarity of expectations by 21%, perceptions of fair pay by 20%, and fairness and consistency in management by 24.3%.

High performance and a great workplace

Recruitment can be brilliant, but it can also be demanding. Deals fall through, candidates change their minds, clients pause hiring and targets have an unfortunate habit of remaining targets regardless.

Being a Great Place to Work doesn’t mean removing our commercial edge or lowering expectations.

We’re ambitious, we hire ambitious people, and we want them to perform, progress and be proud of what they achieve. I don’t think high performance and a strong employee experience are competing ideas. They should support one another.

The challenge is making high performance sustainable: capable managers who know their teams as well as their numbers, clear expectations, honest conversations, recognition when things go well and support when they don’t.

This year’s results also showed us where there was more work to do.

Perceptions that promotions went to those who deserved them fell by 9.5%. Initially, I worried people were being overlooked or decisions had become inconsistent.

But when I looked deeper, the issue was different. Progression itself had become difficult. An overly simplified, tick-box framework no longer reflected how we operated or the consistent, sustainable performance we wanted to develop.

So I went down another rabbit hole.

In January, we introduced a bespoke progression framework designed to make expectations, development and promotion decisions more objective and transparent. People now have greater clarity on what strong performance looks like at every level, where they need to develop and what is genuinely required to progress. Managers have a more consistent way to assess performance and have those conversations too.

It’s early, so I’m not going to claim success before we can measure it. That’s the point: identify what isn’t working, make a meaningful change, then come back and see whether it actually made a difference.

Earning it year after year

Akkar today looks very different from the company I joined.

Following our best year yet, we’ve expanded our reach, broadened our services and continued investing in our people. But growth also means being more deliberate about culture.

When everyone sits within a few metres of each other, culture can happen quite naturally. When colleagues work across different services, cities, countries and time zones, you have to work harder at it.

There isn’t a point where you reach a strong score, congratulate yourself and decide the job is done. The business changes. People develop. What worked two or three years ago won’t necessarily be what we need next.

Being a great place to work isn’t something you achieve once. It’s something you have to keep earning, year after year.

There will always be another 4% to understand as the business evolves.

And I actually think that’s a good thing.

Abi Wright - abi@akkar.com