Marie Vine

Said the following about Margarita Ziborova:

“BCM is a business in pursuit of an ambitious growth and transformation strategy. From the outset, we recognised that attracting and retaining excellent people was going to be our #1 challenge. We are an SME with a keen eye on cost, so we did not want to start signing blank cheques and succumbing to increasing wage demands from an industry with a high ratio of self-employed consultants, this would not have been sustainable for us. Our desire was to create a people oriented culture within our business and create an environment “where people are valued and enjoy working” – a phrase that can be found in our Mission Statement. To back-up this desire and formalise our intentions, we set a strategic goal of achieving the Investors in People Silver Standard within 2 years (by 2018). We also set about recruiting a top HR talent to join our Senior Management Team…

Margarita Ziborova, or Margo as she likes to be known, joined BCM in January 2016 from Pepsi Co. Attracted by our ambition and the prospect of making a significant impact, she set about the challenge of settling into the construction industry, which from Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG’s) is quite a polar-opposite. Not only did Margo introduced BCM to high fashion, glitz and glamour, she quickly got to work developing a HR strategy to support our Project 2020 business transformation. Margo has been a game changer for our company, a true People’s Champion. From day 1 she has fought for improved benefits; a more structured performance management and people development process; improved engagement, leadership, and line management. Margo does not present her fellow Senior Managers with problems and requests for more investment, rather she has looked at our existing spend and identified efficiency opportunities; smarter ways of doing things; better products etc…

In just 18 months or so, BCM has gone through a truly positive transformation in culture, capability and competencies. Margarita Ziborova has been truly magnificent and has transformed our business.

Supporting Statements:

She began in a stand-alone role and managed to impressively deliver day-to-day administrative HR tasks alongside a massive strategy of development activities. After spending 10 months in the role she brought-in and developed an HR team (Recruitment Manager, Training Manager and Internal Communications Manager). Subsequently, she not only created in-house solutions and recruited talented HR professionals, she also drove productivity up by 60% through dropping the use of external suppliers.

Margarita’s key achievements include but are not limited to:

• Development of sustainable and transparent competency-based recruitment process, including introduction of an advanced Student Programme. Last year BCM grew by 30%, 7% of which was due to new graduates.

• A best-in-class on-boarding process was established for new starters, including a digital company induction; welcome pack; objectives setting/review; feedback forms and lunch with the Managing Director.

• A well-structured and fair compensation and benefits system was introduced, based on clear grades/levels. Margarita analysed and improved our benefits offering: pension contribution was increased, a bonus system was introduced, as well as life insurance etc…

• An Employee Relations System was built and controlled, allowing better management of performance and conduct.

• A Performance Management Process was launched that covers the annual cycle of objectives setting and review. A key element of which includes the usage of a cascading principle: company goals, departmental goals, individual goals. But the unique element about it is that we introduced working groups to support the company’s strategic plan which allow people to get exposure to delivering priorities on a company level outside of their daily job. We have 12 working groups sponsored by a member of our senior management, but led by an up and coming talent. The scope of these Working Groups is very broad. Our working groups are working on Business Improvements like re-branding, Health and Wellbeing, Close Call reporting, Fatigue Management and Sustainability to name but a few.

• A Training system based on capabilities required and on top of that, one that is linked to career aspirations and plans. This year we are running a massive Leadership program for all line managers. We are also carrying out Lunch & Learn sessions where people can share their knowledge and best practices on a weekly basis.

• A Culture and Engagement Process was established and included the introduction of a new Code of Conduct, Core Values, Leadership Behaviours, regular employee surveys, employee suggestion boxes.

• A Rewards & Recognition Program is driven and linked to company’s values, using a perks system and annual awards.

• New and regular Internal Communications are carried out using modern digital platforms to keep all people engaged with company’s priorities and news on projects and people. The use of internal social media helps all our people to embrace news, exchange and create common communications areas.

• Margarita also created a HR portal that serves as a one-stop-shop for any HR-related matters, that contains easy to understand information in an interactive way. A big focus is placed on Health & Wellbeing, including the introduction of an Employee Assistance Program, Healthy Mondays, cycle to work scheme, and SMART medical insurance with a pro-active health & wellbeing incentive.

• During this time Margarita has been with us our attrition rate has been kept under 9% and oud diversity indexes have improved, for instance we increased ratio of female by 30%.

All these programs are innovative and aggregate best practices in Human Resources. Margarita launched and introduced them with drive, determination and passion. The main challenge behind all these projects was to keep site-based people involved and engaged. So some of the programs were especially adapted for site teams. Another innovative approach that Margarita used was sharing and delegating HR projects to our regular employees, for instance our job descriptions required updating and Margarita did it with a number of employees rather than line managers, who were specially trained to do that, which was a positive experiment.

We believe that these HR initiatives have made a large and exceedingly positive impact on the level attraction, development and retention of key talents.

For more information on our people programs, please visit our People page on website https://www.bcmconstruction.co.uk/our-culture/people/“