How we Help

Engage Your People

We believe the importance of people and culture is often overlooked in private equity, but our experience has taught us that it really matters. Great cultures attract and retain great people, and that is fundamental to scalable growth.

It’s why we designed a People Toolkit, to help management teams to create a more engaged and happier workforce, focussing on areas such as:

Engagement scores
Cultural assessment
HR function maturity
HR system selection

75 %

OF PORTFOLIO USED PEOPLE & CULTURE TOOLKIT SINCE INCEPTION

How can ECI support management teams with people and culture?

ECI People & Culture Specialist, Lesley Davies and partners Lewis Bantin and Rich Pearce discusses how ECI help portfolio companies with our People Toolkit.

Please accept marketing-cookies to watch this video.

One of the things I’ve really learned from the management teams is that it’s important in this environment to have a critical friend — or a guide who can help them focus on that critical area of people and culture. This is particularly important because often HR is one of the last functions to fully form in that size of business, and so having someone to really help them navigate it and go on that journey is a really valuable input for them. What we’ve found over the years is that the best businesses we’ve backed have had the most engaged, most energised people. And the more we can help other businesses get to that, the better the outcome. We developed the People and Culture Toolkit back in 2019 — it’s a series of tools that our portfolio and management teams can draw upon to help improve their culture, the maturity of their HR departments, and even select their HR system. This toolkit has been deployed in around 75% of the portfolio companies we’ve invested in since 2018. It’s a real tool — it gets used an awful lot and it’s added a lot of value across the portfolio.

One of the things about ECI that really stands out is the focus on people and the culture of an organisation. They’ve been very supportive in ensuring that we’ve got employee engagement, the right people in the business and making sure that the people agenda is the main agenda. That’s been a really welcome bonus.”

Naz Dossa

CEO, Peoplesafe

Case Study

Ciphr

Ciphr is the go-to HR and payroll software and solutions partner for UK mid-market businesses. ECI supported Ciphr to implement a people strategy that delivered measurable improvements in engagement, culture and DEI:

Delivered significantly enhanced EVP
Revamped the recruitment process
Embedded a high performance culture
Leadership and management training programme
Fostered a values-based culture focused on diversity, inclusivity, wellbeing and employee engagement
Led to a halving of voluntary turnover

An outline of a circle with a grey filled circle overlapping in the top right of the image

+ 33

eNPS improvement

46%

female employees

+ 9%

Quality of hire

We’ve significantly invested in our employee engagement at Ciphr, including training, management programmes, career development and a focus on culture and team wellbeing, Engagement is always a lagging indicator, but seeing such strong improvement reflects the work we’ve done, and it’s been such a big help having the Commercial Team’s support to focus and prioritise efforts.

Claire Hawes

COO and CPO at Ciphr

Open Section