Employee relations

We want Kaplan to be a great place to work, where everyone can succeed.

As a purpose driven organisation, we ensure that everyone at Kaplan understands why we do what we do and the contribution that they make towards the achievement of our ambition and goals. Everything we do connects back to our purpose and we work together to create success.

Two men and a woman using a tablet during a meeting

How everything connects

Purpose – the reason we do what we do.
Promise – the commitment we make to our learners, candidates, clients, customers and colleagues.
Personality – how we sound when we communicate, our tone of voice and brand persona.
Values – the backbone of our brand, the driving force behind us all living our purpose and promise every day.
Vision – the business we want to become.
Key performance indicators – for creating and measuring success.
Goals – moving us towards our vision.
Team and individual goals – your contribution, the difference you make, how you create success.

To embed this in our culture, we have an induction programme for new joiners called Setting You Up for Success. This ensures everyone is clear on our purpose and their role in delivering it.

Employment policies

We are fully committed to conducting our business in a way which promotes equality and inclusion, and as an employer, we value this within our workforce.

We believe in remunerating employees fairly for the work that they do and providing fair and equal access to progression. We ensure all our employees are paid a rate that is no less than that published by the Living Wage Foundation. We publish our gender pay gap report annually, and this drives activity within the company.

All our roles have a defined level and transparent salary bands. This provides clarity and fairness for everyone. All employees also have access to our comprehensive benefits package.

We have a comprehensive suite of employee policies, including:

Maternity/Paternity/Partner leave
Adoption leave
Shared/Parental leave
Menopause
Employee Inclusion and Equal Opportunity
Anti-Bullying and Harassment
Flexible Working
Training and Development
Volunteering

Our Employment Policies, plus additional guidance for managers, are shared on our employee intranet.

Employee voice

We create multiple opportunities for employees to share their experiences, views, ideas and suggestions.

Representative networks
We operate champions/representatives networks across a number of key areas such as GDPR, safeguarding, Inclusion and Equal Opportunities, and Business Continuity. These are a great opportunity for sharing what we are trying to achieve and getting practical suggestions about how these can be achieved, as well as helping implement them.
Employee Engagement Survey
We invite employees to share how they feel about Kaplan as a place to work, where we are doing well or improving, and where we still have room to do better through our annual Employee Engagement Survey. Feedback from the survey informs the employee goals we set for the following year to ensure we are adapting as people's priorities change.
Opportunities to be part of the conversation
We provide multiple ways for our employees to get involved in conversations about our business, including regular team meetings and involvement in projects and new initiatives. Employees can also share their views, thoughts and ideas, and connect directly with our senior executives, through our employee intranet. Our intranet also provides a social space where employees with shared interests or passions can connect in Community Hubs.
Raising a concern
We have clear channels for employees to raise issues, either informally or through more formal routes such as our Grievance or Whistleblowing procedures. Where issues are raised, appropriate steps are taken to address the concerns and ensure that employees who raise concerns are protected from detriment as a result.

Two-way communication

We use multiple channels to keep employees informed about our business, our ambitions, our goals and how we are doing.

We do this via:

An interactive employee intranet with content owned and authored by colleagues across the business.
Regular business updates from our senior leaders.
Ongoing, open invitation to ‘Ask your MD’ a question, on any subject.
Regular updates on our Key Performance Indicators (KPI) focused on learner/candidate satisfaction, client satisfaction, and financial performance.
News of the Week - opportunities for employees to share their stories with colleagues across the UK.

Employee recognition

Recognising colleagues and teams who have gone above and beyond is an important part of our culture, and helps make Kaplan a great place to work where everyone can succeed. We have a range of schemes available to employees and managers, to recognise and say thank you for exemplifying our values and helping us to create shared success together.

Recognition from Kaplan

The Kaplan Way Awards - UK and Global recognition for exemplifying the guiding principles that describe the type of company we are and want to be.

We award employees who embody the values and principles of Kaplan, which are:

Student Success
Great Place
Shared Values
Continuous Transformation

All employees can nominate colleagues for the awards. We typically receive more than 200 nominations each year.

Recognition from managers

We have a flexible recognition framework for managers to recognise and celebrate the outstanding achievements of their team members. Typically, team members are invited to nominate their colleagues; some schemes also invite nominations from outside of the immediate team. Awards are made monthly or quarterly.

Recognition from colleagues

Employees are able to ‘send a star’ as instant recognition to say thank you to colleagues, or whole teams, who have helped them personally, their team or the wider organisation. Recipients are featured on the main homepage of our employee intranet.