We’re changing the way we work – supporting the workforce of the future
At Global Marine Group, we have consistently been at the forefront of innovation within the offshore, oil & gas, and renewables industry. Whether it’s driving technological excellence in subsea engineering, pioneering world-class training or building vital infrastructure that supports billions of people worldwide – we lead the charge for change.
And in 2021, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re breaking more barriers with the launch of a new initiative: GMG Evolution. This industry-first programme represents the future of working in our business, as we look to support new models and create a healthier, happier and more productive Global Marine Group family.
Evolution is a unique working programme which encourages remote and flexi working for all of our employees across the Group. It is entirely optional – our state-of-the-art HQ isn’t going anywhere – but colleagues will now be able to determine how much time they spend in the office compared to their home, giving them more power over how they work. Similarly, employees can work more flexibly, allowing them to focus on home-life when they need to and work when they’re the most productive. So everyone can work more effectively and efficiently.
Our focus within our office locations will be more centred around collaboration – making it easy for teams to meet and work together on projects, training, creative thinking and strategic planning – with open-plan and adaptable facilities to enable them to do so.
As a global leader in subsea engineering, we have over 900 personnel all over the world, across multiple time zones. This includes employees in offices, vessels, depots and offshore environments. Regardless of where they work and how they work, they will be part of the GMG Evolution programme, and given full support from our central teams to ensure they can take advantage. And by de-centralising our workplace, we are now able to recruit from a wider talent pool, ensuring our clients get the very best people for their projects, regardless of where they are located!
We are currently in the process of trialling various pilots as part of the GMG Evolution programme across the Group with new ideas and best practice shared across teams as we learn and continue to improve. We will continue to monitor the efficacy of the programme to ensure we are delivering the same Global Marine Group quality service whilst continuing to support our employees. This long-term initiative is tied to our 5-year business plan which aims to create a template for other businesses of our scale to follow. Not just in offshore and renewables, but in all industries!
GMG Evolution is the next, well, evolution of the benefits that we already offer to our teams:
> Employee awards, both peer nominated year-round as well as annually at our formal celebration.
> Ongoing mental health and wellbeing support including fitness challenges, access to mindfulness tools, healthcare benefits and 34 fully-trained Mental Health First aiders across the business.
> Charitable activities, fundraising and supported volunteering.
> Employee engagement initiatives including Ask Me Anything sessions with our leadership team members, All Hands meetings, Town Hall events, drinks with the boss and the use of Microsoft Teams & Yammer for improved communications Group-wide.
We want to build on the great work we’re already doing at the Global Marine Group to create a more balanced, caring place to work, and we see the GMG Evolution Programme as the cornerstone of all of this!
Prioritising Employee Wellbeing
By giving our employees freedom to choose how they want to work, we’re putting their needs first – creating a strong, more flexible work-life balance.
Creating a More Efficient Workforce
Our internal data shows that 50% of the workforce have seen productivity increase through remote working. We don’t want to see that end.
Reducing our Collective Carbon Footprint
By cutting down office energy bills and lengthy commutes for employees, we’re doing our part to reduce our organisation’s emissions.
The average UK home to work commute by car is 23 miles per day. At GMG, we have 315 office-based employees in the UK. Using these numbers in the last 12 months we have saved 1,651,860 commuter miles on UK roads by facilitating remote working for our teams. This equates to approximately 389 tonnes of CO2 not being released into the atmosphere since the first lockdown began!
Given the flexible, hybrid approach that is going to be offered to all going forward through the GMG Evolution Programme, we will reduce our corporate carbon footprint. This will mean less energy, heating and lighting within offices, and may also reduce commuter miles by on average 60% per person – equating to a huge annual saving of around 233.12 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
These changes to the way we work as a business are in response to what our employees have been telling us over the last 12 months, as well as working with our customers and suppliers to ensure that we can continue to deliver excellence in everything that we do.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions has forced us to adapt our working practices over the past year, in order to maintain our growth trajectory. Like so many others, we invested in remote working at the start of the pandemic to ensure there was little to no disruption for our staff or customers.
And the results speak for themselves! Hybrid working has received positive engagement with staff, evidenced through WinningTemp, our employee insight tool. By learning from these adaptations, and interrogating the data, we have been able to determine a new, more flexible way of working tailored to each individual circumstances – which benefits everyone.
We don’t want to lose the best bits of these new ways of working by simply reverting to the old 9-5 office-based patterns which were ingrained into us pre-pandemic. Searching for ways that we can offer flexibility on work location, attendance and wellbeing, while still ensuring the way we work meets our customers’ needs and delivers the same value as ever. There’s been no better opportunity than right now to make this happen.
We’re exceptionally proud about how we invest in our people, but we know that as a business we must continue to develop and evolve to meet the challenges of the future and provide the next generation of workers with a healthy, comfortable, forward-thinking place to work. Along with supporting our long-term employees, we want to make flexibility and wellbeing the bedrocks of our ethos.
Because we know from decades of experience that a talented workforce that is cared for will be more efficient, and provide the high-quality service that is associated with the Global Marine Group name.
We are committed to monitoring the success of the GMG Evolution Programme, developing new additions where they emerge and continually listening to our employees to make improvements. Through connection and engagement, we can continue to grow – making more waves in the industry.
“I have always had a long daily commute to the office, which could be temperamental depending on traffic on any given day. With the Global Marine Group now embracing remote working and providing the technology to work collaboratively as a team, this has not only freed up almost two hours each day of wasted travel time, it’s given me more opportunity to focus on my work and enabled my family to make a life-changing move. We’ve been looking to move away from the South East for some time, but thanks to the flexibility GMG are now offering, we’ve made the move to the North East. This has given myself, my wife and our two children the quality of life and happiness that we’ve always dreamed of, and the security of being supported by a great company that I didn’t want to leave.”
Ricky Mardlin, Solution Designer, Global Marine Group
“The collaborative approach of our GMG Evolution Programme has resulted in a new flexible working model that not only supports the wellbeing of our teams, but provides the business with a replicable model of productivity, service delivery and continuous improvement, changing the traditional mindset of “presenteeism” and being in the office, to one centred on outputs, not hours worked.”
Nat Allison, Managing Director, CWind
“As with many organisations presently, we are pivoting to a new way of working – looking to be both practical and innovative in our approach. The GMG Evolution project is looking at aspects of work, organisation and cultural transformation, and a stakeholder-focused approach to ensure our quality of service delivery isn’t negatively impacted no matter where in the organisation we’re looking.”
Paul Rose, Director of HR & Talent, Global Marine Group
“We are looking to create buildings that incorporate shared spaces and conference rooms as well as hot desks alongside phone pods, all coming together to create engagement hubs where employees can easily meet and collaborate together. As an individual, the new hybrid working that has evolved due to the coronavirus pandemic has enabled me to adopt a flexible working pattern. From a personal perspective this has created a better quality of life and improved my work-life balance – decreased stress but more quality, focused time to be able to do my job well.”
Claire Cormick, Facilities Manager, Global Marine Group
“As we look to exit the travel restrictions created by COVID-19 our business has benefited from the reduced carbon footprint created by fewer crew changes, less commuting to offices/facilities and reduced business travel for a variety of reasons. Moving forward we will be looking to maintain some key activities remotely, or at the very least, flexibly to maintain some of these gains by introducing a hybrid working model, embracing technology gains via remote auditing, team meetings by video call and reviewing the use of drones to minimise not only our CO2 emissions.”
Graham Boyle, Director of RQHSE, Global Marine Group
“Having worked in a company which closed during the first COVID-19 lockdown, I was very happy to join the Global Marine Group in the latter half of last year. I was really interested in joining the OceaniQ team but don’t live close to any of the Group offices. I was particularly drawn to their flexible working attitude, which was very important to me as a working mum of school children. The flexibility that we’ve been offered during the lockdowns over the last 12 months has taken the pressure off juggling work and home life through these difficult times immensely. As restrictions ease, I have the ability to travel and work from the office if I choose to but likewise, there is no pressure from the company to do so. The transition from office work to a remote working lifestyle has been easy to make, due to the support I have received from the company from day one.”
Cherri-Ann Bones, Survey & Route Engineer, OceanIQ
Interested in learning more about GMG Evolution?
Speak to a Global Marine Group representative for more information!
