Watch: How Camelot built a strong company culture

Camelot are operators of The National Lottery and have 1000 employees. In 2022 Camelot were awarded People Insight’s Outstanding Workplace Award twice, after achieving a top-quartile employee engagement score in both their employee surveys. They also won the award in 2021, when they increased employee engagement by 10% in 12 months.

Below, Kat, Senior Internal Comms Manager and Niamh, Head of People Experience share how Camelot have built their brilliant, engaging company culture.

Keep reading to learn how they have:

1. Built a strong culture through communities and networks
2. Embedded employee listening as part of their culture
3. Used agile employee surveys to drive change at pace
4. Acted as a result of employee feedback in a way that’s visible and tangible to colleagues

[Niamh]

“Through operating The National Lottery we change lives, and we do that in two ways. Our players can win life changing amounts of money, and we also, through our players, generate 30 million for good causes each week.”

[Kat]

“Our mission is to change lives, and I think that’s a pretty special thing to be a part of. And I think I feel like everybody feels very connected with our purpose. Being part of something that generates an average of £30 million to good causes each week is amazing and an amazing thing to contribute to.

[Niamh]

“I think everybody here would agree that the thing that is most special about Camelot is our people. People get very excited about working for a company with such a good purpose. And in the internal comms team and in the people team, we’re really proud to be able to bring that purpose to life.

How do you think we have created such an inclusive company culture? We’ve recently done a survey and had some really strong results in our D&I questions.”

[Kat]

“Yeah, I think it’s not something that can happen overnight or be overly engineered. We really started working on this five years ago where we created open environments for people to be able to share their stories, share their beliefs and a safe space for them to be able to do that. And I think also by slowly building up our community network within Camelot; we’ve got a pride network, mental health, first aiders, women’s network, parents’ network, environmental network, cultural community and now an ability network.

That’s a safe space for people to be able to come in and share things that they’re passionate about, share ideas, and make a difference around the company.”

[Niamh]

“People Insight have been on this journey with us actually since 2014 and I know when I came into the role, I was really passionate that we stayed at the same provider because I think the historical information is really important for us.

So they’ve been a really agile partner and really helpful and I think pretty much every time we do a survey we go back with “Have we got the right set of questions?” or “How could we ask this question in a different way?’”

[Kat]

“I really see People Insight as being more than a partner to us. They’re an extension of our team helping us along all parts of the process, including on our annual surveys. We get a consultant to come in and really speak to the exec about what is underneath the numbers and give us some really deep dive analysis and offer some great suggestions on where we need to improve things and how we can do that.”

[Niamh]

“Yeah, those sessions have been super useful and sometimes when you’re running on quite high numbers, which we do, it’s like, how can you make that difference? Where can you lift the lid? And they’re very insightful in helping us with that strategy.”

[Kat]

“By not running a survey in the right way, I think that people can get survey fatigue. So it’s really important that when you’re asking people to have their say, you’re analysing the results, listening to people, cascading in the right way and really action planning across the whole company, opening the loop, then also closing it.”

[Niamh]

“I think that’s really important. And also being agile with your messaging. So as soon as we’ve done the survey, we’ll do a quick heads up to everybody as to what’s come out as the main topics.”

[Kat]

“Yeah, I think people need to trust that if they fill out the survey, action is going to happen for it. We always get really high scores that way. We’ve created a company culture where people really love to have their say because they trust that they, by what they’re saying, can make a difference and that action will happen.”

[Niamh]

“Yeah, I’ve noticed in the last few years of quite a few years of doing the surveys that the verbatim comments are getting richer and richer, and that’s where the real gems of insights are.”

[Kat]

“So, I think that the amazing thing to see is the difference in results from when Nigel, our CEO, joined us five years ago to where we’re at now, because it has been such a journey and we’ve consecutively improved scores across all areas up to now where our score is 91%.”

[Niamh]

“And engagement has become such a part of our everyday language. Like all of our managers are held to account on their engagement scores. That’s a really important part of being a People Manager at Camelot.”

[Kat]

“And I think what really makes a difference is the that the individual issues are tackled or challenges are tackled within the teams, and that’s supported by our people, business partners. And all of the results of the survey are considered when we’re building our people plan which really supports our strategy.”

[Niamh]

“Wellbeing is something that became very important in the last few years that we could see in the survey we needed to do something with. So we now have a wellbeing strategy and a pretty strong reason to support wellbeing.”

[Kat]

“Yeah, and I love seeing in the numbers, you know, we know the difference that we’re making in our plans. And then when you look at the numbers in the survey, you see them going up. It’s really nice to see actually the difference that we’re making to how people feel.”

[Niamh]

“We might be making it sound easy that you can move these numbers. It takes a huge effort, and you can’t take your foot off the gas on any of the mechanics. One of the ones that we struggle with probably a bit more than others is learning and development. So that was in the fifties. It’s now in the seventies, but we literally wait with bated breath every time we get the results.

However we are tasked in the learning and development team to move. You know, that is our target is to move the metrics up and we can see it going up so we can see that what we’re doing is making the difference. So that’s a really important part of any planning as well as surveys.”