The IIP Awards provide an opportunity for BMS World Mission to be recognised for achieving significant improvements since 2022 in strategic leadership, people management and alignment of our organisational culture to our vision, strategy and overall transformation to becoming more a globally-dispersed, people-centred organisation.
BMS seeks to become more polycentric because we believe people are called to serve globally, sent from anywhere to everywhere. To achieve this we need to transform. We also needed to invest in strengthening our people practices, including embedding our vision and values in all we do.
Since 2022 we have invested time and resources in essential building blocks of our organisational transformation such as refining our vision statement, developing and agreeing our target operating model and setting out our journey of transformation identifying key enablers to accelerate change.
Essential to this was:
We sought to become more data-driven with KPIs to measure organisational culture and health and staff capability and performance. We listened to diverse voices of our Board, staff, our global partners and supporters. We have drawn on internal and external data to understand trends and areas to improve, identifying what we can do to make the most difference.
We felt it was important to recognise the excellent progress we have made and so we entered the Investors in People Awards. We have a 5-year people strategy and, after only 2 years, we had the opportunity to get external recognition of this progress.
Our trustees and staff were excited that BMS has been shortlisted for an award. BMS World Mission is a people organisation. We are about the people we employ, the people we support and the people we serve. Being shortlisted provides a recognition that we are putting people at the heart of what we do.
At BMS, we have embedded a culture of continuous improvement and learning and often focus on what needs to improve. Entering the awards led us to pause and consider what we have achieved in 3 years. Being shortlisted provides further recognition of our achievements.
Moreover, it provides an opportunity for us to share with others our approach to transformation, to highlight the importance of noticing, listening and considering what could make the most difference. This can be through new operational frameworks, such as our global reward framework to better position us to become more global and more easily employ the right people in the right place at the right time, or the introduction of our senior leadership team. However small initiatives can also contribute to creating a positive work culture, such as inviting overseas staff representation on our staff forum or introducing our Midweek Exchange, a self-organising space for staff to share key information or interesting things they are working on.
We set out to become more people-centred and strengthen our culture to support our transformation. We can be proud of how we have shaped our culture, role modelling and introducing new practices, such as running learning sessions using a simple, replicable model.
Our vision starts with: Together we are working. We are not doing things to or for others, we’re working with others. Being short-listed, gives us confidence to continue; inspires us to be bolder in sharing our successes and how we have learned to improve. However, it is ultimately an achievement for BMS, our Board, staff, supporters, global partners and for those whose lives we impact through our work.
BMS is a faith-based, global charity. We are a people agency: we send, connect and serve people globally. As such, we seek to ensure we have the right people, in the right place at the right time. Investing in people is fundamental to achieving our vision, strategy and organisational transformation. Winning an Investors in People 2025 Award, would bring recognition of our achievements as a result of our investment in people and organisational transformation.
We recognise we have much to improve and we are now aiming for gold! To win an IIP Award would inspire and motivate us to build on our success. So we will continue to:
Winning an award could strengthen our brand, attract staff and volunteers and motivate staff to continue to reflect our values as they work in a constantly changing, uncertain and volatile world.
It would help us highlight the importance of investing in people to increase BMS’ impact. Our staff are inspired and motivated by our global impact. Each year we serve thousands of people globally whether in the aftermath of a disaster; through training and mobilising churches to serve communities, supporting refugees at their journey’s end or providing life-saving help in the poorest countries.
If we won an award, it would be something we can celebrate together. It would be a celebration of our staff, volunteers, partners and supporters.
It would be received on behalf of all the people we serve.
Our overarching people goal is to equip, empower and support our people to achieve our vision, strategy and organisational transformation. IIP’s goals and approach align to our goal, approach and cultural shift. For example, through the IIP’s accreditation process, the practitioner listens to diverse voices, collects and analyses data and highlights areas of progress and to improve.
The IIP framework and accreditation provides a systematic assessment tool that guide our overall investment in people. We value the external benchmarking as it challenges and inspires us to improve.
We appreciate our practitioner’s feedback. She held a mirror to us as she shared how impressed she was with our staff’s commitment and pride at working for BMS and our overall impact. It highlighted to me how we can take our impact for granted and how important it is for us to share impact stories and celebrate our successes. She challenged us to be bolder in sharing those stories and proud of our transformation. For example, she highlighted staff’s excitement about the people pool, a virtual pool of highly-skilled people to provide organisations with targeted support. It was initiated to help us become more global, agile and responsive. We built and adapted the model, fostering our culture of creativity and innovation, and now have 26 people on the pool from 11 countries.
We have a 5-year people strategy and are on a journey of long-term transformation. Our focus often is on improvement and our mechanisms for transformation, such as our people pool. By engaging with the wider community, we can learn from companies in different sectors. We can also contribute to the wider IIP community by sharing our stories and what we have learnt as we have invested in people, our culture and organisational transformation.
Engaging in this award and participating in the Awards event, challenges us to be more externally focussed and proactive in engaging with the wider IIP community.
Share to:
Ready to make work better? Complete the form below and one of our team will be in touch to discuss your accreditation enquiry.
Ready to make work better? Complete the form below and one of our team will be in touch to discuss your accreditation enquiry.
