New Constitution heralds new era at Scott Bader

Scott Bader’s nomination comes off the back of a range of DE&I initiatives over the past three years, including; launching a Women in Leadership programme that has now ran five times with 40% of the organisations female colleagues in attendance, the establishment of a global D&I Council, D&I focused e-learning for all colleagues in 2020 and again in 2023, launching RISE a diversity in leadership programme in 2021 and repeated in 2023 with 92% of the first cohort receiving promotions, leadership competencies introduced for all our line managers, introducing a D&I focused Guiding Principle into the Group’s Constitution, and work to improve its UK gender pay gap resulting in Scott Bader’s UK median pay gap sitting at -8.3% in April 2024 compared with a national average of 14.3%.

Amplifying the voice of our colleagues

Scott Bader is immensely proud of the part it’s played in pioneering the employee ownership model. For over 70 years colleagues have been nurturing the gift our founder, Ernest Bader, bestowed everyone in the business. But in those years the world has inevitably and irrevocably changed. The principles of industrial democracy that Ernest held so dear are as relevant as ever but, in 2021, the time had come to carve out a new Constitution and convey in, the simplest terms, the huge upshots our company’s unique structure delivers.

Following a series of focus groups, town hall meetings, webinars and polls, there was almost company-wide consensus regarding the proposed changes afoot. In fact, with an 83% voter turn-out, it was the highest attendance level recorded in a decade, demonstrating that this was something colleagues truly cared about.

Putting transformative changes into effect

The shiny new Members Guide and accompanying animation are the core outputs from what has been a long and involved process but the true outcomes remain to be seen. As colleagues familiarise themselves with all the ways they can live out Ernest Bader’s founding philosophies through a modern lens, the months and years ahead will show the extent of cultural shift and the collective determination to genuinely make a difference. But early engagement with the process signifies a promising start to this new era and an exciting time in the company’s history ahead.

Find out what this adds up to for Scott Bader’s Members, all over the world.

Watch the animation below and learn more about a business that’s been behind the employee ownership model – since the start.

Key highlights: Launching the new Constitution in numbers

• 1,500 ‘live’ attendees and over 3,000 ‘on-demand’ viewings of the virtual events hosted throughout the process

• 500 responses to anonymous company-wide survey

• 40 participants in 4 externally facilitated focus groups

• 19 colleagues involved in 4 lead steering committees

• 1 Members Guide, 6 languages