Parklife – A Mission-Led Place to Work
Rob Horner, Bella and Duke
Right. Who doesn’t love to start a slideshow with a picture of a cute dog? So our presentation, Parklife, a mission-led place to work. And really it’s how we have cultivated our workplace to be aligned to our customer-facing brand mission and proposition to ensure that we’re going all in for pets and all in for people. So mission statement, get a million pets off crap food by educating, empowering and inspiring the hearts and minds of the nation of pet lovers. Punchy, memorable, and single-mindedly focused on our customers and pets. And this is what we do, we manufacture package, box up and send out four million meals and treats a month to dogs and cat customers across the UK. We cuddle-call our customers, we offer free 24/7 vet care and we’re rated the most nutritious pet food in the UK.
So what is Parklife? Simple concept, you’re in the park with your pet and the fun and joy that is involved with that and that you’re part of our pack and that pack is fun, curious, hardworking and absolutely dedicated to being the most amazing pet food brand in the world. So we have Parklife Rosyth, our office, and Parklife Inverkeithing, our production and fulfillment site. So one hosts our customer care, marketing, tech, finance people, teams, the other our manufacturing site. Vastly different operations, but same fundamental Parklife workplace ethos. This is our Parklife office. So it was described by the Sun as the world’s most pet-friendly office amazingly. Big communal kitchens, yoga and plenty of parties. Production site that we opened in 2020 and in four years, we’ve created one of the world’s best leading pet food manufacturing sites based in Fife. Strong focus on health and safety, but the same fun, curious, hardworking and dedication to excellence.
And so the ambition is that when someone sees Bella and Duke, they know that we do things differently and better and proudly different. We’re all in on the good stuff. So they, customers, pets, and our people get more out. So these are our strategic brand propositions and pillars, and we align our people initiatives to exactly the same way. So nutrition, well-being, community support, and I’ll give some examples along the way on what we do. So Parklife and Parklife ethos and these are our park rules. So really that’s to align and promote behaviors and culture that allows us to create an environment for staff to be their very best and then deliver the very best for our customers.
I just want to highlight this one. So be brave. Not often in the workplace are staff actually told to be brave, but for us it’s so important because we’re battling against large multinational pet food companies. So for us, we want staff to take risks, we want them to celebrate failure, and we want them to every day to be brave. This is just a slide with more cute pictures of cats and dogs because why not? And these are all actually from our Facebook group. So we’ve got 35,000 members, a great community that support each other.
So don’t stray, stay. How do we keep our employees? So they’re part of the pack that drive our mission forward. And we don’t just want them to turn up every day, we want them to belong and be their best selves. So really, how do we do this? So we listen to staff through surveys and we act on that survey, which is super important. We continually involve our benefits and rewards and we ask our staff what they want and we keep them up to date on business objectives and we also celebrate our successes. So this one really diversity is our superpower and this simple visual is our perspective on how we give all staff the opportunity to be involved and contribute. So we have an open door policy and all ideas welcome and really different views bring those different ideas.
To achieve our mission, we really need that and drive, motivation and passion from staff. So we want our employees to flourish, and if they flourish, our business will too, and we will achieve our mission. So what do we do? We cultivate our own. So we collaborate through cross-functional squads working to achieve objectives. This encourages a growth mindset epitomized in lots of cross-team moves, internal promotions, and next slide.
So we carefully create every ingredient and service to boost our pets’ wellbeing. So exactly let’s take the same approach and do the same for our people. And so we champion that pet wellbeing so we champion our employees wellbeing. And this is what we do. So wellbeing is at our core. So we have lunch on wellness Wednesdays at the office, we have mental wellbeing, EAP, we even had a masseuse a couple of months ago at the office for a day. We have annual health surveillances, we have daily pack walks with dogs, of course. And back to the mission, mission-led. So get a million pets off crap food and really evolving our workplace and our culture to allow our teams to be their very best and deliver that mission back to the world. So thanks for listening.
