Highlights of 2023
By Elaine Forth - CEO
Looking back on the year with the goal of filtering out the highlights is very cathartic. We too often dwell on the challenges and forget to prolong our celebration of the wonderful experiences that balance them out. This year sure has had it’s challenges, but the purpose of this blog is to reflect on the sparkles.
Volunteering for Calum’s Cabin
Make a Difference is the value that most motivates me, and this year we have once again had the privilege to support a number of nonprofits. This has taken the form of pro bono consultancy, donations (both direct and via employee matched funding), involvement in fundraising events and service design.
One that I have been involved in personally, and is very dear to my heart, is the awe-inspiring charity Calum’s Cabin. I was matched with them through one of our customers, Inspiring Scotland’s Special Volunteering Network. Inspired by their son Calum, who tragically passed away, they provide beautiful holiday homes for children facing cancer. They needed guidance and technical help to improve their booking and fundraising management processes on Salesforce. I was delighted to get the chance to visit the team and see the impact of my involvement on the Isle of Bute in November.
You can hear more about the story of our journey together here.
Customer Success
As with every year, we have had the privilege to work with a wide variety of nonprofits this year. And, we celebrate every success irrespective of the scale. From our multi-year partnership with Wellcome to transition their CRM and grant management onto Salesforce to providing a few days of annual ongoing support for smaller charities like Merlin’s Magic Wand, helping each of our 100+ customers to increase their impact drives us forward. This year, we have maintained an average CSAT (customer satisfaction) score of 4.9 out of 5, and received some heart-warming feedback in our customer survey.
Developing our People
We focus heavily on ensuring that our talented team are nurtured and fulfilled. With a new structure and delivery framework established early on in the year, we introduced a number of further new initiatives:
- Career Development Framework – to clarify the skills and values expected for each level
- Mentoring programme – to provide additional inspiration and guidance
- Communities of Practice – to bring together working groups to focus on things that matter to us
We couldn’t have done this without Angela Murray, our Director of Delivery, who was instrumental in progressing these initiatives and supported by our amazing Delivery Managers Vai Cheung and Julia Williams. We also had guidance from Iyas Al-Quasem, from Beyond the Quarter, a strategic consultant passionate about helping companies with a social purpose to thrive. He has given us so much guidance and helped to focus on the things that needed to be done whilst sharing some laughs along the way.
In the Summer we spent two days at our annual all-company get together, which is always the best way to demonstrate our commitment to one of our 8 values – Don’t forget to have fun! There were team-bonding outdoor challenges, a workshop to review our values and how we manifest them and even impromptu karaoke (less said about that the better!).
Journey towards B Corp
Social purpose is in our DNA, and this year we have started the journey towards becoming a B Corp. This is an important next step for us to formalise our ambition to balance profit with making a difference to people and the planet. It is pleasing to see that we already score highly in many categories thanks to some of the things we already do, such as:
- Our HyphenEarth team led by Jennifer Sowerby continued efforts to make us net zero and share knowledge and tips
- Our commitment to staff benefits – flexible working, rewards and incentives, acting on staff feedback and transparent communications
- Our continued journey to demonstrate diversity and equality through our policies and the opportunities we strive to create
I hope that achieving this is in next year’s highlights!
Celebrating Women in Tech
I am proud that we are recognised for our gender equality, which can be rare in a tech consultancy. So I was delighted to be invited to join the first-ever Salesforce Ecosystem Equality Exchange in May. This provided an opportunity to mix with people all passionate about promoting diversity and sharing fascinating and thought-provoking ideas.
One of our Communities of Practices is focused on Women in Tech led by Amy Worrall-Thompson to ensure that we are upholding our strong standards for gender equality and sharing our experiences with wider communities. You can read more about Amy and our Women in Tech group here.
Digital Revolution Awards
It is not really our style to shout about our achievements at Hyphen8, so we haven’t submitted any award entries before. But this year, we took the plunge and put ourselves forward in a few categories at the prestigious Digital Revolution Awards (thank you Joel Aughey for crafting our entries).
Up against a whole host of respected organisations and individuals, we were over the moon to be awarded the Best UK and Global Salesforce Partner to Work For. To receive recognition for our commitment to staff wellbeing and development and demonstrating that we are values-led is very rewarding.
Thank You
Thank you as always to my fellow Directors and team members at Hyphen8 who have all worked hard this year to make these highlights possible. So onto planning for the next year, which I am sure will have its fair share of ups and downs but never, ever boring.
