We’re delighted to announce that SBS has been shortlisted in the ‘UK Employer of the Year’ Silver Category of the 2026 Investors In People Awards.
The 2026 Award ceremony will take place on 18th November 2026 at Old Billingsgate in London, with the theme this year of New York and Broadway on what is sure to be a memorable night.
We were invited to submit a nomination following our successful assessment to retain our Silver IIP status earlier this year. As part of that process, we were asked for details of the changes we have made as an employer, what instigated them, what objectives we set ourselves, what impacts we actually achieved, and what made our initiatives stand out.
In answering these and other probing questions, we emphasised:
- Our considerable growth in size and reach. Since our previous IIP audit in 2023, we have enlarged our workforce by more than 100% and expanded our regional presence via new offices and depots.
- Our adoption of new technologies and a wider range of projects to manage, all demanding additional skills.
- Our creation of a new, 5-strong HR team as a practical necessity for managing this growth and diversification.
- Our work with the Retrofit Academy to equip all SBS staff with the skills necessary for their roles. Over the last year, operational staff have taken advantage of member-access to the Academy’s Training Hub.
- The success of our in-house apprenticeship programme; apprentices now account for around 8.5% of our workforce. Nine staff are currently working on degree-apprenticeships, in roles including Quantity Surveying, Finance, Customer Liaison, and Construction Management.
- Our success in attracting, training and promoting female staff. In the UK retrofit sector, women typically account for only 18% to 20% of employees; by contrast, over a third of our workforce is female, and the figure is rising.
- The development of our leadership programme for all managers.
- Our new employee benefits package. Among others, benefits include Enhanced Maternity Pay and a company-paid healthcare plan that covers all staff and certain dependants for various medical and dental treatments.
Crucially, we noted that we have done all this, and more, at a time of major changes in retrofit funding and public policy, while also winning multiple industry awards and achieving substantial commercial growth.
Responding to the shortlisting announcement, our Head of HR Kris Gallagher said:
“I’m delighted to hear that we’ll be a finalist in this year’s awards. It’s great to see everyone’s hard work recognised in this way. Getting here at a time of such change hasn’t been easy but we’ve got a fantastic culture of teamwork at SBS, and everyone has made a real contribution.
“A shortlisting is a real accolade, but our work won’t stop, of course. The HR team’s work is always cyclical. It’s a process of continuous, improvement: of monitoring and fact-finding, evaluation and action. Our IIP Insight Report noted that we possess particular strength in our approach to ‘creating sustainable success’ and that’s very much our aim. We’ll continue to ensure that staff recognise that training opportunities and mentoring support are readily available, and we’ll keep encouraging bold career aspirations.”
The 2026 IIP Awards will take place on 18th November 2026 at Old Billingsgate in London.
