Staff engagement, along with client delight, partner trust and shareholder return, has always been one of our four equally important ‘Pillars’, as we call them. It struck me four years ago that, while we thought that our 180 staff at the time were engaged (and our executive consistently reassured me of same!), we’d never actually independently measured and verified this.

We duly entered the Deloitte Best Company to Work For competition – in our view the best of its kind anywhere. We came 25th that year and decided then to ‘eat our own dog food’ and do ourselves what we take to market through our consulting division: ensure the alignment and engagement of our people through a culture change process. The result was way above our expectations – first overall and in three other categories. Something we’re proud to have done and from which we learned a great deal.