What makes GS tick… even after a decade of employment?

Walking into work every day only to be greeted by Bruce in his cycling shorts (my polite way of saying ambushed!) isn’t for most of us, a great way to start the day. Why then are most of us still here even after what feels like a lifetime?
Looking back at the years spent at GS, from the day of my interview (where unlike my not so fortunate colleagues, I wasn’t required to do the “tea-pot” dance as a condition to pass the interview), GS has played a big part in helping me become the person I am today – to be prepared for any challenges life throws at me and not give up easily. One of the things I have learnt over my career at GS, is be prepared to accept any challenges that come my way both in my professional life and equally in my personal life and to be able to grapple with this and not give up without a fight!

A place with a soul.

A nurturing workplace which has never in anyway stifled the growth and potential of its people – be it the team or our most valued clients. It is a place where we build lasting relationships not just with our clients but with each other.
We are a diverse team – some of us come from different ethnic backgrounds and bring our unique skill sets, yet what unites us is our drive to deliver exceptional value to our clients and we support each other in doing so!

Glide time.

Flexi-time encourages better work-life management. We grow professionally without compromising on our personal goals – our employers take an interest in our personal lives and support us on what we believe is important to us. A few of the team members have been recently sponsored for extra-curriculars and we think that is awesome!

Early Adopters of change.

We have always pioneered and embraced change and been early adopters of this. Our seemingly paperless office brought about by “paper busters”, the revolutionary online scanning and filing system has certainly improved efficiency around how we manage our resources. Amongst one of our other very radical ideas was setting up a back-office up in India some ten years ago, where most of the accounts processing takes place. Our team in India have now grown to 50 people over this period, very impressive given we number just under 30 staff. This move was an effort to free up capacity for our in-house accountants and enable us to better engage with our clients and be more involved in driving improvements in their business. Having unfettered access to our clients, as I have observed is the builder of lasting relationships of trust and confidence.

Encouraging employee participation
in strategic decision making.

Our very own Employee share ownership plan (ESOP) was introduced early 2017 has seen quite a few members of the team take up shares and become part of management!
A recent effort to encourage employee participation was through organising sessions with independent consultants in an attempt to garner our thoughts on workplace culture and values. This helped us outline and define our perception of what makes for a fun, exciting, nurturing and truly rewarding work place.
A common theme that has emerged from our engaging with each other is one around “enriching lives” of our clients by actively participating in delivering value to them – be it through providing quality business advisory services or through our value-add team who focus on solving client problems and optimising business solutions. Two divisions but with one vision – to enrich lives. This in turn enriches our lives by sharing in the success of our clients and becoming part of their story!
It is for reasons such as these, and many others, that while a few us feel older than the furniture here at GS, we’ve stuck around… and whilst no work place is perfect, ours is indeed a fun and exciting place to be – where we feel valued, respected and cherished – in some ways a work-o-topia or even better Bruce-o-topia!