COOK: Creating Growth by Placing Relationships at the Heart of Business

Six years ago, Rosie Brown entered COOK for the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies to Work For list, which is measured through a staff survey — and was shocked to find that they didn’t make the list. In this 20-minute video from the 2017 Happy Workplaces CEO Conference, Rosie talks about COOK’s journey to become a happy workplace.

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I’m Rosie, I’m Managing Director of COOK. It’s a business that was founded 20 years ago, and we make really delicious, amazing, ready meals. We do it by cooking like you would at home, using the same techniques and ingredients that you use at home, and our chef’s name is on the label. We’ve got about 900 people on the team now, we’re growing fast, and it’s a really diverse bunch. We’ve got retail, we’ve got office, we’ve got logistics, we’ve got chefs, we’ve got food manufacturing, so it’s a really interesting mix from a cultural point of view.

I stand here with some humility, because while we’ve come a long way on our journey, I’m aware that we have a long way to go, we are far from perfect, and I definitely feel in this space that humility is wise, particularly if it’s going online!

We’re here about what makes us happy, so I thought I’d start with a little bit about me and what makes me happy.

I’m a mum, first and foremost is my boys. They make me happy, they make me feel quite a lot of adjectives as well, but we’re going to stick with happy for today!

At COOK we’re definitely family first. We’re a family business, it was founded by my brother Ed, and back to checking power, if you want to check your power, work with your siblings! We are family first, and we encourage everyone at COOK as far as possible to be family first. Go home, look after your family.

The next picture is a picture of our senior team, and it’s a real privilege to work in this team, we’ve worked together for five years, we’ve built the business, we have fabulous relationships with each other. We went to a conference two weeks ago and we didn’t hire a hotel, we hired a house because we thought it would be more fun. We have an absolute riot, and I think relationships from the top and how they filter down is really key to our culture journey.

Next is curry, just because, and if you haven’t had a COOK curry, try it, they’re amazing!

And then this is a drawing of a bookshelf, some of you will have read these company culture books – there’s a Timpson’s book, Playing To Win by Alan G. Lafley and Roger Martin, Start With Why by Simon Sinek, Drive by Daniel Pink.

My place is a really core belief in people, and that everyone has intrinsic value, regardless of what they can and can’t do for COOK. That has lead me to a deep passion for company culture, which makes me happy!

I’m going to talk a little bit about our Sunday Times Best Companies journey.

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“Feeling strongly about company culture, I wanted to be able to measure it, I wanted to be able to chart our course. It was about six years ago that we decided, with intent, we were going to get better at this. We didn’t know where we were. We had about 350 employees and we knew we were going to grow, and we really wanted to retain that culture we’d created,” Rosie explains.

“We thought we were pretty good… but we were miles out, we were rubbish. But what a great wake up call, and what a great time to have that wake up call, because we just weren’t as good as we thought we were.”

COOK is now the highest placed manufacturer, and the third highest retailer, on the list, having been listed on the Best Companies list since 2013. The key to these high levels of staff happiness has been caring for the people — “if we care for people, they will care for our business in turn.”

In this 20-minute video from the 2017 Happy Workplaces CEO Conference, Rosie talks about COOK’s journey to become a happy workplace. COOK now has a very clear, values-led strategy, give their people opportunities to grow in their personal and professional life, and have a particular focus on the importance of creating relationships at work.

What you’ll hear in this video

Why Rosie replaced the HR team with the People team — changing the team’s focus from following policies and procedures to care for the company’s people (4:53)
Addressing some of the challenges that people in the company faced — introducing regular visits from a nurse, career counselling, and giving staff their birthday off (5:50)
Creating company values, the five essential ingredients that feed into everything COOK does — recruitment, performance management and leadership training — and how they bring them to life (7:57)
Giving staff opportunities to grow in both their personal and professional life — COOK has created the Dream Academy, with a confidential four-month program with a coach to help their dreams come true (13:20)
The importance of big relationships and COOK’s model for relationships at work — a Venn diagram of Unity, Clarity and Accountability, and Appreciation (16:56)

Resources and related content

Running short on time? Watch the two-minute clip from Rosie’s talk
The Happy Manifesto by Henry Stewart — click here to get your free eBook
Why you need to make friends at work — Shannon Banks talks about the importance of building relationships at work at our 2016 Happy Workplaces Conference
The Key Business Question: Will it Make Life Better? — Henry Stewart’s blog about Propellernet, a company who make their people’s dreams come true with their Dream Machine: When the company hits their targets, one person gets to live their dream
Happy offers free staff surveys to help you benchmark your staff’s happiness and get measurable feedback on your organisation — click here to visit Happy’s website for more information

Learn the 10 core principles to create a happy and productive workplace in Henry Stewart's book, The Happy Manifesto.

About Rosie

Rosie Brown started her career in London, and it didn’t take long to work out that politics and investment banking weren’t going to be part of the long term plan. In 2000, she joined COOK (then three years old, and co-founded by her brother Edward) working in most departments and having three sons along the way. Rosie became People Director in 2012. In 2016 Rosie took on the role of Managing Director.

COOK manufactures remarkable frozen food in our own Kitchens (made like you would at home) and sells it nationally in 86 retail stores and online. COOK are proud to be a founding UK BCorporation (people using business as a force for good) and have been voted as one of the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to Work For, for the last 5 years (and the highest placed manufacturer). In 2015 COOK won the Sunday Times Wellbeing award for our work on relationships, and in 2016 and 2017 won the award for Developing Potential. In addition, COOK’s ‘Dream Academy’ was voted in a Times list of Top 10 company benefits. In February 2019, COOK were recognised in 14th Place in the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to Work For list.

Next Conference: 2025 Happy Workplaces Conference

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