Best Places to Work: MG Alba

• Murdo Morrison, marketing manager

How would you describe your company culture?

We foster an honest, open, interactive and empowered environment where everyone is treated as an equal and every one’s opinion counts. Our head office is in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, and forms part of a close-knit community. This community ethos significantly informs the company’s culture.

How do you bring the best out of your staff?

We invest in development and share information as much as possible so that all staff know how we’re performing, how they are contributing to that, and what we’re doing to be even better at what we do.

Our HR, Learning and Development Strategy seeks to enable employees to live our values, maintain a healthy work-life balance and develop their personal and professional skills in a planned manner.

Our goal is to provide them with an opportunity to grow and develop in their roles, while nurturing lifelong qualities of respect, strength, self-discipline, vision and momentum.

How have you improved the working environment and practices – and what future improvements are planned?

Each quarter, our Continual Improvement Group, chaired by a member of the senior management team and a representative from each department, presents to staff on workplace initiatives that lead to better skills, a continually improving workplace experience, cross-departmental co-operation, and development of health and wellbeing programmes.

What are the essential qualities of a good work environment?

Creativity. This is a must, but it takes a particular type of creativity to be able to create hugely successful, populist television on minuscule budgets.

Resilience. We are a minority-language broadcast funder, surviving and thriving at a time of challenging public finances.

Talent, which we have in delightful amounts. And passion: everyone here cares about the channel and about the future of the Gaelic language. The combination of these qualities is powerful.