Listen: Digital consultancy XDesign has grown rapidly in the past two years and increased its headcount from 50 employees to over 450.
In this episode of the Employee Benefits podcast, chief people officer Ciji Duncan, explains how the organisation has adapted and expanded its benefits offering in order to support its growing workforce.
Duncan explains how its benefits offering strives to support employees in all areas of their lives, from how its life insurance app helps staff to live a healthy lifestyle to its financial wellbeing programme, and its policies on flexible working.
At a glance
XDesign is a digital consultancy that creates web and mobile experiences for some of the world’s fastest-growing and most recognisable brands. It scales digital delivery and upskills internal teams.
It has a wide range of job roles including digital engineers, quality assurance and product and design specialists. It also employs a large number of non-technical teams which look after the people, marketing, office operations and company finances.
The organisation has scaled rapidly in the last two years and has seen around 400 new joiners, bringing the workforce to over 450 employees. The average age of staff is 35 and the average tenure is one and a half years.
Primary business objectives that impact on benefits for the coming year:
- Growing at an exponential rate means XDesign needs to draw on the right skills and expertise continually and as a result, the talent acquisition team is constantly looking for new hires.
- The set-up of new competency frameworks and working with teams to support them in setting objectives and timescales for their own promotion.
- Reviewing its benefits offering and making sure that it still works for XDesign’s people and if not, then adapt and change.
Career history 
Ciji Duncan joined XDesign in October 2017. Duncan started as the office manger and progressed to office and HR manager before becoming head of people. Most recently, Duncan became a member of the XDesign executive team as chief people officer. On her career so far, Duncan says: “I’m most proud of progressing through the ranks of XDesign to become a fully-fledged member of the executive team in just five years.
“I’m also really proud of the fact that myself and the people team have managed to keep company attrition rates down to 7% in an industry which has a reported average of 25% according to some studies.”