Bicycle has just officially turned three years old and with a full headcount of 35 it’s hard to believe that we’ve got so far so quickly.

This month the IPA announced its CPD gold accreditation for 42 agencies across the industry, for excellence in staff training and development. We’ve secured our second year of gold recognition, while 27 agencies secured platinum, which is an amazing achievement given how much hard work goes into proper CPD.

However, it does feel as though historically there were always far more agencies that secured this accreditation. It got me thinking as to why that might be the case, especially given the reality that it is hard work to achieve CPD Gold. It’s not something that can be achieved through a single awards entry, or a staff survey. It’s 12 months of consistent hard work that needs to be captured in a very robust report.

Sadly, it appears that for many, this level of hard work makes it difficult to justify. You hear all of this ‘people first’ vernacular from many around the industry - some of which are notable exceptions to this year’s list. My view is that, if you claim you are people first, you’d better actually do it.

Our report this year talks about our “deeply rooted CPD culture” and how key business metrics such as organic growth, profit margin and staff retention all link back to a culture that prioritises staff development and individual support.

Bicycle London is effectively the third culture that I’ve been lucky enough to be part of building. Each time build an internal culture you learn very different things, but this time around it’s been all about three obvious things, all of which are very easy to say but very hard to actually do.

First up you need values that actually mean something and are directly linked to your purpose. They should never need to be explained or plastered all over the walls of your office. They need to be crystal clear, simple and measurable. For us we have drive, balance and freedom - all of which are vital attributes when riding a bike.

Next, avoid tokenism. Again, it sounds obvious, but attaching yourself to this or that event or initiative can be a dangerous thing if you’re not going to be consistent in your support of it, and if it doesn’t really mean anything to your people. We’re lucky as we’ve built our peloton from scratch, we have no legacy issues and we’ve been able to put our focus on the importance of belonging and authentic leadership. Once people have a genuine sense of belonging together it’s amazing to see how much more energy is spent on listening and understanding our differences as opposed to what makes us the same.

And finally, you have to invest in this stuff. Once again obvious, but I don’t mean just spending money on your people development - I mean really investing in it. Investing emotional effort, process, structure and time into setting a strategy, aligning everything to your values and ensuring your team feel empowered and belong. This is precisely the type of commitment to development that IPA’s CPD Gold is built to measure. It’s just a pity that so many organisations appear to have gone about doing this with more tokenism and frankly less commitment to hard work.