PEOPLE & CULTURE PULSE · ISSUE 10 · OCTOBER 2026
A monthly benchmark for People & Culture teams: the talking points that matter and how your people and culture compare, built on Deltabase culture, workforce and talent data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
October gave boards three reasons to ask for better people data. New Employment Rights Act duties took effect, NatWest scrapped its remote-first category and permanent hiring rose again. A board-ready Human Capital report needs both halves of our name: People (workforce shape, skills and turnover) and Culture (what employees say, topic by topic, against peers). This month we show what that looks like for Engineering & Construction, where Supportive Leadership fell sharply in 2025.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
What happened: From 1 October, the time limit for most Employment Tribunal claims rose from three to six months. From 30 October, employers must take "all reasonable steps" to prevent sexual harassment, are liable for third-party harassment unless they took all reasonable steps to prevent it, and face new union access rights.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: In Engineering & Construction, third-party risk sits on sites and at client interfaces, where leadership matters most. Median Supportive Leadership NSS across ten Top 100 companies fell from −20.0% to −30.2% in 2025. People: Prevention will rest on line managers, not the HR team: at Mitie, operational managers make up 5.1% of the workforce, against 0.6% in HR.
So what: Report prevention steps and leadership sentiment to the board together; "all reasonable steps" will be judged on evidence.
What happened: NatWest is ending its remote-first category: from February 2027, its 13,497 remote-first staff must be on site at least two days a week, and 17,272 hybrid workers must attend more often. Unite called the decision "a kick in the teeth".
The Deltabase lens: Culture: NatWest Group's Work-Life Balance NSS was +61.8% in 2025, well above Barclays (+35.0%) and JPMorgan Chase (−9.3%), even as its overall NSS fell from +6.5% to +0.4%.
So what: Attendance decisions should reach the board with sentiment data attached; the risk is losing a strength while chasing a weakness.
What happened: The KPMG and REC Report on Jobs showed permanent placements rising for a second month in September, the strongest increase in four years, with permanent staff demand led by IT & Computing and Engineering.
The Deltabase lens: People: Engineering demand raises the retention stakes. At Arup, where 13.3% of the workforce sits in Engineering & Maintenance roles and 23.9% list project management skills, average monthly turnover fell from 1.04% in January–August 2025 to 0.68% in January–August 2026. Culture: Across the sector, median Work-Life Balance NSS fell from −0.4% to −12.5% in 2025.
So what: Pair hiring plans with retention metrics in board reporting; rising demand for engineers raises the cost of a weak culture.
−30.2%: median Supportive Leadership NSS across ten Engineering & Construction Top 100 companies in 2025, down from −20.0%, even as monthly turnover fell at all six companies below.
| Company | Culture: overall NSS, 2025 | Culture: Supportive Leadership NSS, 2025 | People: avg monthly turnover, Jan–Aug 2026 (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kier Group | +11.2% | +5.0% | 0.56% (0.74%) |
| Babcock International | +0.4% | −38.2% | 0.50% (0.69%) |
| Balfour Beatty | −11.2% | −28.6% | 0.61% (0.74%) |
| Mitie Group | −13.4% | −31.7% | 0.65% (0.78%) |
| Amey | −14.1% | −44.0% | 0.46% (0.65%) |
| Arup Group | −23.1% | −43.1% | 0.68% (1.04%) |
Source: Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), 2025; sector median of Amey, Arcadis, Arup Group, Babcock International, Balfour Beatty, Kier Group, Mace Group, Mitie Group, Turner & Townsend and Vinci. Deltabase Employee Turnover data, average monthly turnover January–August 2026 (January–August 2025 in brackets).
Two UK names with similar Culture problems and very different People. On Culture, Mitie fell from +8.7% to −13.4% in 2025 (394 reviews), with Supportive Leadership down from −1.3% to −31.7%; Arup stayed deeply negative at −23.1% (586 reviews), with Career Progression at −69.2% even as Learning & Development scored +50.5%. On People, Mitie is a frontline business, with 6.6% of its workforce in transport operations and 3.5% in Tech. Arup is a knowledge workforce: 23.5% in Tech, with 9.5% listing sustainability skills and 3.5% AI skills, against 0.6% and 0.5% at Mitie. A board needs both views on one page.
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Sources: Morgan Lewis (15 October 2026); Remote Work Europe, citing BBC News (20 October 2026); KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs (10 October 2026); Deltabase Culture data; Deltabase Workforce data; Deltabase Talent data; Deltabase Employee Turnover data.