Our day to day is working with people of all ages, this can be unpredictable and challenging but also very rewarding.
If our staff teams are happy and supported they are much more likely to be able to help the people they work with more effectively.
We have always offered enhanced benefits for our staff, but with the recruitment crisis over the last few years, this gave us good reason to review what would be useful for our teams.
Sometimes employee benefits that look good on paper to the exec team may not translate as useful to staff teams. There’s an industry around providing staff benefits, which may make employers feel better, but if staff aren’t actually using them what is the point!
We have found that practical benefits that can impact a employees everyday make the real difference.
We introduced interest free loans available for all staff to be paid back as a salary sacrifice. Staff can borrow up to a month’s worth of salary and can choose to pay it back over a period through their salary of up to 12 months. This just means if their car breaks down or an unexpected bill happens staff can easily access money without incurring interest.
We provide enhanced supervisions for relevant roles but also every member of staff can utilize our counsellor if they need it, either face to face, online or on the phone.
Our salary sacrifice schemes include an electronics scheme so that if an employee needs a new washer or a new TV they can do it through their salary over a number of months without incurring interest.
All staff have access to our services for the community free of charge, this includes activities like yoga, karate and mindfulness.
We offer an enhanced training package where staff have budget to learn something for them – staff have spent this on audible subscriptions, yoga training and even on trips to visit other organisations.
But most importantly we have found that teams want to have fun! Working somewhere that staff look forward to going to, where they feel supported is the most important thing. We hold regular wellbeing events for our staff teams from lunches to beauty themed events! We also hold lots of staff socials both as individual teams and as a whole organisation from our annual BBQ through to escape rooms and meals out.