“Scouts honour you’ll leave on time today, Freddie?” I was never in the Scouts so wasn’t entirely sure what this meant, but figured I had to promise to leave on time. An odd thing to hear from someone a few months into your job, especially when it’s your boss. I’d always thought it was best to have a first-in, last-to-leave mentality, work through lunch break with a meal deal and pop into the office over the weekend every now and then and hope it coincided when the head honcho was in too. I suppose that approach has served me fairly well in the workplace over the years, but it has come at a bit of a cost.
I was excited to complete the Sunday Times Best Places to Work survey last year along with the rest of the SWC team so I could provide some feedback, in particular around wellbeing in the workplace. So excited in fact that I volunteered to write this blog about the survey’s findings and my own experience of SWC’s approach to wellbeing in the workplace.
There’s an awful lot of talk about wellbeing in the workplace, the importance of having a work-life balance and the impact this can all have on your mental health. It’s come as a great relief therefore that SWC’s approach to its teams’ mental health is not just talk but backed up with actual actions. These can be as simple as checking in with colleagues who might be in danger of burning out to having mental health as an item for discussion during company-wide meetings.
It’s no wonder then that when SWC completed the Sunday Times Best Places to Work survey we scored a whopping 98% on whether employees felt happy at work, almost 25% above the industry average. You might be thinking that’s just a fluke that might have caught people on a particularly good day, but to expand on that the survey went on to record an astonishing 100% on whether employees felt happy in their working environment, again almost 25% higher than the industry average.
We did however score a slightly lower 92% about whether employees feel depressed or anxious about work. While this is still an impressive 30% higher than the industry average, I don’t mind saying that I probably contributed to that lower score due to a pre-existing struggle with mental health.
What’s truly awesome though is the 100% we scored on the next stat about whether the employer cared about employees’ wellbeing, another 25% above the industry average. This for me is the deal breaker and absolute music to my ears because it means I can worry less about my mental health issues knowing SWC has my back.
Making sure I leave on time is a simple but great example. As I’ve had the space and support to talk to my colleagues about my mental health issues, they can recognise incidents that might trigger a negative reaction like burnout that I might otherwise miss. I might be working late with the best of intentions, not realising I’m actually not doing myself any favours in the long run.
SWC is brilliant at removing the stigma that can be attached to mental health issues so we can actually have relaxed and meaningful conversations about it. For example, these have been during weekly one-to-ones with a cup of tea, over an impromptu lunch and as an international marketing agency, even waiting in an airport lounge munching on a sandwich!
However, it’s not just me that gets all this lovely support and attention as this is a company-wide approach that’s led from the top. In addition to the morning team check-ins where we go through everyone’s workloads, forthcoming projects and weekend plans, we each have a weekly one-to-one with our line managers where topics can range from career development, upcoming deadlines and weekend recoveries.
On top of that, we have our quarterly excursions that allow us to down tools, hang out together and talk about something other than work. Outside of that there’s always the swift half after work, a trip to the cafe opposite the office during lunch and believe it or not, we meet up with each other at the weekend for things like a 5km run, National Trust visit or a colleague’s wedding. All of this allows us to check in with each other, find out what work they have on, make sure it’s manageable and if appropriate, how things are outside of work.
This all makes for a very lovely, supportive, but also extremely hard-working and professional work environment. One SWC mantra is ‘Work Smarter, Not Harder’ which if I’m honest has taken me a while to figure out. It’s about making the best use of the time you have available. If you’re working flat out for 12 hours straight, chances are you’ll be knackered the day after and only get half a day’s actual work done. Much better therefore to just get in on time, take a decent lunch break (away from your desk!) and jolly well get home on time for supper both days and get the same amount of work done.
Testament to this environment SWC introduced what we thought would just be ‘Summer Working Hours’ where we all work a little bit later from Monday to Thursday so we can finish the working week a little earlier on Friday. Clients still get the same service while the team gets a bit more time for the weekend. All made possible by a great team effort of making the best use of the time we have available. So much so that these hours have been rolled out permanently.
All these measures genuinely have a positive and lasting impact on the SWC team’s wellbeing, which for me is paramount and lays the foundation for everything else – productivity, efficiency and delivering an outstanding service to our clients – as well as feeling good about yourself, what you do, who you do it with and for.
If you’d like to work with a supportive marketing agency in Tunbridge Wells or find out more about us, get in touch with Simon.
