Accredited Employers

Ridgeview is the first employer in East Sussex to be accredited with a Wellbeing at Work Small Business Bronze Award. Some of the successful projects they have launched as part of their wellbeing journey are implementing a cycle to work scheme, charity giving through payroll, a healthcare cashback scheme, mental health first aiders and becoming a disability confident employer. Due to the nature of their business, they take great care in promoting MSK injury prevention and provide manual handling training too.  As put by their employees, ‘The company embraces continuous improvement, is open to feedback from staff and is supportive of people across all stages of life. The CEO is very visible and approachable. It’s a great place to work.’

A challenge of having seasonal workers is ensuring everyone feels truly part of the organisation. Ridgeview ensures that all staff updates are filmed and available to rewatch, which ensures that all staff have access to communication channels and the ability to be involved in decision making.

ICS Roofing is the first construction company in East Sussex to be part of the scheme and be awarded with the Small Business Bronze Award.

As part of their award, the company has created a wellbeing folder in the shared drive, with wellbeing information and links for staff to seek information privately in their own time. They also run frequent Toolbox Talks on site for staff and sub-contractors, on particular topics such as mental health, musculoskeletal health and general wellbeing. Lunch and learn sessions are held regularly in the office, where staff come together to not only refresh their skills but also have wellbeing conversations.

Due to the various awareness training provided, managers feel confident to have wellbeing conversations when required and signpost staff to further information and support. The company wants to ensure everyone is supported. Undertaking the staff survey has allowed the opportunity for staff to feel that they are valued and that everyone has a voice.

All these initiatives have led ICS Roofing to create a truly open culture in a predominantly male industry, surrounded by a lot of stigma and stereotypes. An Impressive achievement! ‘Taking part in the awards scheme has given us the framework we needed to co-ordinate all our wellbeing initiatives’, summarized Chantalle Sullivan, the Wellbeing Lead and PA to Operations Manager.

Gradient Consultants, a company with six employees based in Eastbourne, was awarded with the Small Business Bronze Award in January 2023.

Through weekly pulse surveys, a WhatsApp group where they check-in on each other daily and Monday meetings where everyone shares their priorities and concerns for the week, and has the opportunity to ask for support, the company has created ways of having everyday conversations about wellbeing, keeping a sense of connection between colleagues and fostering an open culture. As building surveyors and asbestos consultants, the nature of their work can often see the team on site and coupled with their hybrid working policy, which allows the freedom to work from home, they regularly work independently, making those check-ins a great way to bring the team together and create a safety net for them to fall back onto and get support. The Friday Pulse surveys are a simple way to assess staff morale and act quickly if any issues arise. They also provide staff with the opportunity to express their gratitude to colleagues, which reinforces a sense of connection. Their Teams Wellbeing Channel is always kept fresh and updated, which is a great way to share information and reminders. With their awards journey, the company wants to ensure there is support available to everyone, and wellbeing conversations are kept current and at the forefront.

Affinity Select Insurance Services Limited, a small business based in Uckfield, have been granted the Commitment Award in September 2022 – within 4 weeks of enrolling on the programme.

As part of their award application, the workplace has undertaken a staff health and wellbeing survey, which has been driven by two members of staff – Daisy Otway (general insurance clerk) and Naomi Penfold (trainee insurance clerk) who have taken on implementing the award criteria as a project.

Jenny Carter-Vaughan (Director) was motivated to undertake the award as it aligns with one of the company’s core values, to look after each other, however wanted to ensure that employees bought into the award as opposed to it being communicated from the top. The organisation has also been working to upskill staff by enrolling team members on mental health awareness and workplace wellbeing champion training, as well as rolling out suicide prevention training across the whole workforce.

Wealden Community Care are a domiciliary care provider with 53 members of staff, who achieved the Wellbeing at Work Commitment award in November 2022.

To achieve this award, they undertook a staff wellbeing survey – which generated the most responses the organisation has had for any staff survey. Wealden Community Care feel that running a holistic wellbeing survey and acting upon the results has allowed them to show their care for the workforce, and the staff themselves liked the survey responses being anonymous.

One of the key areas that staff indicated as an area of interest in the survey was getting more support with was sleep. As a result, a sleep fact sheet (including signposting) has been shared with staff, as well as fact sheets on menopause, anxiety and prostate cancer. Sharing fact sheets has seen an uptake in staff accessing support for wellbeing concerns, in particular the anxiety fact sheet has encouraged more staff to access the in-house Mental Health First Aiders for support. Sarah Ridley-Smith (Wellbeing lead) and Angela Wright (Director and Registered Manager) strongly feel that ‘‘a supported employee is a productive employee, and the process has helped them to nurture’’ staff, as well as helping them to consider and improve their approach to staff surveys by providing a structure and focus.

Fieldskill Ltd provides local Sussex businesses with business essentials across four main areas of expertise: Packaging, Janitorial, Stationery, & Office Furniture. They have 13 staff based in Eastbourne and achieved the Wellbeing at Work Commitment award in November 2022.

By undertaking the staff survey as part of the Commitment award, the organisation now feels more in touch with staff having provided this formal opportunity for them to provide feedback. Fieldskill has been able to use the feedback from the survey to inform their offering to staff and have started providing Westfield Health (a health cash plan), as well as free fruit in the office for all staff. When asked about their experience of the Wellbeing at Work programme, Sacha Bowles (Finance Manager and Wellbeing Lead) said ‘’It’s been a really supportive process, that I would encourage any workplace to take a look at. Our team is so important to us, if we can look after their wellbeing then in turn it will help our business. Wellbeing in the workplace is not a tick box exercise but a crucial area that must be addressed, which we feel very passionately about at Fieldskill.’’

Knill James LLP, a firm of Chartered Accountants based in Lewes with a team of over 60 people, achieved the Wellbeing at Work Commitment award in November 2022.

As part of the award, the firm ran a wellbeing survey to understand the needs of the workforce. One of the highlights was being able to present the results to the team, to demonstrate how the firm values each person’s individual views, and to discuss actions based on the survey results. Knill James ran two practical sessions following on from the survey – an introduction to mindfulness and a pilates session, which included exercises for good posture and ergonomics that could be done seated at a desk.

HR Manager, Tracey Tivey, has been working with colleagues who have completed Wellbeing at Work’s Workplace Wellbeing Champion training to plan the campaigns and activities the firm would like to run in 2023. When asked about Knill James’s experience of the programme, Tracey said, ‘’The framework provided has been great – we were already addressing our team’s wellbeing, but the framework has given us a great structure to work within and enables us to direct our wellbeing initiatives in the best way to support the team.’’

Spring Care are a domiciliary care provider based in Battle who achieved the Wellbeing at Work Commitment Award in January 2023 – an impressive achievement for a small company who has also been dealing with other challenges such as lack of time and the impacts of Covid-19.

This was the first time they implemented a formal wellbeing initiative and, as part of their award application, an anonymous staff health and wellbeing survey was conducted. Having a workforce largely made of lone and remote workers can be an extra challenge. This survey allowed them to not only have a good insight into their staff health and what support would be helpful for them, but also to bring them together as a team and show that the business care about their wellbeing. As a result, more information on sleep, healthy eating and other health topics has been shared with staff in their beautiful and carefully crafted newsletters. They have also promoted their in-house Mental Health First Aider Janet Mitchinson, which has led to a great response with more staff accessing this support. They are now thinking to expand on these successes and run a monthly drop-in session as an opportunity for their remote and lone workers to connect, increase their sense of belonging and support each other.

APAC (Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy), the largest training provider for play therapy based in Uckfield with 20 employees and 30 contractors non-office based, have achieved Commitment Award in January 2023. Running an anonymous employee health and wellbeing survey was very beneficial. It not only gave their staff the opportunity to say more openly what they wanted, but it gave the organisation a great idea of what to focus on in terms of wellbeing. In order to have a more strategic approach and keep the momentum going, they decided to put together a calendar of wellbeing activities for the year based on the survey results, being the first one a 10k challenge to encourage staff to be more physically active with different options of participation, from walking to running or just cheering colleagues. The organisation has gone beyond and is now finalising their new Wellbeing policy for the workplace. They are also thinking of ways to have a wider impact and include their many contractors in their wellbeing activities. 

To their Wellbeing Lead, HR and Office Manager Radek Kwietniewski, the training courses offered by the Wellbeing at Work Programme were really good and provided them with the confidence they needed to move forward their wellbeing initiatives. The support received from the programme has also been invaluable, ‘the team is very approachable and ready to answer any questions’.