The greatest asset any business has is its people, and as Aristotle once said “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work”. As a small business Parliament Hill has always placed a high emphasis on making sure our people feel valued, and to providing the best possible working environment that it can.

During the COVID years, like many businesses, we had to think about employee wellbeing in a whole different context. We could no longer rely on physical presence to facilitate communication and feeling connected as a team; especially important for colleagues such as myself who were recruited during that time and had to learn a job and build relationships with colleagues via a PC screen. We established a wellbeing committee that worked hard on introducing initiatives that supported the team in isolation; including virtual team lunches, an online cook-a-long (provided by Cookaway) with a professional chef and regular wellness checks.

Now that we work in an established hybrid environment some of those initiatives still exist today – quick daily Teams catch-up calls, an early finish on Friday for an online Teams quiz, quick fire question/answer gimmicks 3-days a week and when we are in the office lunch-time walks in the park and social activities, including a sports day and community volunteering. However, it’s time to take a more holistic approach to employee wellbeing; cemented by a 2023 Gallup poll on the State of the global workplace, which indicates that 61% of employees consider wellbeing benefits a major factor in their decision to stay with their current employer.

So what are we doing now? We have re-framed our wellbeing group as the ‘Be Better Group’ with representation from all business units and clear terms of reference, focusing on the 4 pillars of employee wellbeing:

• Physical health
• Mental health
• Job satisfaction
• Social interaction

There has already been an injection of ideas from the group on how we can make changes to improve all of our work lives; from duvet days to changing up our daily calls and team meetings to adding more opportunities for getting together. I’m excited to see the initiatives the group bring to life and the positive impact they have on the Parliament Hill family.

Parliament Hill are the member benefit specialists, who have been operating in the market for 20 years. If you would like to see more on the work of Parliament Hill, please click here.

Gallup 2023 ‘State of the global workplace’, is available here.