Our highlights of the year...
Throughout the year we’ve taken the time to open up the conversation around mental health, taking part in days and weeks of action and starting our own challenges and initiatives to encourage our team members to prioritise their wellbeing.
A real highlight was our ‘pass the baton’ virtual relay – issuing a challenge to our colleagues to get out and about in nature, share their reflections and photos and tag a team mate to do the same. We also shared information about men’s mental health, suicide awareness, support for carers and much more – really bringing mental health to the forefront and helping people share their thoughts and feelings about this important topic.
We’ve also increased our bank of Mental Health First Aiders by training a further 28 team members across the organisation, to have productive and meaningful conversations about mental health and wellbeing. So they can support those around them to get the support they need.
Meanwhile, we've also been getting physical! To start the new year, we partnered with Loughborough University to set our team members the 600-minute challenge – to log 600 minutes of exercise over the course of a month, from aerobics to Zumba and everything in between! Forty-seven team members took part, logging an astounding 53,123 minutes between them – a real win for team Futures!
We also took the time to recognise stress awareness month, our in-house Myers-Briggs experts ran specialist workshops to help colleagues learn how to manage their stress based on their Myers-Briggs profiles. These were really valuable sessions that helped our people understand how stress can affect us differently and what support we can put in place to help others!
No hair? No problem!
In February, our Graduate Business Partner Armaan braved the shave to raise money for Macmillan – taking the razor to his luscious locks and risking the chilly winter months all for a good cause. And team Futures came through, supporting him to raise an amazing £370 to help those living with cancer.