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Impact International on Becoming the UK’s Best Company For Wellbeing

At Impact we don’t believe in the concept of a work-life balance. We prefer our people to bring their life to work rather than see a stark difference between the two. This means Impact benefits from the many varied backgrounds and personal interests that our people have. Life isn’t something that we want people to start when they leave the office at 5pm.

Below are a few ways that Impact excel as an emotionally healthy place to work, but rather than just tell you what we do, we have provided a number of examples from our business to highlight just how easy it is to implement such principles as ours:

A Family Culture

Impact has a strong sense of family. This is one of the reasons why so many people choose to stay for 25 years or more.

We have a very sympathetic staffing department that takes family life into consideration to ensure that employees aren’t overworked or away from home more than they wish. Family commitments are priority and our staffing team would employ a freelance associate rather than a contracted member of staff if a family event was at stake.

For example one of our senior manager’s in the UK was due to make a presentation. His son’s football team reached a cup final and he had promised that he would be there. Due to bad weather the original date was moved and it now clashed. A replacement was found at short notice allowing the manager to attend the match and avoid disappointing his son. Luckily they won the cup!

Many friendships made at Impact extend from the workplace, as we make a concerted effort to create a environment that allows such relationships to develop.

Annual Barbeque – Impact invites all employees, partners and children to a fun day which takes place in August. This takes place in work time and all employees are encouraged to finish at lunchtime so that they can fully participate with their families.
Birthday’s – David Williams, CEO sends personal birthday greetings.
Births – following a birth, and this can be either employees or clients, we will send flowers, cards and an Impact teddy to mark the occasion.
Holidays – The head of Business Development reached a milestone age last year. Impact agreed for her and another colleague to take a month off ‘for a holiday of a lifetime’.
Kids Christmas Party – This is held annually just before the Christmas break. All children are invited. There is even a visit from Santa Claus who distributes a present to each child.
Exercise – Most impact people have a love of the outdoors and many can be found exercising during their lunch hour. From our HQ offices in Windermere there are many local cross-country routes. This year Impact people have challenged themselves to take part in the Windermere, London and New York marathons, the Great North Run and the Langdale 10K cross country. Whilst doing this they have raised £thousands for various charities.
Goodbyes – Impact’s receptionist Edwina retired this year. A first for Impact. In true Impact style, we organised a Caribbean themed party for her. Everyone was invited, employees and partners alike!

Open Dialogue

An open and honest dialogue is encouraged and our company structure is such that we have direct access to a member of the management team at all times. Managers are encouraged to stay very close to their people understanding the challenges they have, to ensure their life is good. Managers have the discretion to change their team’s workloads and expectations based on their personal circumstances.

Our CEO, David has an ‘open door’ policy and he has created a place in which anyone can approach anyone else.
We may be in office at 9am, but everyone is encouraged to catch up with a cuppa and a chat.
We have monthly Management updates, which includes both functional and financial updates. This takes place on a Friday before lunchtime drinks and our employees are encouraged to ask question’s.
The Head of Impact UK has a 1:1 with every employee once a year.
Internal coaches/mentors are available to work with our people on personal development or work issues (in addition to their manager).

Other Reasons

Flexible working – An adaptable approach to working hours
Forgiveness - We recognise that anyone can make a mistake, we even have an award for the greatest conspicuous mistake of the year – ‘the Silver Screw’. Nominations are open year-round and the eagerly awaited presentation closes our company celebration lunch before the winter break.
Team Ethic - We look out for each other and help each other.
Togetherness – FREE Social gatherings. Friday drinks, catered off-sites, company parties and lunches. Sports events and use of outdoor equipment, running, fell-walking and mountain biking sessions during lunchtime.
Location - A fantastic main office location in the heart of the Lake District.
Space - The best ideas often happen during relaxed, creative time out of the office. You can find Impact people meeting in our gardens, mountain huts, or even out on the lake.

Award Winning

We believe that we have created an emotionally healthy place to work. Good relationships are essential to a business such as Impact’s and we have created a place in which anyone can readily approach anyone else. Monday Morning Meeting and Friday Drinks frame our working week and are an informal opportunity for people to get together and catch up. They are typical of our philosophy of relaxing and socialising with each other.   There is always something exciting happening in an Impact office – if you need five minutes away from your desk you can refresh yourself by taking part in a session to innovate a new product, a simulation piloting a new project (from building objects with Lego to creating a structure out of spaghetti and marshmallows) or by helping to make decorations for an Impact party. There’s literally never a dull moment!   We work hard and play hard. We enjoy the work we do and inject fun into our work whenever we can, ensuring an emotionally healthy environment.

We also win awards for it, Impact was proud to be named as the third best Workplace in the UK and we scooped a special award at the TT100 award for ‘Best for Wellbeing‘.

The Proof is in the Pudding

We pride ourselves on our retention of talented people. By 2009 we had celebrated with 24 of our people as they reached their 10th anniversary and this year we have just celebrated our 6th member of staff to reach the 25th Anniversary milestone.

When we asked Senior Consultant, Simon Wagstaff, our second employee to reach their 25th anniversary, why he has stayed so long, he said ’Every day is different – challenging, fun, interesting, developmental, scary, intriguing, stimulating – and I’m surrounded by talented, inspirational people. Why would I leave? Engaging and retaining our talented employees directly contributes to our commercial success.

91% of our employees believe that this is a psychologically and emotionally healthy place to work. (Source; Great Place to work Awards Survey 2009).