International Week of Happiness at Work

At Bedford our employee’s happiness is important to us, not only because happy employees are more productive, but also that our people are our business, and we want to radiate happiness and positivity to everyone we interact with, both within and outside of our business.

We have created a number of initiatives to ensure our employees are happy, such as:

Showing appreciation

Our people need to feel recognised and appreciated for the great work they are doing. We highlight this at our quarterly performance reviews and annual pay reviews. Our leaders also send recognition emails as well as send thank you gifts, including Christmas and summer care packages to recognise people’s work.

It’s important to us that recognition doesn’t just come from the top, so we encourage people throughout the entire organisation to acknowledge great performance and say thanks. For instance, this year we launched our “Thank-you Thursday” slack channel to give our employees a platform to give shout outs to their peers when they see them living out our Bedford values (Partnership, Teamwork, Quality, Innovation, Customer Focus and Humility).

Development

We believe it is critical that our people can grow to their full potential, and invest in development opportunities for all our employees. We have created a clear progression framework so our people understand how they can develop their career and skills at Bedford. Our enablement department’s sole focus is to provide internal training through workshops, e-learning courses, and Q&A’s. We also offer each individual access to a training budget as well as business development days to use to learn new skills and undergo certifications.

Creating connections

We are now a remote first company, so encourage and cultivate connections within the entire organisation, that would naturally occur if we were working together in person.

When people first join Bedford, we invite at least five or six people across the business join their induction call, so they immediately feel connected to Bedford. We also set them up with a buddy to help them navigate their way into the company and encourage them to set up coffee chats with as many people as possible.

Our fortnightly coffee roulette, where people are randomly paired up to have a 15-minute non-work-related coffee chat, have been a great success. We host regular all hands meeting on Teams where we share company information and also share information via our People tool called Bob. We make full use of tools like Slack to share peer to peer learning and ask questions, as well as Teams to host video calls and connect with each other.

Finally, we have quarterly ‘away days’ for people to come together. It provides the space to help nurture and develop connections between our people. Recently, our away days have been virtual, but we have still been able to have meaningful connections via group chats and breakout groups.

Flexibility

Allowing people the autonomy to plan and have control over their own day, provides them with a better work/life balance and increases their happiness. Our people can choose to come into the office or work remotely, they can also choose when and how they wish to work. Our focus is on what our people deliver, not on the hours that they work. We actively encourage our employees to take regular breaks from work and utilise their full holiday allowance each year. We believe that rest is as important to productivity and happiness as work is.

Fun

We encourage people to have fun at work, with office banter taking place on Slack and Teams, and for those lucky enough to be able to travel to the office and who are happy to meet in person, we encourage them to go to lunch together and have after work drinks at the local pubs.

We are also about to launch a new company funded social interest group initiative, where people who have a common interest, outside of work, can get together to have a great time together.

And finally

Active listening

We believe it’s important to listen to our people, as this is the best way to improve as a business and increase happiness in our employees. We listen to how our employees feel and what they need. We do this by providing a psychologically safe space for our employees to share how they are truly feeling and what they need from us.

We have regular sessions with their line managers’ and teams, as well as frequently ask for their feedback anonymously using pulse surveys. As a management team we review all feedback received monthly and we act where we can to make improvements.

I am pleased to say from the pulse surveys and feedback we get, we have happy and hardworking employees at Bedford. We are intent on continuing to listen to them and take action to help improve their happiness during their career here at Bedford. If you have any further tips for us, we would love to hear them!