Workplace Wellness
Did you know its Stress Awareness Month!? We wanted to talk about all things stress, mental health and well-being to raise awareness and help to start a conversation about the importance of mental health in the workplace.
The pandemic and all the uncertainties in the recent years have had a huge impact on our mental health. “In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25%, according to a scientific brief released by the World Health Organization (WHO) today”. So the mental health and well-being of your family, friends and colleagues has been more important than ever before…
Award-Winning Hospitality Group Like No Other
At Caviar & Chips, we’re creating a company that places greater importance on the well-being of our team over profit. We want to do the right thing for the communities we work in and the environment around us. And so everything we do at is guided by our four core values:
1. Client-led
2. Collaborative
3. Positive
4. Creative
Well-Being In The Workplace
We have a great focus on well-being and looking after our teams in our business, so much so that this is headed up by our Head of People, Gemma, and Grace our Well-being Coordinator. Together and with our leadership team, they plan, support and deliver on all things well-being here at Caviar & Chips!
Grace is a Host at our historic pub the Virgins & Castle, and has recently taken on a new role of our well-being coordinator for Caviar & Chips Hospitality Group as this is an area she would like to develop further in. We’ve chatted to Grace about all things well-being at Caviar & Chips and here’s what she said…
“From the minute I came into the team I knew I’d found my people! I was impressed by the way the whole team lived and breathed the values. In my previous career I had led with a well-being focus and was pleasantly surprised that team well-being is put at the heart of everything we do here.”
Our approach to well-being is based around four pillars of well-being; emotional, physical, social, career and financial. We have a different focus/theme each month focusing on one of these pillars which form the basis for communications, training, events, volunteering and charity work. We recognise that all these areas contribute to our well-being so it is important that we as a business have a focus on all of these and not just one.
Emotional Well-Being
Life can be stressful and challenging right? But we want to help support our team’s emotional well-being as much as possible. Here’s some of the ways we support our team:
We have check-ins at the start of every shift and event where we are only focused on our team, how they are and if they need any extra support that day. This builds a culture where we can bring our whole selves to work, support one another and break down barriers about talking about our mental well-being. Similarly, we also have check-outs at the end of the shift or event to make sure all our team members leave feeling happy and motivated!
We all know that the Hospitality industry comes with its challenges, however we want to change the perception of the Hospitality industry and create a great place to work! One of the ways we do this is by investing in Hospitality Action for all of our businesses. This is a great resource to support and provide team members with specialist help, advice and support.
We’ve created a number of internal and external campaigns with a strong focus around mental health to give our team members opportunities to have open conversations about their mental health and well-being. This also includes leaders of the business creating videos and blogs about their own mental health. We also run monthly leadership training sessions to help support the mental well-being of teams as well as how to look after your own well-being.
We want to empower our employees to take time out for their well-being, and we want to support them in doing this. There’s lots of ways we do this and it’s easy for other businesses to follow suit. Some examples include; we give everyone their birthday off (a paid day off) to give individuals a chance to have time out. We also encourage flexible working and help colleagues plan their work schedule around family and home life.
Our Head of People Gemma, is always available and on hand for people that want to talk through how they are feeling and we create a safe space for individuals to talk through their well-being and signpost to further support.
Physical Well-Being
We want our team to thrive! So supporting our team to help them have good health and energy levels is a must…
We offered and paid for our team members the flu vaccine over the winter, as we know keeping our employees healthy is super important. We also give our team members the time they need in order to attend any medical appointments or health screenings.
We’re all about food and drink! And so we provide everyone on shift or working at an event a meal, these are hot and well balanced meals to support our teams whilst they are working and give them the fuel to look after guests.
At the Virgins & Castle, we like to support the local community, and we therefore plan and organise well-being walks to encourage the team and the local community to go outside, get active and socialise. We’ve also recently launched our brand new dining destination in Warwick No.34 Garden & Grill. We provided workplace massages for the team before the big launch event and this gave the team time to relax and de-stress.
Social Well-Being
Whether this is in your home life or work life, there’s nothing better than a sense of belonging and being part of a community.
We love to support local charities and get the team involved in volunteering opportunities. Every employee across each of the businesses can choose to take one day off to help the local community and they will still be paid for this day.
We supported Movember in November for the Virgins & Castle, where we raised an incredible £1,700 for charity as well as a great opportunity to come together for a great cause – throughout the month we had a focus on men’s health sharing lots of information and videos about how men can support their mental and physical health. We also recently collected donations from the team and the local community for the local food bank, which was inline with Random Acts of Kindness Day.
When new people join our team, we also deliver what we call “culture club” for all new starters so they can be “onboarded” in the right way, understand our vision and values and can fully understand the support that is available to them.
Career Well-Being
Live to work, or work to live? Either way, we want to create a great place to work!
We offer individuals the opportunity to work across our businesses and gain different skills and experience for their personal development. We also do six monthly performance and development reviews to ensure everyone has an opportunity to discuss their development. We can then look at how we can support people to progress throughout the business and their careers. At Caviar & Chips, we look at where the team has skills and we utilise these across all of the businesses. The great thing about working for Caviar & Chips Hospitality Group is that there’s always opportunities for people to develop and grow, whichever business that may be in.
Alongside this, we have a leader and management development programme that delivers regular sessions to ensure our leaders and managers can be the very best they can be and are continually developing.
Financial Well-Being
We want all our team members to have a sense of security and ensure they have everything they need.
Firstly, we don’t pay minimum wage, whatever your job title may be! We’ve given advances to employees when they have been struggling financially and have allowed people a loan to pay back over time. Alongside this, we did an extra pay run in January as we recognise January is a long month and don’t want our team members to struggle throughout January.
We have also provided financial awareness training for a number of the team members and give them the opportunity to have a 1-1 financial review with a financial coach. This can give employees a sense of security and can provide individuals with tips and guidance on how to budget and monitor their finances.
We hope this blog has given you a really great insight into the Caviar & Chips Hospitality Group and all the things we do to support our team. We also hope it gives some ideas and inspiration for other businesses to put greater focus on the well-being of their teams no matter how big or small they may be. If we all worked a little more towards looking after our well-being and of those around us, we’ll all be in a better place.
Fancy joining the Caviar & Chips family?! We have exciting roles across our Hospitality group and we want to recruit like-minded people to help us create a great place to work. View our current vacancies.