The past year has been particularly challenging for companies, as we all try to navigate a hand-sanitised and socially distanced working environment, brought on by COVID-19. With remote working being at the forefront of our lives since last March, an essential consideration to make in order to remain productive is the wellbeing of employees. In this post, we look at what the ICS-digital team has been doing to maintain happiness and success throughout 2020 and beyond.
Our most recent endeavour to encourage productivity has been a wellness fitness incentive. For this, we encouraged members of the team to participate in a step challenge, where the person who had the most steps at the end of a month would get an extra day of annual leave. Many of the team took part in this, and with an international office that meant participants from Leeds to Madrid. We used a collaborative app where we could share motivational tips and photos that were taken on hikes, such as the ones below:
As an agency we pride ourselves on creating a vibrant and social environment; pre-COVID (a staple phrase nowadays), you’d regularly see our social media flowing with group office activities such as fuddles, Monday breakfasts and cheese days. This made our transition to the working from home model even more challenging. However, we rose to the occasion and adapted our way of encouraging team spirit.
Team incentives have taken on a more homely theme, with exceeded targets being rewarded with takeaways for everyone. We’ve also enjoyed navigating the virtual world by holding Friday drinks and charity coffee mornings via Microsoft Teams (cue lots of ‘you’re muted!’). Video calling platforms have been particularly crucial for engaging with each other while working from home; something as simple as seeing a familiar face on your laptop screen can make such a big difference in terms of general wellbeing and productivity.
A new addition to our wellbeing resources is the Wellness Newsletter. These are sent to the team once a month, and detail information on healthy snacks, entertainment and fitness tips. The team are encouraged to submit their own content - be it submissions for a pumpkin carving competition or recommendations for their favourite book. We even put together themed newsletters for Halloween and Christmas, to try and put a smile on people’s faces:
As we look ahead to the rest of 2021, it is clear that ‘the new normal’ is here to stay. We will continue our efforts in ensuring that the ICS-digital team feels healthy and productive, to achieve success throughout the year. The fitness wellness incentive from last year was a huge success, with feedback from the team being extremely positive. Given the latest lockdown in the UK, creating another one of these will be a great way that we can encourage people to get active once again, and hopefully one day soon we will be able to return to Fun Days and celebratory Friday evening drinks.
Pandemic or no pandemic, we’re always on the lookout for new faces to join the team - if you think that could be you, head to our careers page to see our current openings.
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