As the UK marks Mental Health Awareness Week (9-15 May 2022) we’re working to add more joy to the workplace.
This past week, we’ve launched ‘Project Joy’, which aims to create an even happier environment and a focus on the wellbeing of our team to allow them to flourish and deliver ever greater results.
Our founder and CEO, Heather Horton, says: “Our industry is fast paced and relentless; like everyone, our clients are facing huge pressures, they’ve got massive budget cuts and supply chain issues. Supporting them means providing a great service. And to do that we have to look after our staff and develop our talent.
“We can’t get the best out of our teams if they’re burnt out, which is why we launched Project Joy and have promoted a member of staff to Director of Joy too; it’s that important to us.”
Project Joy is now a regular part of our working life. We have regular away days and social nights, plus a mentorship programme from day one to help each member ease into their roles.
We’ve also been working with ‘The Happiness Index’ which gives us the opportunity to check in at any time and let the senior team know (anonymously!) how we’re feeling, any challenges we’re facing and what they can do to make Ecrubox a happier place. This has really helped to shape the way we work and how we can evolve the business to be better.
Every month our senior leadership team acknowledges one employee at the agency’s ‘Employee Appreciation Awards’, where they are gifted a £25 Amazon voucher for their great work. We also believe that recognising milestones in the company is an important aspect of appreciation, which is why staff also receive a trophy after their first anniversary of working at Ecrubox.
Working at a digital marketing agency means that there’s a lot that we need to keep up with as a company and in our individual roles, so we created our own internal learning and development programme, EcruAcademy. We work from home every Friday and everyone takes part in EcruAcademy. Each week we focus on a topic that is not directly related to our roles. We’ve most recently looked at Cult Theory, Why Retro Matters and Data Driven Personas.
We’re also really keen for Project Joy to help the wellbeing of our clients and have just held a successful trial of sending our partners ‘boxes of wonder’, that include personal items from our team that can spike curiosity or have personal meaning to us. The feedback so far has been really positive, and it’s just another way in which we can show our appreciation to our clients.
Heather says; “We’re proud that our agency culture and partnership approach feels like an extension of our clients hopes and dreams, and we will be honouring this by rolling out more boxes as part of the project this year.”
With flexible working more apparent, we also offer all our employees a flexible approach to their work to follow their out-of-work passions: for example, one team member runs an online second-hand luxury clothing business a day-a-week and another team member has time off to develop his own online business.
Since the pandemic, we’ve realised that we don’t need our team back in the office to succeed. We have a number of employees that work around the world, ranging from the North of England to Brazil and the Philippines! We know that if we want the best for our clients, we need to ensure our team are the best they can be, regardless of where they prefer to work. We’re incredibly excited to develop Project Joy and to ensure the wellbeing of both our employees and our clients. Discover more about our culture by following our team on social.