Check out your Company Bowl for anonymous work chats.
We’ve been recognised with a Gold Award in the Mind Wellbeing Workplace Index for the second time! This is the highest recognition you can get for workplace wellbeing. The index is a benchmark of best policy and practice. It’s designed to help organisations find out what they’re doing well and where they could improve their approach to mental health in the workplace. As part of this, our people were invited to complete a survey about how they feel RHP Group supports their wellbeing and mental health. Achieving this level of award means we have successfully embedded mental health into our policies and practices, we utilise a variety of best practice approaches and we demonstrate a long-term, in-depth commitment to our people’s mental health.
Last week we joined together for our all employee conference at Twickenham Stadium. The theme this year was the RHP Olympics. The perfect choice given many of their values connect with our own, and the games in Paris are just around the corner. We made music with boomwhackers and drums at our very own opening ceremony, went head to head competing for medals in team challenges, and heard from Derek Redmond about his inspiring career and Olympic story. Lunch time was spent eating yummy food and taking selfies pitch-side! Our employees were fantastic sports, bringing energy, enthusiasm and competitive spirits to the day. Colleagues from across different teams worked together striving for gold, but also spent time connecting and having fun.
Please join us in giving a very warm welcome to Sarah Thomas who starts her role as as Chief Executive of RHP Group today! Sarah has extensive experience in the housing sector with over 11 years at Executive level. Sarah joins us from a role as Chief Operating Officer at Peabody, one of the UK’s largest housing associations. She previously worked at Catalyst as Interim Chief Executive, having joined them as Chief Operating Officer in 2019. Prior to roles in housing, Sarah worked in the commercial sector including over eight years’ experience at a senior level at Eurostar. Sarah has a strong track record in strategic leadership, transformation, performance, and customer experience. In addition to her accomplishments in large, complex organisations in both the housing and private sectors.
Empowering women isn’t just a one-day celebration for us here across RHP Group: it’s a daily commitment to creating a truly inclusive culture. When we embrace equity, we embrace diversity and inclusion: that's why gender equality is a key part of our inclusion strategy. Our mean gender pay gap is as low as 0.2%, and women make up: 52.6% of employees 50.7% of managers 50% of Executive Directors 54.5% of RHP's Board 71.4% of Co-op Homes' Board We're also looking forward to welcoming our new female Chief Executive from 1 April!
It's Time to Talk Day: the nation's biggest mental health conversation, and a great reminder that at RHP Group, we're choosing to talk about mental health all year round. As part of our commitment to make these conversations the norm, our Mind Matters Champions are holding a charity bake sale. All donations are for our chosen charity, The Vineyard in Richmond 🍰. We're encouraging everyone to be open to the idea of talking – we all have mental health, and by having conversations about it we can help ourselves and others.
Today is known as 'Blue Monday': the most difficult day of the year, but at RHP Group, we know there’s no such thing. We all have our good days and our bad days, so we're joining in with Samaritans' 'Brew Monday' instead, and bringing together all the ingredients for a great conversation! Whether people are working in the office, on site, or remotely today, we’re encouraging everybody to take some time out to catch up with colleagues over a cuppa for a tea and talk.
Last Saturday saw our chosen charity ‘The Vineyard’ hold their annual Community Christmas Fair. The event, saw a Christmas market, a live performance from the Richmond Ukrainian Refugee Choir and even a fashion show! We’re proud to say that there were RHP-ers present on the day lending their support. They decorated the garden, helped at Santa's Grotto and served mulled wine at their Fashion Show.
We're over the moon to have been named 'Family Friendly Employer of the Year' at last night's prestigious Personnel Today Awards! The judges chose RHP Group because of our commitment to enabling everyone to balance home, family and work commitments, our unique family friendly initiatives and that we offer an environment where everyone can feel like they really belong. Whatever shape someone's family takes, we want to enable them to be the best version of themselves, get the best out of life and do the best for our customers. Some of the initiatives we run that support this include: our flexible working programme 'Your work, your way', paid carers leave, paid time off for becoming a Grandparent/ moving house/ getting married and interest-free loans for fertility treatment.
Last week was National Fertility Awareness Week. With one in six couples and one in seven individuals #FightingForFertility, we recognise this is a very real issue for many employees, which is why we're working with Fertility Matters at Work to become a Fertility Friendly workplace. We aim to educate, raise awareness and offer support for those whose journey to parenthood isn't easy. As part of this awareness raising week, we've shared advice from Fertility Matters at Work on how to support colleagues who are facing fertility struggles. We also held a powerful and insightful webinar with managers last month, about why fertility matters at work.
We'd like to wish a very happy Diwali to all of you who are celebrating it. We hope this time brings happiness and joy to you and all your family 🪔
