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With the return of The Great British Bake Off in mind we decided to have a bake off of our own! And even better, we did it for our chosen charity The Vineyard Community Centre. Our very own Star Baker Sue (one of our Retirement Scheme Managers) led us through a virtual baking class with lemon cupcakes being the ‘showstopper’ of the day. As a result, we raised £360! We’re thrilled to share that since we named The Vineyard as our chosen charity back in November 2019 we’ve raised £2,300 for them in total.
Last Friday 17 July marked 20 years since RHP Group was born! To celebrate, we held a #ConnectedApart virtual roaring twenties party where we invited employees to dress in 1920s attire: we had Great Gastby-inspired tuxedos and flapper girls, speakeasy gangsters and plenty of Peaky Blinders! Everyone received a personalised party pack through the post, which included a bingo card to join our live game, sweet treats and materials for our 'design a birthday card' competition. Huge thanks to all our employees, past and present, who've helped make RHP what it is today. With ambitions to provide stellar customer service, homes to be proud of and a personalised employee experience in 2020/21, we're just getting started!
Because of recent events we weren't able to support our nominated local charity, The Vineyard Community Centre with their drop-in sessions like we'd planned, but we're chuffed to have found a way around that during lockdown with 5 in 5: our fundraising challenge. The rules were simple: choose an activity related to the number five, post a photo and nominate one other person to do the challenge. Our employees donated £5 to The Vineyard through their pay and RHP matched every donation. Distance didn't stop us from making a difference. We walked, cycled and ran 5k, ran up hills, knitted, did press-ups, yoga, meditated, played five instruments... and even recreated five famous pieces of art using things around the house! We raised £900 in total, which will help local people who are in greater need than ever after The Vineyard saw a massive drop in food donations and the complete loss of income from the shop and café.
Showing gratitude is a big part of our culture, because we know feeling appreciated can have a profound effect on how people feel about and do their jobs. For a number of years, our iamrhp employee awards have been integral in our approach to recognition. The categories are based on the things that matter most to us as a business, our customers and each other. And a global pandemic won't stop us from handing them out! So we rolled out the (virtual) red carpet for our spotlight awards ceremony, recognising nearly 40 employees who have gone above and beyond to live our values. As you can see, David Done OBE and the rest of our leadership team dressed for the occasion...
Throughout June we celebrated #PrideMonth 🌈 Our people often say that being able to bring their authentic selves to work is one of their favourite things about working at RHP and throughout the month we’ve been celebrating the values of inclusion and equality that Pride represents. As part of this, we asked everyone to ‘wear their pride to work’ by posting a rainbow selfie – here are just a few of the responses we got.
Investing in our employees' development remains one of our top priorities and we’ve been working hard to adapt our L&D plans for these unique circumstances. This month we launched Stellar - our groundbreaking new customer service programme, which will launch us into the stratosphere of delivering even better service and achieve our vision of being one of the best service providers in the UK.
Just because we’re working from home and aren’t all together right now it doesn’t mean we can’t still show thanks to our colleagues. In fact, when apart, it’s more important than ever to let someone know they’re appreciated. Our new way of doing this is with a ‘virtual thank you award’. If someone has done something extra special or gone out of their way to help us and we’d like to say ‘thanks’, we can now send an e-thank you card along with a £5 Amazon e-gift card.
