We’re thrilled to announce we’ve recently been recognised as an Accredited Happy Workplace & employer of choice by BU Happiness College.
We’re thrilled to announce that Verve Partners has been recognised by Newcastle-based social enterprise BU Happiness College as an Accredited Happy Workplace and employer of choice!
Of course, we always knew our people and culture were a bit special. But we’re over the moon that it’s now been made official. Happiness is something we’re big on, and it’s nice to know our efforts are paying off.
So, what did it take to become Happy Workplace Accredited? And why is it such a win for our business?
We love a chance to get to know ourselves better—and find out how our employees feel. And the Happy Workplace Accreditation process was both insightful and great fun.
It involved completing a Workplace Happiness Diagnostic Report facilitated by BU, and was a whole team effort that saw us answering questions around five key areas relating to workplace and employee happiness:
Honesty and openness were encouraged throughout, and the team were excited to invest in an initiative that ultimately invests in them.
To gain formal accreditation, we needed to display above-average (60%) and, at times, exceptional scores (>70%) in each of these five areas.
We’re pleased to say that we scored over and above, achieving more than 80% in three of these key areas. What a great result!
As part of this accreditation, we also received a Certificate of Social Impact for our contribution towards 80 Days of Access to Clean Water and 100 Days of Education for Children Around the World, contributing to two UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Creating happy workplaces is something we do for our clients every day. But this accreditation proves we also shine the spotlight on ourselves.
We’ve worked hard to build a fun, collaborative and supportive environment where everyone has a voice and is heard and respected for their contributions.
We celebrate individual and business-wide achievements and provide ongoing recognition and appreciation. We also have a wellness committee, who work hard to come up with and drive engagement in various wellness programs and initiatives—with huge success!
And as part of our drive to create vibrant communities, we’re passionate about getting involved in local and national charity and community events.
When it comes to benefits and incentives, we go the extra mile with everything from paid quarterly self-care days, birthday leave, and additional paid family leave for better work-life balance to financial and money habit workshops.
“We believe that having a happy workplace positively impacts our employees and overall company culture”, says Executive Director Krystle Parker.
“Our people feel they have a heightened sense of purpose and job satisfaction and are included and a part of the overall vision of the business. This ultimately increases motivation and leads to higher employee engagement and greater productivity and success.”
“It also reduces turnover, creates stronger collaboration, reduces stress and burnout, enhances the experience for both our clients and candidates, and makes people want to come and work for us!”
The same is true for any business—and don’t just take our word for it. There are plenty of happy workplace statistics out there to back this up.
Now that we’ve been recognised as a happy workplace, we’re not going to sit back and say job done.
By completing the report, we were also able to quantify our culture and clearly see any gaps. Taking these insights, we can now jump on them with effective strategy to create even more smiles at our offices in Newcastle and Wollongong.
We’ll also continue to be very conscious of conducting temporary team check-ins to see how we’re tracking as a business across the five key areas.
We have an open two-way feedback channel to ensure our people can share openly. We also hold fortnightly one-on-one with every employee and quarterly performance meetings, which we call ‘Reflect and resets’.
But first things first, in true Verve Partners style, it’s time to celebrate this fantastic achievement. As a thank you to our team of happy employees, we’ll be heading out for a special lunch and a glass of bubbles or two!
Finally, a special mention to BU Happiness College for this insightful opportunity.
If you want to turn up the happiness dial in your workplace or career, let’s start a conversation.
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