OpenCredo awarded Britain's Healthiest Workplace for SMEs

Creating a positive culture is not just a core value at OpenCredo but something we actively and intentionally work towards. Because of this, we decided to participate in Vitality’s “Britain’s Healthiest Workplace” annual award programme – with the intention of learning how we could become a better and healthier organisation for our employees. To have won ‘Britain’s Healthiest Workplace’ for the SME category in 2022 has been a huge accomplishment and a welcomed surprise for our team!

In this blog, you can learn more about our journey to achieving this award and what we are doing to better improve our workplace culture.

What is Britain’s Healthiest Workplace?

Britain’s’ Healthiest Workplace (BHW) is an annual award programme headed up by Vitality, that recognises and celebrates UK-based organisations committed to promoting and supporting the health and well-being of their employees.

To enter companies need to invite their employees to fill out a survey which assesses several areas including workplace culture, work-life balance, and access to healthcare. Organisations are then ranked based on their overall score.

Our initial reason for entering was to help us gauge how we could better improve our culture and workplace well-being. We didn’t expect to win!

“We are absolutely thrilled to have been awarded first place for small businesses in Britain’s Healthiest Workplace! People are the lifeblood of OpenCredo, so it is vitally important to us that they are healthy, happy, and thriving. We are constantly working to adapt and create a workplace that is special for our people, and we’re especially grateful to the judges for recognising the hard work our team continues to do to put people at the heart of what we do.” Nicki Watt, CEO/CTO of OpenCredo

The Winning Factors

The survey included categories such as Business outcomes, Covid metrics, Burnout, Health interventions, Support, Diversity, Lifestyle, and Absenteeism; all of which we scored well in enabling us to win first place.

The survey didn’t just highlight our successes though, it also shed light on areas where we could improve. We discovered that communication was an area that needed improving specifically with regards to information on the benefits and support available to employees. Since then, we’ve been implementing new communication strategies, ensuring that every member of our company is well-informed. Some of these strategies included creating a new Slack channel for specific communications around the benefits available to employees which is already having a positive impact.

While our snack cupboard was very much loved, the survey also showed that employees wanted the addition of fruit, so we started delivering fruit baskets on a weekly basis.

Keeping a BHW Mindset!

Although wellness months have always been on the OC agenda, since winning the award we have held one that specifically featured activities based on the BHW feedback. This involved puppy playtime & cuddles therapy sessions, an Ergonomics session to alleviate musculoskeletal discomfort, massages and a healthy cooking class at the London Cookery School on how to make Dim Sums.

Looking ahead our aim is to actively maintain a positive work environment that prioritises employee health and well-being. We have introduced an OpenCredo Health, Wellbeing and Engagement survey for more frequent anonymised feedback to gauge our progress around all things well-being! We will continue to run monthly social outings for team building, office massages, provide healthy snacks and prioritise Care & Engagement for our employees. Some of our people have taken the initiative to implement their own employee-led programs such as the running club – not only does this have physical benefits but social ones too. We will continue to assess employee satisfaction quarterly, and our target for 2023 is a company-wide average of 7.5/10 – we are currently exceeding at 7.8/10!