It has been almost three years since our group became a signatory of the Mindful Business Charter (MBC), with the intention of creating a working environment that removes unnecessary stress and allows everyone to thrive.

The journey hasn’t come without its challenges, but it has given us a framework to not just talk about mentally healthy working practices, but to create tangible actions across our businesses.

Our chief executive, Jem Fawcus, initially heard about the MBC and felt it was an important initiative to be part of. The MBC was set up in response to the demands of professional service work and the nature of the client/supplier relationship.

As we explored the framework and the challenges it was trying to overcome, we felt we could draw significant parallels with the organisations that had signed up to the charter. So we started our journey with the MBC – the first organisation from the market research sector to do so. We welcomed the chance to meet regularly with other industries, and learn from – and be inspired by – what they were doing in this area.

After our initial onboarding, we set up a small team responsible for developing principles and actions that we felt would be relevant for our business, under the guidance of the four pillars of the charter (see boxout).

Pinpointing pressures

Our journey started, primarily, in our Firefish UK business. We spent time with teams to hear about how they defined moments of stress in their day-to-day work and looked at what we already had in place to alleviate these. Our first action was to communicate our existing wellbeing principles to the business more proactively, through the guidance of the pillars.

Speaking to people and trying to understand their pressures highlighted that some of the messages around our current wellbeing principles had been lost or went unnoticed in practice and we needed to do more to ensure that everyone knew about them. For example, we reiterated the importance of:

• Switching off work channels when on annual leave
  
• Being aware of other people’s workstreams
  
• Aiming to start an hour later after a late night of fieldwork.

These are things we have committed to and that have been endorsed at senior level – but they were not consistently actioned.

We then started to think about actions we could take to go further under the principles. When we became a signatory, we were in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic and had adopted new, remote ways of working. We were conscious that there was a new stress emerging from feeling distant from colleagues, peers and seniors, but with the added realisation that people were experiencing the pressures differently depending on their personal circumstances. We needed to develop principles that would be relevant in the moment, but not reactive. We wanted to be progressive in our approach to mentally healthy working and for the principles to have longevity and flexibility – to still be relevant in the future ways of working that were yet to be established.

We developed some practical principles and communicated these across the business. Under the ‘smart meetings and communications’ pillar, for example, we recognised the reliance we were having on video calls and virtual meetings – and our insight highlighted that this could be stressful for individuals in different ways. We developed principles on how people could share their communication preferences with others, giving people permission to turn off cameras for a screen break, and encouraging them to think more about who needs to be on emails/invites and to trial times of the day when they stay off email to complete tasks.

Remote working also added pressure on how and when people took breaks. Not having natural breaks away from screens that the office environment provided, we developed principles around rest periods, encouraged people to signal their working hours via their email signature, and changed some of our regularly scheduled meetings so people didn’t have to compromise their lunch break to attend. We also ensured that seniors across the business led by example.

Our journey has not progressed without challenges. Our company comprises different businesses, and the work culture between teams can differ – what works for one team might not work for another. This has led us to realise that, while some principles will sit company-wide, for others we will need to be flexible or create principles to suit a particular business. We established a team of MBC representatives across different parts of the group, so we can account for all business needs and learn from one another.

We also felt it was important that we had representation at board level and embedded help from the central people team, to understand where our principles can be supported through other company wellbeing initiatives, such as: a group mental health policy; menopause policy; mentally healthy training for line managers; and trained mental health first aiders.

Maintaining momentum

We continue to overcome the challenge of building awareness and keeping up momentum, to ensure everyone knows of our commitment to MBC and what that means for them. It is important to keep the company updated on progress, to ensure it remains at the forefront of people’s minds and that they feel comfortable making suggestions and helping us evolve the principles. Our MBC representatives work together on a regular basis to establish new principles and further those we already have.

We have also launched a new slide for research proposals, which outlines our values around mental health and wellbeing. We hope it will help set expectations with our clients about what’s important to us, and how we work.

Margot Goldman-Edwards is associate director, and Sian Stranks, people and development director, at Firefish

This article was first published in the April 2023 issue of Impact.