2 minute read
FINAL WORD
The value of giving
Ben Thompson, communications and PR manager at Midwich, says that supporting and raising money for charities helps not only the chosen organisations, but also those engaging in charitable activities, to improve their mental health and wellbeing
educing our R environmental impact, helping our local communities and charities, and supporting our people are three important elements of how we conduct business at Midwich.
We have always been recognised as a supporter of charities and, over the past 10 years, we’ve been proud to represent some amazing charities and raise about £200,000. Most recently, we raised £45,058 for our local mental health charity, Norfolk and Waveney Mind. We did this through several different initiatives, including our annual quiz, festive raffle and physical activity challenges. As well as donating funds, colleagues volunteered more than 100 hours to the Mind charity shop near our head office, and donated 315kg of worthwhile items.
In 2022, we are supporting 14 charity partners in the UK and Ireland and our events and initiatives are open to our customers, vendors, distributors, suppliers, family members and the local community to get involved. We have set our sights on raising a record amount this year.
As well as donating as much money as possible for our chosen charities, in 2022 we are giving everybody the opportunity to take a day out and donate their time towards a volunteering project. This might be supporting Cancer Research UK’s local Race for Life events, litter picking in the local community or a conservation project in partnership with Norfolk Wildlife Trust. We are also forming a team of green-fingered colleagues who are creating a vegetable patch and garden area at Midwich HQ; we plan to raise funds for our charities by selling the vegetables in our office café.
CREATING POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTS From a mental health perspective, we recognise that promoting wellbeing can help prevent stress and create positive working environments; this, in turn, enables both colleagues and the organisation to thrive. Good health and wellbeing can be a core enabler of employee engagement and organisational performance - that’s why we create regular wellbeing challenges. Our current ‘Healthy Body, Healthy Mind’ initiative combines fundraising for our chosen charities, a physical activity challenge, and competition – the aim is to have a positive impact of the mental and physical wellbeing of our colleagues, promote team togetherness, and raise vital funds for charities.
We also select national days throughout the year as vehicles to recognise and support the physical and mental wellbeing of our staff. We invested record levels in 2021 on these initiatives, which included mental health awareness day, employee appreciation day and wellness week.
Midwich has also invested funds to provide all employees with private medical insurance (PMI), permanent health insurance and life cover. For our staff to know they can access PMI, and be seen by a medical specialist quickly – rather than joining the NHS waiting list – provides peace of mind and reduces the financial burden.
And finally, no colleague should have to work on their birthday, so we have given everybody an additional day off to celebrate their birthday (or the closest work day) with family and friends.
