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Last week we celebrated "Bring your dog to work day"! Our four-legged colleagues were not too demanding, but they had a few special requests: Treats at the ready ✅ Belly rubs for good behaviour ✅ Tennis ball breaks ✅ Meet Hugo, Ronnie, Nala, Rex, Max and Chase – they brought a smile to everyone’s faces and left with tails wagging. Thank you also to their wonderful owners for taking part!
Our Training & Education Team took the opportunity to use one of the benefits we offer which gives our QAers time off work for charity leave, they decided to raise money for the mental health Charity - Mind. The team set a monthly challenge to start a walking group and see if they could walk 879 miles within one month which is the total distance to walk around some of offices and training centre's (London, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Cheltenham, Swindon and Slough). Our QAers smashed their target walking 1,453 miles and raised £820 for MIND. Well done all!
We attended the London Job Show at Westfield, Shepherds Bush to talk to candidates about what 'Life' is like at QA and discuss the amazing opportunities we have. The team were thrilled to speak with so many talented people and look forward to taking them through our recruitment process.
In February our QAers got together to commemorate LGBT+ History Month. We learnt about pivotal people, events and symbols that are a part of LGBTQIA+ history. We hosted a movie night across our offices, watching the film ‘Pride’ – a great conversation starter about the power of different communities coming together. And our live streamed conversation between Lukasz Konieczka, the co-founder of the Mosaic LGBT+ Young person’s trust and Katie Nykanen, Chief Technology Officer was a real highlight; we all picked up some great tips on language and how to be better allies both at work and as carers to young people.
At the start of the year we set our QA-ers a challenge to improve their wellbeing for the month of January, for one lucky person they had the chance to win Love2Shop vouchers. We caught up with Vicky, one of our Curriculum Managers about her achievements. "My journey through the January Wellbeing Challenge was both a struggle and rewarding. Since I started working remotely as a Curriculum Manager, I've struggled to reach even 2000 steps a day! So I started to look at ways I could improve this. One of my successes was incorporating a mix of outdoor walks and indoor walking sessions using my new adjustable desk and walking pad in between meetings. If your remote worker like myself, I can highly recommend swapping the chair for some trainers. Since Joining QA back in August, I have been consistently impressed by the company's focus on employee wellbeing, engagement, and community building, and I wholeheartedly encourage others to participate in future challenges. Well done Vicky!
Thank you to our Senior Learner Service Manager Mark Soady for running a session with some of our People Team today around Neurodiversity . It was very insightful to learn more about what it means to be Neurodiverse and what QA Ltd can do to make reasonable adjustments in the workplace.
There's no Blue Zone at QA, this week we wanted to bring our employees together on Blue Monday both in person or virtually. We enjoyed a variety of opportunities to get together whether that was enjoying breakfast in the office, attending a virtual doodling session allowing us to unwind and let our creative minds flow, getting together for the virtual Big QA Brew, (we were even joined by a few of our four-legged friends) where we discussed what makes up happy outside of work and finally ended the day with a mindful session.
This year our QA-ers were delighted to be supporting the KidsOut Giving Tree campaign! The charity supports families who can't afford to buy gifts by giving every child a present to open on Christmas morning. Every QA office joined in the campaign to donate as many gifts as possible to children up and down the country.
We were lucky to be joined by our wonderful furry friends today at QA to celebrate Bring Your Dog To Work Day! In true QA spirit, the uptake was great, and our QA-ers enjoyed the many benefits our four-legged friends give us.
Our Chief Exec has kindly given all staff, where feasible, an early finish of 4pm on Fridays from today until the end of August, when it will be reviewed!
