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It's Time to Talk Day: the nation's biggest mental health conversation, and a great reminder that at RHP Group, we're choosing to talk about mental health all year round. As part of our commitment to make these conversations the norm, our Mind Matters Champions are holding a charity bake sale. All donations are for our chosen charity, The Vineyard in Richmond 🍰. We're encouraging everyone to be open to the idea of talking – we all have mental health, and by having conversations about it we can help ourselves and others.
Today is known as 'Blue Monday': the most difficult day of the year, but at RHP Group, we know there’s no such thing. We all have our good days and our bad days, so we're joining in with Samaritans' 'Brew Monday' instead, and bringing together all the ingredients for a great conversation! Whether people are working in the office, on site, or remotely today, we’re encouraging everybody to take some time out to catch up with colleagues over a cuppa for a tea and talk.
Welcome our new Chief Executive! Earlier this year we let you know that our long-standing Chief Executive David Done OBE, will be leaving the organisation in March 2023, after 22 successful years. Following a robust recruitment process that involved our Board, customers, employees and other key stakeholders, we’re delighted to announce we’ve appointed Sarah Thomas as our new Chief Executive. Sarah has extensive experience in the housing sector with over 11 years at Executive level. Sarah joins RHP from her current role as Chief Operating Officer at Peabody. She previously worked at Catalyst as Interim Chief Executive, having joined them as Chief Operating Officer in 2019. Sarah has a strong track record in strategic leadership, transformation, performance, and customer experience. In addition to her accomplishments in large, complex organisations in both the housing and private sectors, Sarah has also held two non-executive roles in housing. Sarah returns to RHP after seven years, having previously held the role of Executive Director of Customer Services at the organisation.
Last Saturday saw our chosen charity ‘The Vineyard’ hold their annual Community Christmas Fair. The event, saw a Christmas market, a live performance from the Richmond Ukrainian Refugee Choir and even a fashion show! We’re proud to say that there were RHP-ers present on the day lending their support. They decorated the garden, helped at Santa's Grotto and served mulled wine at their Fashion Show.
We're over the moon to have been named 'Family Friendly Employer of the Year' at last night's prestigious Personnel Today Awards! The judges chose RHP Group because of our commitment to enabling everyone to balance home, family and work commitments, our unique family friendly initiatives and that we offer an environment where everyone can feel like they really belong. Whatever shape someone's family takes, we want to enable them to be the best version of themselves, get the best out of life and do the best for our customers. Some of the initiatives we run that support this include: our flexible working programme 'Your work, your way', paid carers leave, paid time off for becoming a Grandparent/ moving house/ getting married and interest-free loans for fertility treatment.
Last week was National Fertility Awareness Week. With one in six couples and one in seven individuals #FightingForFertility, we recognise this is a very real issue for many employees, which is why we're working with Fertility Matters at Work to become a Fertility Friendly workplace. We aim to educate, raise awareness and offer support for those whose journey to parenthood isn't easy. As part of this awareness raising week, we've shared advice from Fertility Matters at Work on how to support colleagues who are facing fertility struggles. We also held a powerful and insightful webinar with managers last month, about why fertility matters at work.
We'd like to wish a very happy Diwali to all of you who are celebrating it. We hope this time brings happiness and joy to you and all your family 🪔
Monday 10th October was World Mental Health Day and this year’s theme was ‘make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority’. With this in mind, we asked our employees to make their mental health the number one priority by setting aside 60 minutes to do something within their power to support their wellbeing. Our Mind Matters Champions ran a virtual ‘power hour tea and talk’ session so people could reconnect and recharge. Other suggestions were to arrange a coffee or a walk with colleagues, or to simply take the time out for reflection. Mental health issues can affect anyone, at any time. As we return to life post Covid and with so much going on in the world around us, taking a moment to pause and reflect on ourselves is rarely at the top of our to-do list. World Mental Health Day is a prompt for us to reignite our efforts to protect and focus on our mental health. It's an opportunity to talk openly about how you're feeling and a reminder to reach out if you, or others around you, are struggling.
The eagle-eyed among you might've noticed that we've changed our LinkedIn logo. This is because it's #BlackHistoryMonth in the UK and here at RHP Group we're doing lots of different things to both mark and celebrate it. To give you just a flavour of what we'll be up to this month: we'll be sharing relevant books and tv shows to read and watch, highlighting key moments and achievements throughout history and creating places to have discussions about all these things and more. We'll be doing these activities with a particular focus on the theme of this year's month which is 'Time for change: Action not words.' We look forward to sharing more with you later in the month!
Our #NationalInclusionWeek celebrations were brought to a close in style on Friday by a fantastic talk given to us by broadcaster and inclusion thought leader, June Sarpong OBE. June’s talk was packed full of insightful and practical advice about how we can be more truly inclusive for our customers and fellow employees. It’s fantastic to have a week dedicated to inclusion and having these in-depth discussions and activities, for us though inclusive thinking and behaviour is very much at the forefront of our thinking all 52 weeks of the year.
