Balancing Act: Thriving at the BHF with Work-Life Harmony
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In today's fast-paced world, achieving equilibrium between work and personal life is more crucial than ever. The benefits are endless for both the individuals and the organisation.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is passionate about ensuring our colleagues maintain a healthy work-life balance. When individuals have the freedom to allocate time for relaxation, hobbies, and spending time with friends and family, their mental resilience and physical wellbeing is amplified. In turn, they are more likely to increase productivity and job satisfaction, and less likely to experience stress and burnout.
Getting the right work and personal life balance is a win-win situation for everyone involved and the following are a few things the BHF have implemented to support our colleagues lead their own journey for a better work-life balance.
Flexibly Connected.
The BHF continues its amazing work following on from winning the Best Flexible Working Strategy at the HR Excellence Awards in 2022.
We introduced Flexibly Connected in June 2021 and since then we have been engaging with our Champions network, gathering insight from colleagues through our Ways of Working Study, all the while testing, learning and adapting our approach where needed. Our Flexibly Connected policy outlines the BHF’s flexible way of working and promotes wellbeing.
Teams have developed Team Agreements, agreeing on a set of principles on how they work best. This helps them understand and support each other's way of working, wellbeing, and work-life balance. Underpinning all of this is the ongoing use of enhanced technology and processes to support hybrid collaborative working, and support inclusion and diversity.
The Flexibly Connected Programme allows employees to establish flexible work arrangements to suit personal needs while still meeting work obligations, allowing us all to work in a way that helps to unlock our best work for our cause – a vision of a world free from the fear of heart and circulatory diseases.
Engagement Surveys
We conduct two Employee Engagement Surveys each year, one of which is a deep dive pulse survey. In September this year, we ran a ‘Health & Happiness Survey’ to gather feedback on wellbeing, work-life balance, change, and manager support. This helps the organization understand and address the needs of its employees and look for opportunities to improve based on the feedback provided.
Live well. Work well (LwWw)
LwWw is our internal wellbeing programme that helps colleagues on their personalised wellbeing journey. This programme provides activities, opportunities, and signposting to support employees in living a healthy and happy life, both at home and at work. Our work is based around four key pillars: Mental Health, Physical Health, Social Health, and Financial Health. Our project group work with stakeholders around the organisation to support our LwWw agenda for colleagues across the BHF.
Lifestyle Benefits
The BHF offers several benefit options to encourage staff to take care of their wellbeing. For example, staff have access to BenefitHub, an employee discount platform. This includes discounts on shopping, travel, restaurants, hotels, gyms, insurance, and more, allowing for a more cost-effective solution to better wellbeing and reduce life stressors. We also contribute towards gym memberships and exercise classes, which supports a healthy mind and healthy body.
Healthcare and Wellbeing
We have cash back schemes for medical treatment including optician and dental cover. These provisions encourage preventative care and the ability to quickly take action for early signs of concerns. This reduces the stress and time associated with longer term health and medical issues, allowing employees to enjoy their work and personal lives.
Annual Leave
The BHF recognises the importance of having a happy, healthy workforce and a work-life balance is an important part of this. We offer one of the most competitive leave allowances in our sector, and we want our employees to use it!
It’s vital our employees take regular breaks from work so they can recharge and feel refreshed on their return. Research shows that taking regular annual leave is hugely important on mental and physical wellbeing.
Employees also have the opportunity to buy up to one week contracted hours and increase their holiday allowance to suit their needs.
Support Leave
In recognition of the diverse make-up of the BHF’s workforce, the BHF have introduced a new holistic Support Leave offering in 2024, which aims to foster a culture of support, understanding, and flexibility for those who need it.
This leave supports different life events that our colleagues may face during their employment at the BHF with an offering of up to 10 paid days, plus 5 in extenuating circumstances in a 12-month rolling period.
This leave is available to provide extra support to colleagues in time of uncertainty, where they may need to take additional time away from work to support themselves or others close to them during a life event, such as caring responsibilities, bereavement, and specialised medical appointments such as IVF treatment.
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is important for all employees. There’s no one size fits all solution, but by providing a variety of options, colleagues can tailor an approach that is aligned with their values and passions.
The BHF is the biggest funder of research into heart and circulatory diseases in Europe. We help find cures and treatments to give people more time with loved ones. Find out more at bhf.org.uk
