Life at SBRC – Culture and Wellbeing

11.07.22

Blog, General

The Scottish Business Resilience Centre continues to work towards encouraging the importance of integrating a culture of wellbeing, and consistently takes various steps to ensure the right kind of support is available to the team members, as and when they need it through working on championing the cause of wellbeing, diversity and inclusion within the workplace, through several initiatives. 

Since coming out of lockdown, we have spoken about how we can protect our work-life balance, and most importantly our mental wellbeing. In addition to that, we all collectively agreed that with so many working mums in our team, the challenges that working mothers face particularly in those pre-school years in their homes, balancing work and childcare can be excruciatingly challenging at times. Therefore, our CEO, and the board members of our organisation, collectively decided to go ahead with trialling the four-day working starting April 2022 and we are proud to say we have not looked back! It has been a learning curve for the team, and a big milestone at the same time for the organisation  
 
We have been evaluating and monitoring it regularly to understand and identify the benefits and adjustments around it, so we can eventually share the best practices to the wider public forum and for the benefit of the organisations who may want to follow the same approach. Feel free to reach out to us at SBRC if you would like to know more about our learnings!  

Four day working at SBRC: 

Scottish Business Resilience Centre CEO and CyberScotland Chair, Jude McCorry is known for breaking barriers in the Scottish tech and cyber sectors and has become well-recognised for her inspirational leadership style.  

“I used to be very conscious of how being a working mum impacted my work; it certainly affected the types of positions I applied for. When my children were younger, I felt constantly pulled in multiple directions.  

“I’ve tried to minimise that feeling as much as possible for the parents (and everyone else!) at SBRC by implementing a four-day work week across the organisation so that everyone gets more time at home without sacrificing their income. It’s good for the organisation because it’s good for employees.” – Jude McCorry, CEO, SBRC.
 
Since April 2022, under the guidance of our CEO, SBRC has been leading the trial of a 4-day work week, determined to give team members a healthier work/life balance.  

In order to better understand what the team members expected from the culture and wellbeing aspect of the workplace, and the impact of four-day working, we have been sharing questionnaires with the team since the four-day working started in SBRC. The answers and findings from the survey have massively helped us identify the needs, expectations and improvement points for the organisation as a whole. 

Whilst we continue to witness the benefits of the 4-day working regime, we have also been working on our communications framework, internally and externally, which makes a huge difference when transitioning to something as significant as 4 day working from 5 day.  

Here are a few quotes from a few of our team members on how the 4-day working has impacted them and their work-life balance: 
 
“Feel much more refreshed after a weekend. It feels like a mini holiday every week, and coming into the summer it feels amazing on a Thursday evening to be able to switch off.” 

“I think having the extra day at the weekend allows people to switch off from work which has a positive effect on overall wellbeing and in turn have a positive effect on peoples performance.” 

“Recently, I have observed positive attitudes of staff who clearly relish four-day working. During the pilot period, productivity has been enhanced in my opinion with considerable projects and programmes of work being delivered. Four day working has made a very positive impact.” 

“I can say quite strongly that I have noticed a positive impact after working a 4-day week. I feel more productive on my longer working days and more rested after my longer break off.” 

“This is an amazing initiative! I do strongly feel there is a change happening and more balance is coming in. Good to have strong female leaders who understand what it’s like balancing family & work, unafraid to take risks.” 

Establishing an organisation’s culture of well-being, where the company’s core values, aspirations and practices are fairly shared with its employees, unsurprisingly helps team members to see the path the organisation is heading towards. It is a universally known fact that a positive workplace culture draws talent, attracts engagement, impacts wellbeing and satisfaction, and influences high performance.   

1. Focus – Stay focused and motivated to achieve established goals, instrumental to the success of every workplace. 

2. Accountability – The capacity to take ownership and responsibility for your work and the outcomes to promote employee engagement and better productivity. 

3. Agility – The ability to work with insight, flexibility and trust in your team – a critical aspect for companies to innovate and swiftly adapt to market shifts 

SBRC’s core values are deeply embedded at the heart of everything we do, resulting in the whole team contributing towards organisational goals and taking ownership of their work to ensure we achieve the best possible results through optimal utilisation of resources.  

In addition to the above mentioned, the culture and wellbeing committee at SBRC has been functioning to its full potential since early 2022 and includes team members from diverse backgrounds such as human resources, diversity and inlc, business management, Police Scotland, cyber exercising, community building and engagement. For a well-being culture to succeed, it is essential that companies embed well-being within their company culture. We have undertaken a few activities over the past few weeks, and some are scheduled for the upcoming weeks: 

On Friday 15th July, the team at SBRC are taking part in a fundraising event for Street Soccer Scotland. The team will be putting on their walking boots for a 22.5km (13.9 miles) trek from Linlithgow to South Queensferry to raise money for a great cause.  

Over the last few weeks, our team have been training hard with lots of walks across scenic #Scotland ⬇️ Even our four-legged friends are getting involved 🐾 

If you’d like to support this amazing cause, head to our JustGiving page 👉 https://bit.ly/3btaSEW 

Street Soccer Scotland uses football-inspired training and personal development as a medium to empower people who are affected by social exclusion. You can find out more about the great work of Street Soccer Scotland on their website. 

In this day and age of digitalisation and hybrid working, no one could disagree that the benefits of having an effective communications framework in place within an organisation can have several benefits. On 23^rd May, our colleague, Nika Noakes, Policy, Advocacy and Communications Lead, delivered an in-house, in-person bespoke Effective Communications Training for the whole team and the focus of the training was to highlight the importance of ethical communications and learning the advantages of being an effective communicator. The workshop was based on the design thinking approach and everyone participated in group activities, eventually coming up with great ideas on how can we best communicate our story to the wider public, and work efficiently together as a team.