Wellbeing in the Workplace

At Leonard Design we believe that the workplace is more than just a place for our staff to work. It is a place for everyone to thrive and enjoy their work without the ‘office’ being seen as a negative entity in someone’s life.

The wellbeing of our team is of the highest of priorities, we strive to create the most comfortable, creative and inspiring environment for our staff. A place which encourages interaction, collaboration, ideas sharing and solutions generation. Our working relationships are constantly re-enforced through hosting events outside of the office; away days, social events and personal celebrations to name but a few examples.

A supportive, enjoyable, strong workplace culture elevates performance. Our shared culture and passion for design makes us more than colleagues. We are friends, collaboratively exploring our passions.

Our Initiatives

Plank fitness challenge

We have a wide selection of initiatives that are currently in place within the company to keep the whole team happy and healthy. Some of these initiatives are a small undertaking such as a small sweet treat at Easter for everyone. Other initiatives are much larger in scale including our annual company away day or our unlimited annual leave scheme. Both big or small, all these gestures aim to improve the wellbeing of the team.
Keeping active in the workplace can be an uphill struggle. Being in an environment predominantly designed for sittings for long periods of time your fitness can begin to deteriorate very easily. To combat this, we run a weekly Pilates session, have a running club, bike storage, shower facilities, Vitality health insurance with ½ price gym memberships and more recently monthly fitness challenges. The current challenge is to complete 200 squats every Monday, Wednesday & Friday and a 2-minute plank on Tuesdays & Thursdays.

Both mental and physical health are equally as important to us, therefore we also have various initiative in place to aid this. Mindfulness sessions are running regularly to give an ‘open culture’ allowing staff to converse freely to directors, associates and the HR team. If an employee’s mental health is weakening, we also offer 24 hour 7 days a week telephone counselling service with an option for face to face meetings too. Furthermore for added piece of mind our staff benefit from income protection insurance in case a long period of illness take place.
Some of our other initiatives include:

– Family fun day out;
– Vitality Health Insurance rewards scheme
– Mentoring scheme
– Chill out lunch areas
– Plus, many more

LDAirport

Each year new initiatives are introduced to put wellbeing in the hands of the team. A previous initiative saw each member of staff having a voucher to spend on making the office a better place. For some this was the inclusion of office plants, stools and bean bags. Other members of staff grouped together to purchase Sonos speakers, a Nespresso coffee machine and a table football.

During 2019 each team member was gifted a £100 travel voucher to put towards visiting an inspiring piece of architecture or design. If 86 people visit 86 interesting projects and start 86 engaging conversations, then Leonard Design will be a much more inspiring place to be. The vouchers have already been used to visit: Venice, Paris, Porto, Girona, Hamburg, Japan, California, London, Melbourne, Norway, Dubai, Tenerife and Singapore.

Small afternoon tea event shared across multiple offices via skype

Bringing the team together

As well as our annual company away day, which physically brings everyone together, we hope that our wellbeing initiatives are naturally creating a much closer-knit community. With a strong team working together and with each member feeling happy and healthy in the workplace we are creating a great place to work for everyone. If you are interested in knowing more about our culture or want to try an initiative yourself, feel free to get in touch with Estelle Morris at emorris@leonard.design for more info. Or if you think it sounds great to work at Leonard Design and are interested in our latest vacancies, click here.

Leonard Design company away day