Health and Wellbeing

Refresh are a member of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter and throughout daily life at Refresh, we support the wellbeing of all team members in five key ways:

Giving back

Each team member is allocated two days per year to undertake volunteering work. These days are paid just like any other working day. In the past team members have used the days to volunteer in local high schools, encouraging more girls to consider roles in tech, to support local charities with press releases, and to provide career guidance to sixth form colleges. It’s not compulsory, but if this is something you’d actively like to undertake, we wholeheartedly encourage it!

Financial wellbeing

We ensure that everyone is paid a fair wage for the role they undertake, and everyone is paid at least the Living Wage. In addition to annual pay rises, bonuses are paid twice-yearly in line with the performance of the business. In our open culture, everyone is kept up to date each month with the current business performance, understanding what they can do on an individual and collective basis to influence this bonus pot further. In addition, we reward team members who find our next fantastic hire with great bonuses  so if you join us, please refer your friends and ex-colleagues!

Social

With an active wellbeing calendar, run by our wellbeing committee, we ensure regular socials, internal workshops, group activities, charity days and general celebrations of great work. None are compulsory as we also understand that life outside of Refresh happens! But we encourage everyone to join in as much as they can.

Mental health

Every team member has access to our Employee Assistance Programme. Their individual, confidential account – held directly with our third-party provider – includes 24/7 GP support, free counselling sessions and talking therapies, together with regular wellbeing advice sessions.

We also ensure that monthly 121s are held with line managers where all aspects of the job, including wellness, are discussed. These are separate from twice-yearly appraisals. Refresh also has trained Mental Health First Aiders who can support team members if and when required.

In addition, Refresh regularly accesses external training which is undertaken both together as a team and on an individual basis.

Physical health

Downtime is important, so in addition to 25 days’ annual leave and Bank Holidays, everyone is given their birthday off as an extra holiday day, plus an extra day for every year served with the business. Since our inception in 2009 we’ve been designed for flexible working, with each team member provided with a laptop, phone and access to our cloud systems. We balance this carefully with the support needs of the whole team.

We encourage and support a strong work/life balance. Working in PR does mean that a 5.30pm finish each day isn’t always possible; we understand this and the wider team works well in supporting their colleagues to get jobs finished and people home asap each evening.