New wellbeing strategy for staff leads to better outcomes for non-profit

An award-winning non-profit based in London has developed its own wellbeing strategy to ensure its own people feel recognised and rewarded.

Money A&E provides money advice and education to disadvantaged groups, including diverse ethnic communities and young people across the capital – funded, in part, by British Gas Energy Trust.

Having recognised the stresses and strains placed on its own employees, the organisation created an internal wellbeing group and devised a wellbeing strategy for the first time in its history to ensure it was looking after its staff.

Greg Ashby, Director of Operations and Co-founder of Money A&E, said:

“Providing advice is stressful and demanding anyway, but then covid hit and then the economic crisis followed. It’s all compounded things and the needs of our service users have increased. Their lives have become more hectic and that sometimes gets passed onto our advisors.”

Money A&E has been running for ten years, and now has 23 full and part-time staff, having grown significantly since the pandemic.

A six-strong team from across the organisation – including management and frontline workers – worked with an external consultant to identify six themes which now form part of its wellbeing strategy:

• Health (including mental and physical health)
• Good work (focusing on line management and the working environment)
• Values and principles (looking at ethics, diversity and purpose)
• Social (focusing on team dynamics)
• Financial wellbeing (including fair pay and recognition)
• Development (looking at career progression)

And Greg says he’s noticed a difference since its implementation. He added:

“It’s definitely had an impact. Things don’t get easier for our advisors – they’re still dealing with very complex cases – but they’re more open to communicate when things aren’t going as well. They know that we’ll do our best to be able to find ways to mitigate some of the things they might be struggling with. 

“Team meetings are taking place more regularly, we’ve tightened up communication, more one to ones and supervisions are taking place and I think our different teams have a better understanding of each other.

“And we recognise that our own staff have also been struggling during the cost-of-living crisis so we’ve been able to undertake a pay review and implement a pay increase of between 7-10% just to try and keep up with inflation. We’ve also been able to adopt a bike to work scheme and help people access counselling when needed, too.

“What’s more, it is definitely helping us all to achieve better outcomes for our service users, too.”

To find money and energy advice local to you, please click here.

British Gas Energy Trust currently has two support funds available. The Individuals and Families Fund, and the Energy Support Fund. To check your eligibility and apply, please click here.