After a well-deserved two-week Christmas break, the busy January period commenced, and we got back into the swing of things here at NOVOS! It can sometimes be challenging to return to work after the Christmas break. And some feel overwhelmed at the beginning of a new year. With talk of New Year’s resolutions and goals circulating, it can cause pressure in people’s personal and work lives.
So, being aware of the struggle this anticipation and pressure can feel, this quarter, we introduced optional virtual wellness lunchtime sessions biweekly for people of NOVO
S to participate in and empower and support each other.
An experienced wellness coach runs these sessions and follows topics involving vision boarding, guided meditations and creating a personalised wellness wheel to reflect on which areas of our life to do with a little more self-love. We have been running these sessions throughout this quarter, and they have been a successful, refreshing boost every few weeks!
Our culture activities so far!
January
We also welcomed the new year with our first culture activity; a Sip &
Swap second-hand clothing event! We asked the team at NOVOS to each bring in some of their old clothes to be donated to the event, and then we displayed all of the clothes at our office to be purchased. Every item was £1, including dresses, shoes, books, accessories, and more.
Nearly 200 items were donated from the team and other offices at our workspace, and NOVOS matched every donation! We extended the invite for this event to friends and anyone at our office block and used QR codes to direct people to the Go Fund Me page.
The money we raised was donated to Project Seagrass, a global-facing environmental charity devoted to conserving seagrass ecosystems. We invited one of our clients, Ocean Bottle, to deliver a talk on one of their sustainability initiatives and share more about how plastic and consumption impact our oceans.
We have many sustainable-led clients, and we’re also trying to do more every day for the planet ourselves, like reducing our plastic use in the office to encourage sustainability and reduce consumption internally.
At NOVOS, we are committed to helping eCommerce brands of all sizes reach their goals, particularly socially and environmentally responsible ones. Take a look at our case study on how we helped pre-loved fashion brand Beyond Retro boost their revenue by 160%.
February
In February, we celebrated Pancake Day with a ‘Pancake & prosecco’ evening, ordering pancakes from a local bakery into our office. Everyone got to choose their pancake order, and we opened a few bottles of prosecco to cheers to after the first busy few months of the year!
March
In March, we held a cocktail-making evening, creating cocktails and mocktails that were job themed! SEOld Fashioned and Marketing Margarita, Bel-link-i and Blog-y Mary were some of the creative play-on-words we came up with!
New starters!
NOVOS is growing, and we have welcomed three new starters to the Digital PR Team!
We visited the popular restaurant of choice, Paradise Green, around the corner, on our new starters’ first day to introduce the team!
Creating a welcoming and smooth onboarding process for new starters at NOVOS is really important to us, as we want to make sure they feel comfortable and at ease from the get-go!
Internal feedback culture
We held our first well-being and engagement index of the year, an internal quarterly survey allowing everyone to submit feedback about NOVOS to the senior team. The index covers topics such as culture, progression, and management, with the aim of improving well-being and engagement within the agency.
As a people-led agency, it is hugely important to facilitate and communicate feedback and make this transparent with everyone at the agency. The senior team reviews and considers index scores and feedback to determine what areas of the business need extra focus.
The top-line results from the index are shared company-wide after the survey is closed, along with responses from the founders and the next steps for ideas and suggestions submitted as feedback. Through these surveys, we have introduced new company benefits and processes to support the well-being and happiness of the people at NOVOS.
It has been a great start to the year. And we are thoroughly looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year has in store for us as we continue to grow and develop our culture and processes!