At Wave, one of our core company values is Succeeding Together, and we can’t do that without the support of our people. We’re looking back at some of our most recent successes and why they contribute to our award-winning workplace culture.
Celebrating our winning streak
Over the past few months, we’ve been shortlisted for five awards for our healthcare and wellbeing offering, and we’re thrilled to be recognised for our hard work and strategy to support our people. They’re at the heart of our business, and the wins we took home are proof that great results come from valuing our employees.
We were honoured to be winners and shortlisted in the following:
The Employee Benefits Awards: Best Healthcare and Wellbeing Benefits winner
As a company of under 350 people competing against big household names like Lidl and Aldi, we were proud to be recognised for our extensive and leading workplace benefits and how they support wellbeing. In our employee survey, 85% of our employees rated us highly on our ‘commitment to supporting the physical and mental health of all employees’, and our 78% uptake in our voluntary financial wellbeing sessions highlighted how valuable our benefits are.
The Water Industry Awards: Water Retailer of the Year
We were delighted to take home the win for this category for the second time in three years! Our strong focus on our people influenced the judges’ decision, as they were particularly impressed by “the focus on colleagues’ welfare, as well as clear and demonstrable efforts to innovate and improve customer service.”
The Employee Experience Awards: Silver award winner
This award was for our innovation in the health and wellbeing space, and for listening to feedback and ideas from our people and letting them choose which workplace benefits would be most beneficial to them.
The judges said: “This was an inspiring submission to read and your approach to health and wellbeing was comprehensive and targeted a number of areas which were clearly very important to your people. It was impressive that people engagement was so firmly embedded in your overall approach to doing business, and also that you managed to innovate in the health and wellbeing space.”
This Can Happen: Shortlisted for two awards
We were shortlisted for Best Idea to Engage Colleagues and Best Mental Wellbeing in the Workplace Strategy for large companies. We were highly commended for one of our submissions and are incredibly proud to have made it to the finals.
Building a culture that works for our people
We’re continuously looking to add to, and improve, our health and wellbeing offering. We’re committed to the health, safety, security and wellbeing of our employees, and our strategic goals include:
- Putting people first
- Developing a trust and feedback culture
- Encouraging personal and professional development.
That’s why we’ve introduced a range of workplace benefits designed to boost learning and make the working day easier for our people. Some of these include:
- One day’s paid volunteering leave
- Internal working groups tackling menopause, men’s health, LGBTQIA+ and many others
- Regular health, safety & wellbeing forums and speakers on important topics picked by employees
- Perkbox membership
- Enhanced maternity and paternity pay
- Two weeks paid leave in the event of a miscarriage
- A buddy system to tackle loneliness
- Hybrid and flexible working
- Healthcare cash back scheme that includes dental, physio and optical.
- Cycle to work scheme
- 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme that includes access to counselling
- Parent Coaching for working parents as they prepare for parenthood
- Voluntary financial education webinars to help those who would like advice on financial topics such as pensions.
Listening to our people
Wave has built a culture of feedback and trust, and we consistently make sure what we’re offering is both beneficial and valuable. In our most recent employee survey, we were thrilled to see that 89% of employees rated our range of benefits as either good or excellent. We have a representative from all areas of the business on our active internal Health, Safety and Wellbeing Forum and have a waiting list of people wanting to join. Many of our wellbeing benefits and tools have been suggested by our people, and we constantly strive to provide an elevated level of support and ensure their experience at work is always a positive one.
We’re always looking for new talent to join us, so if you’re looking to be part of a water retailer that has a real focus on employee engagement and wellbeing, take a look at our careers page for our latest opportunities.
