Performance marketing agency Impression aims to keep its employees healthy through flexible and autonomous cost-effective benefits.
The agency employs 105 staff across its locations in Nottingham, London, Manchester, and New York.
In terms of healthcare benefits, it offers private medical insurance, provided by Aviva, and free, on-demand, therapy sessions for employees and their loved ones, provided by Openup, as well as women’s health check-ups. Impression also runs a variety of active clubs and social activities, such as running clubs, climbing clubs, racket sport clubs and yoga sessions.
It believes flexibility and autonomy are important within cost-effective healthcare benefits, because these give staff the freedom to manage their work around their energy levels, along with how they might be feeling mentally and physically. For example, employees with conditions such as endometriosis or perimenopause can, if they feel comfortable, disclose this to their manager when calling in sick for these reasons, so they can offer support.
Zoe Ogden, people director at Impression, says that it costs the business nothing to implement this type of culture. “We hold women’s and men’s health brunches to create forums for those groups to come together to discuss topics that are pertinent to them and create safe spaces to share openly,” she says. ”We have dedicated support groups for personnel to share their experiences and advice. We also have chat groups that follow on from this and have acted on many of the suggestions that have come from these forums.”
While the employer’s offer is relatively low cost, it provides much to its employees’ wellbeing, as seen in its implementation of a 4.5 day working week that has not impacted productivity or profitability.
It is important for Impression to ensure that its workforce has appropriate support for their physical and mental wellbeing, and by investing in this, staff are more likely to be well and present at work. In addition, the agency aims to improve employees’ engagement with existing benefits by regularly seeking feedback on these.
“We hold annual benefit focus groups to not only understand more about what matters to our people, but also as a way to promote the benefits that we do offer. We additionally send an annual total reward statement that details all of our benefits and the value of them,” Ogden adds.
