The Kite Factory is a media planning and buying agency based in Central London. As a fast-growing company, it expects the headcount to break through the 100 people mark in the next few months.
Eleanor Manuel, people and culture manager at The Kite Factory, says: “Our people are our biggest asset and incredibly important to us. Our people initiatives always have their health and wellbeing at the front of mind and we do what we can to support our team members.
“We introduced a health and wellbeing platform, Telus Health, in December, which gives staff access to an employee assistance programme (EAP) and other health resources, and we swapped our medical insurance to Vitality due to all the additional perks. It’s important that employees are able to access health and wellbeing support as early as possible, whether that’s a GP appointment, counselling or physiotherapy.”
Early intervention is central to the organisation’s absence management system. If an employee is unable to work due to illness, they contact their line manager before the start of the day. All absence is then logged on the people system. “We don’t have many cases of absence among our employees but we will always look to see if we can support them when they are off,” says Manuel. “We’ve had cases where we’ve been able to refer an employee to occupational health or to our health and wellbeing benefits. This can help them access treatment more quickly, where necessary, or enable us to make adjustments to help them return to work.”
Line manager training is another part of The Kite Factory’s absence management strategy. All managers receive mental health awareness training to help them identify the signs that an employee may be struggling.
This training also provides them with conversation starters to help them reach out to an employee when necessary. Manuel adds: “We’ve had really positive feedback from line managers. Learning how to have a conversation on wellbeing and knowing that there are resources such as the EAP and GP appointments that they can direct employees to, has helped them feel more confident about dealing with health issues.”