Here at Aspire we’ve joined the Good Employment Charter launched by the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham. We believe it’s a great idea and would encourage everyone to take a look at it.  It’s a great way to progress your business and keep staff as the top priority. Happy staff equals more productivity so it’s positive all around

There’s a whole host of reasons to join if you have staff or thinking of having staff. Here are a few;

Everyone deserves a regular income and to know what money they will have week to week, right? Research by Citizen’s Advice (CA) suggests some four and a half million people in England and Wales are in insecure work with variable shift patterns, temporary, zero hour or agency contracts. These people find it hard to plan and manage budgets because they don’t have regular hours, by joining the charter you are committing to giving your employees clarity over the hours they work. It makes sense as an accountant that you give your employees the stability they need to plan for their future so I’m onboard with this one.

The charter believe that every employer, has a ‘duty of care’ to protect employees from risks to their health and safety. These risks might include stress caused by working long hours or struggling to balance work and home life.  We know how hard it is to balance work and family commitments and understand that flexible working can help to improve the health and well-being of employees. If employees feel happy and supported there is more likely to be less absenteeism and productivity will increase. To me it’s a win win situation so why wouldn’t you do this? We like our workplace to be a fun place to be with flexibility. We’re sure many of you that have visited us here will vouch for the fact that in the Aspire office there’s always plenty of smiles.

Another thing the charter encourages which we are passionate about is giving a good wage. It’s important to make staff feel valued and help them live a good quality of life. Giving a good wage increases motivation and helps you retain good employees. We want our team to know we love what they do so we pay them a good wage and hope they like working with us and want to stay. To further support our staff we also enrol them into a pension scheme. After all, without the support of an amazing team where would you be?

The charter believes that workforce engagement and voice is an important aspect of good employment. We like to listen to our staff and value feedback. Employee voice is seen to have a central role in improving productivity, in tackling insecurity and in promoting the psychological well-being and job satisfaction, so it makes sense to listen and encourage your staff to talk. We have regular team meetings and value everyone’s opinion. We believe that our staff fully contribute to the direction and success of our organisation and shape their own roles. We also have lots of fun whilst doing it as our meetings always involve cake or biscuits.

Equality and fairness are at the heart of the Good Employment Charter. Employers that have fair and flexible working and recruitment practices are more productive, and more innovative too so why wouldn’t you do this? At Aspire we whole heartedly encourage and enable employees to reach their full potential. We encourage all the businesses we support to reach their full potential too and guess what? We also support diversity, and no one is ever excluded or made to feel unwelcome in our building.

Supporters of the Charter are improving people management and progression. Educational progression is important to us we believe in inspiring and motivating our staff and encourage them if they want to take on any extra learning. We both benefit by the increased knowledge so it’s a good idea all around

The charter encourages employers to look after the physical and mental wellbeing of their staff. Another thing which we do anyway. We enrol our staff in private healthcare. We want them to be looked after and although the NHS is magnificent on some occasions it benefits everyone to be seen sooner rather than later and that is where a private health care plan comes into its own. Did you know that if you were to sit down and calculate it you will spend around 60% of your waking hours at work? For us in the Aspire office, that means over 50% of our day is spent sat down and inactive. We encourage and educate our staff about the health risks of inactivity and encourage everyone to do something which they enjoy to improve their mental health.

We always go the extra mile and have fun team building events and nights out to let the wonderful people who make up our team feel like the special valued people that they are. Without those amazing team players – a business is an empty shell

If you love and support your team why don’t you look at joining the charter to support them fully