All of us thrive when we feel safe, secure, and empowered to express ourselves both personally and creatively. This idea is at the heart of what we do, so it made perfect sense to us to make every effort to ensure our staff feel this way in their work environments.
Since 2020, inspired by our friends at both Safe In Our World & MindFitness, we’ve adopted a number of practices, policies and company-wide culture changes; all of which aim to make better mental health as accessible as possible for all of our people.
This month we’re celebrating 3 years of being ‘Level Up’ partners, so we thought it was time to take a look back at some of the initiatives our team have worked hard to implement as we continue our mental health journey!
Mental Health Training
When we became a Level Up Partner, we initially looked for changes that could make the most widespread and immediate impact. It quickly became apparent that awareness training would be crucial.
Now, three years later, over 64% of our team members have received some form of mental health awareness training.
From excellent, in-depth courses provided by Safe In Our World and Mind Fitness to internal training that is periodically provided by our People team, we’ve already started to see the benefits of making mental health awareness as widespread as possible within all of our workspaces.
Awareness and understanding is one of the most crucial aspects of changing attitudes towards mental health. As we gradually increase that percentage of trained team members, we hope to reach a stage where all conversations at Ripstone are open, supportive, commonplace, and free of stigma.
Ripstone Employee Assistance Programme
In January 2023, Ripstone joined began its own Employee Assistance Programme. The programme now provides every member of the team with fast access to diagnosis, treatment, and discounted treatment and memberships to gyms and health clubs. Our staff can get in touch with a GP 24/7 and are even able to pick up the phone and even arrange prescriptions at a time that suits them.
On the initiation of the employee assistance programme, Phil Gaskell, Ripstone Creative Director, said “We want our staff to enjoy a healthy, safe and rewarding work-life balance. This isn’t a nicety on our behalf, it’s a necessity”.
Small Steps to Better Wellbeing with Walking Club
Since May 2022, we’ve also been taking some (literal) steps to better well-being!
In our industry, we naturally build up an incredible amount of screen time and – if we’re not careful – we can spend full working days taking as little as 500 steps.
To remedy this, once a week a group of our Rockwater Games colleagues gather at lunchtime and set out to walk a route around Liverpool.
During the walks, we make sure not to talk about work – ensuring that everyone gets out of that headspace for a little while; which is absolutely essential at all times, but especially in those busier periods!
Our remote staff even take part in the walking club by sharing pictures of their own walks from places all over the UK and the world.
Though this is one very small aspect of our commitment to levelling up – it’s super simple to set up, requires little to no resources and we’d encourage any workplace to start their own.
R. Life Talks
At the start of April 2023, our team began what we’ve dubbed ‘R.Talks’. Stemming from our desire to destigmatise conversations around mental health, these weekly sessions are a chance for anyone that wants to attend to chat or even just listen to others in a supportive, safe social space.
The sessions themselves are completely confidential – anything and everything discussed is not to be repeated outside of that safe space. Additionally, all attendees who have had it are encouraged to remember and demonstrate the fundamentals of their mental health awareness training.
Though R.Talks are a relatively new endeavour, we’re confident in them acting as a and for our teams to always be mindful and empathetic with their teammates.
Resident Psychologist, James Marquis
More recently, we’ve been joined by our very own in-house psychology coach, James Marquis. James is working to take our commitment to mental health to the next level, helping us build tools and holistic ways of working to overcome both the universal and the industry-specific challenges that Ripstone’s people face.
Over time, his efforts will empower us to bring even more of our best selves to work; all while keeping the joy of creating at the heart of everything we do!
Keepin’ on Levelling Up!
We don’t simply want to maintain our status as a healthy organisation; we want to build upon the solid foundation that our Safe In Our World partnership has laid.
A recent survey found that over 95% of Ripstone’s team members felt psychologically safe at work. Though we’re proud of the progress that we’ve already made, we are and always will be looking to improve wherever we can.
With this in mind, we’re actively delving deeper to help us better define the baseline issues of our organisation. In the coming months, we plan to introduce a completely safe and completely confidential feedback process that we’ll use periodically to make sure we’re on track.
At Ripstone, we’re proud to be able to support and engage with a number of incredible charities and initiatives throughout each year. The momentous work that they take on enriches and inspires everything we do. Find out more about our charity work.