Workers & Governance

We’ve been happy to see the improved reward schemes and worker policies we put in place in 2022 have been utilised by the team, and pleased to be able to support our teams’ wellbeing in a difficult year for the economy. We want to see this translate to our eNPS so this will be a focus for 2024. We’ve maintained 50% women on our board and 68% of our senior management team identify as female. Our DEIBA team are working hard to introduce policies which ensure diversity and inclusion remains a priority.

Team volunteering

Each year, we give every member of the team the opportunity to spend a day volunteering. This year was no exception. Alongside organised group volunteer days, we also saw individual team members offering their expertise pro bono to support charities.

Among them, they…

Built a pond at a newly opened community centre in South Bristol

Painted a fence (and played with puppies) at Hollyhedge Cats and Dogs home

Took to the beach to clean up plastic waste

Planted bulbs at a care home, bringing some colour for the residents in Spring

Team members Isobel & Helen ran marketing workshops for migrant businesses, helping set up and further their small businesses

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging & Accessibility

In 2022 we formed our DEIBA team. They’ve been hard at work better understanding the diversity of our team and implementing policies to improve equity and inclusion. In 2023, they surveyed the team for a second time, comparing the data to the local and national 2021 Census.

What we need to work on…

At Sawday’s we value diversity, but we recognise that we’re not a very diverse company, and there’s a lot of work to do to improve this. Only 40% of employees agreed that ‘Sawday’s is a diverse company’, while 86% agreed that we ‘value diversity’
The main areas lacking diversity are ethnicity, religion, physical disability and socio-economic status

What’s working well…

Despite this, there is a high sense of inclusion and belonging, with 88% of employees agreeing that ‘Sawday’s is an inclusive company’ and 86% agreeing that they ‘have a sense of belonging while working at Sawday’s.’
Forming the DEIBA Team in 2022 has been a step in the right direction: 76% of employees now agree that ‘Sawday’s invests the right amount of time and energy into inclusion and diversity’, up from 41% in 2022

Our focus…

Out of all our initiatives in 2022,our Disability Inclusion training program with Leonard Cheshire was rated highest in terms of impact and importance
One of the areas highlighted in this year’s survey that we need to work on is equity. Although a small company like ours has limited scope for career advancement, we intend to ensure that the available opportunities are accessible to everyone

In 2023 we said we would…

Get our employee happiness score over 70 with a response rate of at least 70%, and we…

Formed a ‘Work Life Balance’ team to better understand how people are feeling about keeping the balance
Still have work to do to improve our scores. We achieved a response rate of 65% and our eNPS was 50

Become Level 2 Disability Confident, and we…

Successfully became Level 2 Disability Confident
Received a company wide programme of disability training in association with the charity Leonard Cheshire

Implement our inclusive hiring policy, and we…

Completed our inclusive hiring policy which is now live and operational

Improve our mental health policy, and we…

Increased the counselling allowance from £50 to £65 per session
Joined the Wellbeing of Women Employer Membership Programme

Review a more ethical pension provider and policy, and we…

Weren’t able to review this year, instead we focused on supporting the team with a financial resilience scheme, including webinars and training

Improve frameworks around sustainability and ethics, guiding teams and holding the company to account, and we…

Reviewed and released our new ethical supplier guide and questionnaire, to help our team make decisions on who to partner with in line with our values
Held a company-wide ‘away morning’ at a community farm, to present our 2027 impact strategy, and help embed the goals into team strategies