Photo: #MyWholeSelfie from Frank Millar (Chief Executive Officer at CPI)
Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) bring together academia, businesses, government and investors to translate ideas and research into the marketplace. They are a leading independent technology innovation centre and a founding member of the UK Government’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult.
They work with partners across diverse markets from pharma to food, to electronics and luxury goods. They drive innovations forward and help to reduce the risk and cost associated with product development, to scale up the next generation of production.
Prior to the pandemic, work life was mainly centred across offices in the North of England and Glasgow, but Covid was a big factor in terms of changing the way staff worked. During the pandemic, a large percentage of CPI’s workforce were working from home, with some remaining on site to carry out essential project work in the labs and on plant. Once restrictions were lifted, CPI maintained a hybrid approach to working, meaning employees were not required to return to the office and could continue to work from home if they wished.
Jane Eaton, HR Business Partner at CPI says:
“This new hybrid way of working has been beneficial to many of our staff, allowing them to balance home and work life. It does mean though that we may not always be able to keep hold of those important interpersonal and team connections.
Now is the time that we need to start thinking about how we look after our staff and future proof our talent management and so we have been actively looking at our health and wellbeing strategies.”
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My Whole Self has helped Jane and her team to move their health and wellbeing strategy forward in the wake of the pandemic and show that home and work life can work in harmony. Several members of the senior leadership team shared their selfies including CPI’s Chief Executive, Frank Millar who has been heavily involved.
“Over 20 people took #MyWholeSelfies and we also posted several internal comms messages about the campaign, explaining what it was and why we were supporting it. We could then use this to flag our MHFAiders (we have about 25 across the organisation) as well as some of our other wellbeing support services including our EAP.
We were really thrilled by how many people took part and we received so much positive feedback. In fact, because of the reaction to My Whole Self, we are extending the campaign and will be introducing monthly ‘Day in the Life’ articles from different staff members from July, which will be shared by our Internal Comms team. We really hope that this will enable people to feel comfortable to bring their whole selves to work, if they choose to. The focus of these articles will be how people bring their best selves to work, why that is important and how they build wellbeing into their everyday lives.
We really want My Whole Self to become an integral part of our work culture and not just a day that we celebrate once a year – we should be able to share as much of ourselves as we want or need to, every day.”
Find out more about My Whole Self