Our people

Mental health and wellbeing

In 2022 we took part in the Mind Wellbeing Index and was awarded silver status. This means that, as an organisation, we have made demonstrable achievements in promoting staff mental health, acting across a number of key areas and demonstrating progress and impact over time. We have also acted upon recommendations from Mind, and trained line managers to recognise and support staff experiencing mental ill health. The organisation has been increasing awareness of critical issues such as managing the menopause, through all-staff panel events and launching support toolkits.

Building a fair and inclusive culture

We completed a benefits review in 2022, and we have implemented a number of benefits that reflect the needs of a diverse workforce. For example, enhancing parental leave entitlements, offering a more generous Time off Work policy including for study leave, and flexibility around when religious holidays can be taken. We also offer three volunteering days per employee each year, benefiting both staff wellbeing and the wider community. In addition to this, we have introduced two Wellbeing Hours per employee per month, to allow employees to relieve stress and to take dedicated time to focus on their wellbeing.

We continue to ensure our remuneration policy is fair and consistent through the use of clear and transparent salary bands, and by paying no lower than the London Living Wage. Along with inflationary pay increases, we gave staff a one-off payment of £850 at the end of 2022 in response to current cost-of-living pressures.

Our apprenticeship programme, which helps young people enter the workplace and develop their skills in real-life work environment, continues to flourish. In 2022, two of our apprentices secured permanent roles in our Finance and Communications teams, with another securing a role externally. The success of the scheme means that there are plans to bring in more apprenticeships in 2023.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Throughout 2022, we have continued to implement the actions identified in our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) action plan, created in 2020. Our three principles to guide our EDI work are:

• Intention: making deliberate choices about what we are going to do and how we will know when we have made progress.
• Transparency: collecting and publishing data where possible.
• Building capacity with and for others rather than trying to do everything within the organisation: Big Society Capital does not yet have all the answers and we are still developing our plans.

We apply these principles across four areas of work: internal standards; the investment strategy and processes; managing and reporting on the portfolio; and work as a market builder.

We published our EDI plan in 2021 as a public document, outlining our approach and what we will be looking to do on this, in line with our 2025 strategy. Further details are available on our website here.