In recent years the stigma associated with mental health and mental wellbeing has changed a lot. The barriers have been broken down when it comes to talking about this and as a society we are, rightly so, more understanding and open to supporting what this means for...
Employee Benefits and Wellbeing
Menopause and the workplace
World Menopause Day is on 18 October 2023, and with an increasing number of organisations implementing menopause policies, we thought we’d take a look at how menopause affects the workplace and what small businesses can do to manage this and support their employees....
Celebrating World Mental Health Day
Every year the World Foundation of Mental Health celebrates World Mental Health Day on 10 October, and this year is no different. The idea behind this day is to raise awareness of mental health and drive positive change for everyone’s mental health. The World...
Understanding anxiety in the workplace
We recently talked about understanding anxiety and how it impacts people. In the workplace it’s important to understand that someone struggling with anxiety may not be displaying any clear signs. What could happen, is they may be experiencing symptoms that result in...
Next week is Mental Health Awareness Week
The last few years have been tough, we’ve just emerged from the pandemic only to come face to face with the new cost of living crisis. We’re sure that you will have felt some of this impact yourself, as well as witnessing the effect it has had on the wellbeing of your...
National Stress Awareness Month: how best to talk about workplace stress
Nowadays, it is more important than ever to be able to spot the signs of stress and burnout in the workplace and offer support to your employees and tackle them as an employer. Stress Awareness Month has been held every April, since 1992 to increase public awareness...
Pro-rata holiday entitlement and pay: How do you calculate it?
Pro-rata holiday entitlement is an amount of holiday that’s in proportion to the holiday entitlement of a full-time employee. The proportion of holiday will depend on how much an employee works, relative to a full-time employee. For example, if they work half as much,...
5 ways to thank your team this Employee Appreciation Day
Employee Appreciation Day (3rd March 2023) is the perfect opportunity to lead from the front and show your team that you care. The last 12 months were supposed to be our first year of complete freedom since the pandemic hit us hard, but instead we are battling a...
Dealing with mental health in small businesses
Wellbeing has really been under attack in recent years due to the coronavirus pandemic and the current cost of living crisis. This means that employees are looking for as much support from their employer as possible when it comes to addressing their work life balance...
Work experience and internships: what is the difference?
The summer and autumn terms are times when you might be asked to take on young people for work experience or have students help out in the holidays. Giving a young person work experience can be helpful for someone just starting out in their career, while providing...
Mental Health Awareness Week: how to promote a work-life balance
With stigmas around mental health starting to evaporate over the past few years, more employees are opening up about it to their employers. While this is a major step forward in tackling mental health in the workplace, there is still a long way to go. If the last few...
Managing the pay rise pressure during the cost of living crisis
The cost of living crisis is a hot topic at the moment, and with rising costs on everything from food to fuel, the question on many peoples minds is what can employers do to help soften the blow.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and how to manage it in the workplace
Most of us in the UK are familiar with the typical British winter weather. Cold. Wet. And dark. But just because we’re used to going to work in the dark and going home, yes you guessed it, in the dark, it doesn’t mean it won’t affect our moods, productivity, and...
10 ways to manage employee stress
Mental health and workplace stress are two of the biggest issues that UK employers face today. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE)'s latest Labour Force Survey estimates that a whopping 55% of days lost to illness, caused or made worse by work, in 2019-2020 were due...
How can you support employees going through the menopause?
The number of women aged 50 and above in the UK population is increasing, and with 1 in 8 of the British workforce being over 50, it is becoming more common that women will be affected by the menopause while working, and that other employees will be supporting family...
Flexible working: how to manage a request to change working arrangements
Flexible working has become much more common and grown in importance as a way of working in the last couple of years, as we all struggled to work out how best to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, and our staff got used to the flexibility of working remotely...
6 Ways to encourage your team to get outside – Mental Health Awareness Week 2021
This Mental Health Awareness Week’s (10 - 16 May 2021) theme is nature and after a year of staring at screens in our spare rooms, we thought it apt to reconsider how we take breaks and how you can encourage your team to get outside on theirs. After over a year of...
Stress Awareness Month: how to help your employees avoid burnout
April is Stress Awareness Month, so there is no better time to talk about managing stressed and even burnt out employees. Burnout comes for everyone sooner or later. This all too common symptom of living in a time where the side hustle, 5am start and social media can...
Team citrus HR spills: how to work from home long-term
This International Women’s Day (8th of March 2021) we decided to ask some of the amazing ladies at citrus HR for their long-term working from home tips. March marks one year since our worlds were turned upside down by Covid-19, meaning that for most of us this month...
Time to Talk Day 2021
Today (4th of February 2021) is Time to Talk Day, one of the biggest days on the mental health calendar, and a chance for all of us to be more open about mental health – to talk, listen and change lives. Coronavirus has made this day especially significant this year –...
Hosting a work Christmas party during COVID-19
With December fast approaching you may be wondering how to host the perfect work Christmas party under the Coronavirus current restrictions or whether just to cancel altogether. Cancelling might seem to be the easiest option with the least risk but hosting a Christmas...
Simple steps to improve workplace culture
This week (24th February 2020) is workplace culture week! A whole week designed to help you focus on the culture within your business or perhaps just another marketing ploy to get us all talking about workplace benefits. Either way, taking some time to think about the...
‘Time to Talk’- Tips for managing mental health in small businesses
Thursday 6th February is ‘Time to Talk’ day which is an awareness day championed by Time to Change who are a social movement group trying to change the way we all act and think about mental health. Their statistics suggest that 1 in 4 people are affected by mental...
How to become an employer of choice
With Brexit looming large, candidates are becoming more cautious about putting all their job eggs in one basket. They don’t want to take a risk on a company that looks only half-decent, or that doesn’t offer them everything they’re looking for. Businesses are now...