BEST PLACES TO WORK

Sum up your agency’s approach to staff welfare and wellbeing in less than 10 words.

"Mandate must deliver the best experience and workplace. Nothing less."

Please describe your current office location and facilities. If you operate from more than one office, please describe your main office location and facilities.

Our purpose designed London HQ was created to be the most stimulating, and most enjoyable, place to work in the capital. Our starting point was that our space would be fully flexible. Everyone would sit together and have exactly the same desk and equipment. Private offices are banned and openness is prized.

We then designed our think spaces and creative zones, and then placed our desks around them.

Our Arena zone gives us a bespoke training area – allowing us to hold over 150 hours of training activity per week in a space designed to make training truly participative. It has been described by training speakers from Google and University of London as one of the best facilities they have ever seen in an office. It also gives us space to run our special stress-buster programmes, including yoga and massage.

Our office contains our own bar and private roof terrace. We incorporated these into the building from day 1 as we believe that enjoying yourself with colleagues is the best possible stimulation for new ideas and changed thinking. It is home to free breakfasts at the start of the day, and drinks and the social club in the evening.

Please give details of your staff training programme.

We have a comprehensive training and development programme called the Mandate Way. Each individual’s programme is designed around their own personal development plan.

We run a best practice sharing internal session every week – this is 360 degree training, as even the CEO has to attend and learn from colleagues.

We have a comprehensive teambuilding programme, built on using external sports, community and other activities throughout the year to build relationships between colleagues.

We have held five separate awayday sessions over the last year.

Please give details of your staff appraisal programme.

Every individual in the Mandate team is formally appraised once a year, with a further formal one-to-one meeting six months later to check on progress towards agreed goals. This is an integral part of “The Mandate Way”.

The appraisal process involves gathering anonymous 360 degree feedback from a range of colleagues and clients, both senior and junior to the appraisee, and then holding a structured discussion. All appraisers are of Director or Managing Director level, as part of our commitment of our most senior colleagues to the development of our whole team. The appraisals process is designed to be forward-looking and, while there is of course an element of learning from the past year, the majority of the appraisal is focused on the coming year.

Please give details of your flexible working policy.

Mandate is committed to making sure that our team enjoys an excellent work-life balance, and we are firmly committed to retaining and developing staff over the long-term. We recognise that becoming a parent can be a particularly demanding time, which is why we have put in place a generous maternity policy, based on four months leave at full pay (and up to a year’s leave in total) for all new mothers with more than two years’ service. But our maternity policy is only part of it: we are very supportive of the rights of fathers to paid paternity leave, and have in place specific policies relating to adoption leave and to time off for caring for dependents including children.

Describe any industry or networking events held at your offices.

Making Mandate the home to industry networking has been an active part of our strategy, alongside giving our team both time and financial support to participate in industry wide development and networking in the PRCA, CIPR and APPC. In the last three months alone we have held events including: breakfast with Peter Luff MP; Vince Cable MP speaking about the future of the financial services industry; drinks reception and screening of the first General Election debate; breakfast with political blogger Iain Dale, and we hosted the PRCA Benchmarking Survey.

How do you reward staff at Christmas?

Christmas marks the end of Mandate’s financial year, and so we think it is an important moment for the company to reward all the team who have contributed to our success (including our interns, who are all paid in Mandate).

Therefore, as well as an end of year bonus, we organise two Christmas parties. The first is a ball and the second is a lunch, to let us recover from the ball! Every member of the Mandate team also receives an individual letter from the CEO; reflecting on their own personal contribution, looking ahead to the company’s plans for the next year and how it will help in their own development.

What staff say.

From debates on the future of government and cross-agency idea sharing sessions, to digital workshops and presentations from innovators and futurologists - all in the space of a fortnight - the opportunities to build new skills and share insights and expertise are endless.

Inspiring and supportive colleagues whose glasses are always half full and a host of benefits - including lunchtime yoga sessions, a bike to work scheme, pensions scheme, mentoring, weekly social club - coupled with the opportunity to grow and a personal development plan does make Mandate a great place to work.

Oh, and bar, roof terrace, and free breakfast can’t hurt!

Deborah Hitchcock, Account Manager