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Hello! I’m Charli Briggs, Founder and Director of Eventure, a multi award winning event staffing agency. We provide brand-matched individuals to client briefs across a wide range of events including corporate, conferences, exhibitions, trade shows, award ceremonies, virtual, experiential, charity, team building, product launches, festivals and so much more! Aside from the day to day, we are largely passionate about employee welfare, and this derives from my personal mental health challenges since 2013 and experience of poor company culture in a number of organisations. These reasons combined, resulted in me wanting to create the company culture that I never had.
The challenges and lack of support that I faced early on in my career left me with a passion and determination to be at the forefront of employee wellbeing in events for two reasons. Firstly because we spend a lot of time in the workplace and I want to make it a better, healthier and more enjoyable place to be – one where my employees don’t have anxiety on a Sunday because they don’t want to come into work on the Monday, one where my employees feel valued for the work that they do and one where we work together to achieve a common goal. I’ve experienced the opposite of all of these things and quite frankly, it was dreadful and contributed to my poor mental health. Secondly because I was told I needed to change and I needed to “snap out of it” or I wasn’t going to go very far in my career – well I’m here to make a difference and prove to myself that I CAN do it. I’m here to say that mental health doesn’t define us, who we can be or how successful we are.
The event industry in particular is well-known for notoriously long hours and high stress which isn’t sustainable for anyone. At Eventure, I’m on a mission to create a company culture that challenges the status quo for this industry with perks that my employees will actually use. We recently announced that we’re embracing a 4-day work week trial with 5 days’ pay whilst continuing to operate a 7-day week model with no disruption to clients. Another recent announcement was the introduction of Vitality healthcare with zero excess to all employees. One thing that really mattered to me was that it was £0 excess because what is the point in the business investing in something that my team may not wish to invest their money into? Both of these new introductions join an already established list of perks that support my employees to thrive inside the business and in their personal lives too.
With my passion for this topic, I’m delighted to be part of the 2023 judging panel for the UK Company Culture Awards to meet and be inspired by other professionals across a range of industries who are striving for better company culture. I’m very much looking forward to reading the entries but in particular about how the best of the best work remotely, innovative employee development programmes and the top employee reward schemes.
Some general tips from me for all entries would be:
- Share a captivating story of how you got to where you are today and be sure to include moments of challenge and resilience – I want to learn about your business, what it does and what makes you stand out above the rest.
- Include testimonials and statistics to bring the entry to life – ask your employees, at different levels within the business and other stakeholders what they think and back up what you’re saying with tangible evidence.
- Touch on plans for future growth and development – what you’ve done to this point is phenomenal and truly life-changing for your employees but tell me, what’s next? I’d love to know how you’re going to keep your employees engaged and productive moving forwards.
Remember, even by just entering these awards, you’re one step ahead of many others and we need businesses like yours to pave the way and show the rest what is truly possible.
