As January hits, new year resolutions are often made and plans for a successful new year ahead begin; we have some exciting plans of our own for the year ahead at Cromwell. The success we make in 2025 is heavily based on our amazing team, so in order to ensure we meet these goals, we must continue to focus on our staff, this is where our new wellbeing monthly targets will come into place.
The mental and physical health and well-being of our staff are of the utmost importance to us. We have recently introduced a team of Mental Health First Aiders, where 12 employees at Cromwell, including some of our directors and senior leadership team, have undertaken professional training on various mental health matters. This new training allows a platform for any staff members who are struggling with these matters, both work and personal related, to have a safe place to talk to one of our MHFAs in complete confidence and obtain advice or even just a listening ear.
Alongside these new supportive roles, we will also be taking a further wellbeing focus each month, which we hope will be to the benefit of all employees. During each month of the year, we will focus on a topic which can help with health, well-being and wellness and host educational support and events on this subject. During January, we chose to focus on Alcohol Awareness – which nicely aligns with the ‘Dry January’ campaign. We shared with our team some interesting facts including that ‘ the 2025 Dry January is set to be the biggest ever, with almost a third of Brits signing up to the 2025 challenge’. Estimates from Alcohol Change UK, the organisation behind Dry January, suggest 29% of people will be attempting the cause, this equates to 15.5 million people. Alongside the promotion of safer drinking, we also provided guides and helpful links to find information on support on this matter, all of which are available in a variety of locations for our team, on hand, any time they need them.

As well as providing a network of support – we also held an associated awareness event, which not only highlighted the importance of the matter but brought all sides of the business together. This saw the introduction of our first-ever Mocktail Making Class, where our team were invited to join us to taste a variety of non-alcoholic cocktails as a mid-day treat. A bit of a different take on the 12-o-clock brew, these tasty mocktails were made fresh by our HR team and served with all the cocktail trimmings to our staff. On offer, the team could try a tipple of some famous cocktails, including a Pina Colada, Tom Collins, Sunrise and Cinderella. The 0% beverages were a hit with the team and helped reiterate the message of safe drinking in support of Dry January. All staff had a wonderful time and a tasty drink during this session and could head back to work without any heavy heads or mishaps! Afterwards, the recipes were shared with our team, many of whom have decided to ditch the wine at the weekend and try one of these instead.
It was great to see our staff clinking glasses and helping promote good wellbeing. More events like this will follow throughout the year as we take a focus on a number of different topics including stress, anxiety and depression all in support of our teams well-being. We understand the way to success is through our employees; we hope by taking a greater focus on their mental health and ensuring they are as happy and supported at work as possible, productivity will only rise further and achieving our company goals will be ever closer.

