Ambition’s Week of Wellbeing

Many elements go into making a successful recruiter.  At Ambition, we believe that one of the key drivers of success comes from ensuring that our employees are feeling happy and healthy.

To promote the importance of wellness in the workplace, Ambition holds an annual Wellbeing Week for all our staff. During the week, we run a range of activities that focus on fitness, mental health, eating well and general wellbeing. 

Starting the day the healthy way

Wellbeing week kicked off with a mouth-watering start in the form of our healthy, nutritious yet still delicious breakfast bar! The breakfast bar ran throughout the week with a range of tasty cereals, fruits, yoghurts and even eggs on toast. As they say, ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ yet it is becoming more and more common for us to simply grab a coffee and get to work.

Providing something as simple as a healthy breakfast encourages our employees to start the day the right way - with more energy and a positive, focused mindset.

As well as a daily breakfast bar, the week was filled with a range of activities focusing on different areas of our wellbeing.

Monday: Lunchtime yoga

Our first activity of the week was a lunchtime yoga and meditation class with a professional yoga teacher. The session began with the instructor sharing an incredibly personal story which really exemplified the power of the mind.

We were taught breathing exercises to help relieve stress and tension and performed a number of stretches from ‘tree pose’ to ‘downward facing dog’ and ‘child’s pose’. Each one of these positions has both physical and mental benefits from helping with back pain to boosting self-confidence and curbing anxiety and stress. Employees with a range of abilities took part and everyone left the session feeling less stressed and more energised. 

Tuesday: Massages

Tuesday was a winning day for everyone in the office as we arranged for a professional masseuse to come in and give each employee a neck, back and shoulder massage. Our meeting room was transformed into a relaxation haven, complete with soothing music and a massage chair. This activity provided employees with the time and space to truly switch off for a short time during their day.

We always encourage our employees to listen to their minds and bodies and to take time away from their desks if they are feeling stressed or overwhelmed. Taking a break during the working day (especially when you are feeling stressed) has been proved to reap a number of benefits: 

• Boost in creativity

• Time to revaluate daily/weekly goals

• Prevention of back and eye strain

• Better focus when you return to work

• Increased productivity 

• Reduced stress

• Higher job satisfaction 

Wednesday: Bootcamp

The latter part of the week was all about fitness! On Wednesday, BD & Marketing Consultant and Ambition’s very own fitness guru Mat Reeves ran a (very tough) bootcamp. He put attendees through a gruelling, yet incredibly fun hour of sprints, push-ups, squats and more!

Working out in a team has to be the key benefit of bootcamp style exercising - it helps to build team relationships since you work together in order to push through the intense and challenging exercises. So why not get your team together and start bootcamp style workouts once a week - it gets you away from your desk and, although hard it’s definitely a lot of fun! 

Thursday: Food and Football

Thursday involved food and footie! At lunchtime we provided a DIY Rice Paper Roll bar in the kitchen with a variety of colourful, fresh veggies and delicious dipping sauces.

Rice paper rolls are super easy and fun to make and are a great healthy lunchtime or afternoon snack. In the evening we took a team over to Shoreditch and had a friendly/competitive game of football. Another great way of keeping fit while having funand working in a team, all things that will benefit performance in the workplace (and of course, recruiters love a competition!).

Friday: Rounders

Friday marked the end of this year’s Wellbeing Week and boy did we go out with a bang! We had an early finish and the whole office headed over to Hyde Park for a game of the classic summertime favourite - Rounders! Reminiscent of our schooling days, the game really bought the inner child out in all of us (some more than others). 

After a week of healthy eating and fitness, we then undid some of our good work with some less healthy but certainly relaxing beers and wines in the sunshine–wellbeing is all about balance after all!

So that’s it, the end of Ambition’s Wellbeing Week 2018! Another successful year in which we hope our main goal of encouraging our employees to focus on all aspects of their wellbeing by making positive changes – will extend beyond the week.
 

If you are interested in pursuing a career in recruitment, we want to hear from you! Click here to find out more about working for Ambition >