CFG’s Communications Officer, Glyn Sheldon, explains the value of CFG’s winter wellbeing week, which enables staff to better support our members and partners by allowing us time to refresh and recharge.
The festive period can be a cause of anxiety for many. For those of us who celebrate Christmas, present buying, making plans with family and friends, and decorating can take up a lot of mental bandwidth and, when combined with the pressures that can come with work, this can start to fill up our stress buckets quickly.
Thankfully, for us at CFG, we are fortunate that the work stresses over this period are removed from the equation. Since 2021, CFG has been observing two wellbeing weeks a year.
These weeks are separate from annual leave as everyone is away together. As such, there is not the usual pressure to hand over work or return to a mountain of internal emails.
Last month, CFG’s Head of HR, Laura Millar, appeared on the Plumm podcast to talk about how valuable these weeks can be for organisations and their employees. And following our last summer break, many of our staff shared how they had used this time to prioritise their mental health and felt a renewed sense of energy.
This year, all CFG staff will be taking this much-needed wellbeing week in the last week of December, immediately following on from Christmas week. All in all, this means that we will finish on Friday 20 December, and will return to our desks on Monday 6 January.
Of course, we’re not so unrealistic to think the world stops when we do. We don’t want our time away from our desks to become a source of anxiety or inconvenience for our members. We are still here if you need us.
If your enquiry isn’t urgent and can wait until we get back, then please email as you normally would. If you’re not sure who to direct your enquiry to, email our general info inbox.
If you need to talk to a member of the team or access advice urgently, you can still reach us via info@cfg.org.uk. Someone will be checking the inbox on weekdays during the break, so drop us a line and we’ll be there to help.
And on behalf of the whole team here at CFG: Have a very restful, enjoyable holiday and a peaceful new year.
We look forward to working with you in 2025!