We truly believe that the value of a business lies in its values as a business, and that’s why we’re committed to doing good things with and for the people around us.
Above and beyond a CSR initiative or a one-off promise, a company should stand for something and live by it; building it into the fabric of its day-to-day actions. That’s what the TeamEV Charter is all about; from diversity and inclusion to charitable commitments, this is about how we drive change in everything we do.
Putting pledges against this policy means that we can hold both ourselves, and each other, to account. The TeamEV Charter is about creating, protecting, and extending lasting opportunities, that incite change from today and every day thereafter.
Attracting and retaining talent
We truly believe in the power of people, and that’s why we’re committed to being a business that puts people first. Always. It’s one of our values and we live by it.
We’re in an industry that seriously lacks diversity, so we’re on a mission to change that: both within the EAST VILLAGE virtual walls and beyond. We want to be a business, within an industry, as part of a wider society, that’s truly representative of the world we live in. From committing time to educating young people and adapting our working practices to make them more flexible, through to removing bias from our recruitment process and ensuring transparency when it comes to salaries and progression, we’re committed to leading by example.
We commit to:
- Becoming a recognised National Living Wage employer
- Ensuring that we never have ethnicity or gender pay gaps
- Having transparent salaries and progression pathways
- Using a transparent recruitment process
- Always replying to potential applicants, be that work experience requests or job vacancies
- Offering paid internships
- Ensuring that 25% of our workforce has come through our Grow Your Own scheme
Ensuring we’re all happy and healthy
In fast-paced agency life, we know first-hand the pressures that surround servicing multiple clients and the strain that staying ahead of the curve can take. That’s why it’s so important to us that we support our team to make mental health and wellbeing a priority.
Having introduced flexible working for the entire team back in the spring of 2019, we actively encourage each person to work in the way that suits them. From the early risers making time to take care of family in the evenings, or later starters using mornings for gym classes (or a lie-in!), we empower our employees to take control of their time and trust them to manage it in the way that works best. In addition to providing additional support that helps every member of TeamEV stay ahead when it comes to mental health.
We commit to:
- Providing free access to mental health therapies and professional support
- Our Senior Leadership Team being Mental Health First Aid trained
- At least 50% of TeamEV being First Aid trained
- Offering above-average holiday allowance
- Giving everyone a paid day off for their Birthday, as well as ‘sunshine’ and ‘duvet’ days
- Appointing a ‘Head of Happiness’, who remains focused on the team’s overall wellbeing
- Sending quarterly, anonymous employee engagement surveys, giving everyone the chance to feedback open and honestly, including what they’d do if they were boss for the day
Supporting the community around us
Charity is about more than a one-off good deed; it’s a commitment to helping those who need it most, when they need it most. As a founding director of homeless charity Let’s Feed Brum, which Tara and Hattie are both trustees of too, EAST VILLAGE. knows first-hand how impactful sustained support for causes can be.
Not only do we actively encourage TeamEV to advocate for, volunteer with, and donate to charities that they are passionate about – we create the space and time on our client list for causes that need PR and communications services, in order to reach new audiences and amplify their message. This isn’t about a company-wide volunteering day or set of CSR tick-boxes, it runs through the DNA of EAST VILLAGE.
We commit to:
- At least 100 days of volunteering time each year
- Signing up as a partner of Make Good Grow, to deliver tailored support to causes that need us
- Providing pro bono comms strategy and delivery to at least two causes per year
- Every member of our Senior Leadership Team holding a Board position of a charitable organisation
- Providing each member of TeamEV with a dedicated fund each month that they can spend only with businesses that are founded by underrepresented communities, as part of our Small Change initiative
Holding ourselves and others to account
We recognise that we have a commitment to ensuring that the businesses – and the owners behind them – that we work with reflect the same values that we do.
We know that this is about learning as much as it is about leading but we aim to ensure that, to the best of our knowledge, the brands we align ourselves with reflect our own policies and promises; that we’re working with eco-friendly and sustainable PR clients, who focus on diversity and inclusion, and give back to their communities.
We commit to:
- Reporting on our TeamEV pledges every year, providing an update on what’s been achieved
- Holding quarterly DEI training sessions for TeamEV
- Having a client charter that we issue to everyone we work with, explaining our expectations of our partners
- Proactively seeking out diverse and representative businesses to work with, both clients and suppliers
- Actively seeking to work with and promote representative influencers and models for client campaigns
We’re committed to being inclusive, representative, and diverse in as many ways as possible
As a business centred around team culture, people are always at the heart of everything we do. We believe in the richness of ideas and power of each other’s differences, and we’re striving to be an agency packed full of people that are truly representative of the world that we live in. Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is more than a tick box. We want to hire people, not statistics or stereotypes, who all bring fresh ideas to our clients and campaigns.