We have made many positive steps in the past 35 years to work towards a greener, cleaner and more socially responsible jellybean – here’s how…

Our Communities – Charities We Support

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Our Industry – We work closely with the industry’s leading charity Hospitality Action  (Susan our MD is an ambassador) providing free strategic marketing advice and design services, as well as initiating various fund raising activities at jellybean. During the particularly difficult Covid times we sponsored the HA initiative To Hell and Back where the industry collectively walked, ran or cycled 30,000 miles to raise vital funds for people falling on hard times during the pandemic – their biggest fundraising effort ever!  Barely a month goes by when we’re not wearing pants outside our trousers or baking an impressive creation, all for a good cause, of course!

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Global Charity Support – Since the business started 34 years ago we have sponsored a child via Plan International for every person employed at jellybean. We currently have 30 children around the world from Cambodia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mali, Togo, Uganda, Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, Equador, Sudan, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Egypt who we have been able to help with vital education and subsistence to ensure they have a sustainable start in life.

The Safe School Project 2019 – jellybean substantially sponsored The Safe School Project in the Gambella region of Ethiopia which helps refugees access safe and high quality education. This is a wonderful project which reached 39,550 children aged 3-14, many of whom had gone through the terrifying and scarring experience of fleeing their homes in South Sudan.
Read more here.

Girls Education in Zimbabwe 2020 – last year we ringfenced and financed a project helping marginalised girls in Zimbabwe, one of the world’s poorest countries, to go on to further education or complete vocational training so they can gain safe fairly-paid employment.
Read more

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Local Charity Support – For the past 20 years we have supported the Children with Special Needs Foundation – a Surrey-based charity that provides help, funds and assistance for children with special needs. Fiona, our CEO, is a Patron of the charity and we create their brand, design and marketing material, to ensure that every penny raised goes directly to the point of need. In 2021 we wanted to support charities closer to home and jellybean donated funds via CWSNF to install a sensory sound and screen system at Woodlands a local school in Leatherhead Read more and made a significant contribution to White Lodge to help save the hydroptherapy pool Read more.

We also support our local community by providing work experience/placements to local schools and colleges. Plus, as we upgrade our hardware, we donate computers and other equipment to local schools and charities.

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Even More Charity Support – We also support various charities throughout the year such as Wear it Pink day for Breast Cancer or hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning and any one off funds raised are doubled by the agency.

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12 Days of giving – In 2018 and 2019 we donated 12 days of our time to charity during the months of November and December. The team helped a varied array of worthwhile causes in a wide variety of ways, using our skills, expertise and sometimes just sheer graft. These ranged from The British Heart Foundation to Plan International, from Campaign to End Loneliness, from The Leatherhead Youth Project to Children With Special Needs Foundation and of course the hospitality industry charity Hospitality Action.
Read more here.

In 2020 Covid times we were forced to review our 12 days of giving as we were unable to visit chosen charities in person and so every bean nominated a charity of their choice and jellybean donated one day’s average salary to that cause.  It looks like this will be the same strategy for 2021 too.

Our People – The Beans – It is our people that make jellybean special and we value their contribution to the business and invest in their future development and careers. We offer internal training via workshops, on the job guidance and informal mentoring, as well as external training across industry-based or professional qualifications, which are fully sponsored by the company. We went to great lengths to ensure that this essential investment in our people continued throughout the pandemic which is why in our most recent staff survey 78% believed they were still encouraged and mentored to pursue their personal career goals.  We have an annual staff appraisal process (with six-month reviews) where progression planning and individual training needs are identified to ensure we develop everyone’s full potential. We are proud to have been awarded a merit in the MAA Best Awards for Development of Agency Talent.

jellybean is an equal opportunities employer and is inclusive of all ethnicity, gender, orientation and diversity offering industry benchmarked salary levels for all roles.  We also offer apprenticeship programmes for school leavers who are paid a fair salary to learn on the job and are sponsored by the company to gain appropriate professional qualifications in PR and Marketing.

Fun and balance – We work hard, we have fun and we take the health and well-being of our people extremely seriously. To ensure we maintain a positive team spirit, which has been the foundation of the company at its inception 34 years ago, we hold regular social events and nights out and have managed to maintain this in a virtual world. Plus, we have all the usual health, pension and benefit stuff you’d expect from a caring, sharing agency! We actively encourage our staff to “live well”, offering a corporate rate at the local gym and regularly review how each individual is coping in their role. We conduct regular Employee Satisfaction and Engagement monitoring whereby all employees are able to feed-back confidentially so we can identify areas for improvement. This became particularly important during lockdown when the team were working from home.  Our latest lockdown survey showed that 77% still felt well connected with colleagues, 83% got all the support they needed, 90% felt the team worked really well together and 100% thought they were kept well informed throughout the pandemic.  We take the mental health and welfare of our staff very seriously and provide mental health first aiders, as well as access to professional services and in the same survey 100% felt that the agency acts in the staff’s best interest and that their ideas or concerns are listened to.  Lockdown resulted in some really positive changes to the way we work at jellybean for example we have now introduced a flexible working hours policy so that staff can accommodate their personal commitments or needs and we also enable and encourage working from home to reduce travelling time and help with a better work life balance.

Environment – Workplace & Wider – When the office was re-furbished, we installed a range of eco-friendly/energy saving measures, such as insulation, efficient heating, low wattage lighting and movement sensitive lights to avoid wastage and provide added safety. We recycle all paper and cardboard and only use recycled paper, while employees are asked to only print what is absolutely necessary. To minimise our carbon footprint, we initiate video and conference calls with our clients wherever possible or appropriate. Staff are encouraged to car share or use public transport, or better still walk or cycle to work (as we participate in the Cycle to Work Scheme) and many have invested in electric cars. We use wwf – essentially a non- printable pdf and work without paper whenever possible. We have also installed state-of-the-art IT systems to provide business efficiencies and save on energy and waste.  We recycle all coffee pods and plastic and paper containers in the kitchen in keeping with the local environmental policy.  We are currently investigating how we can become a carbon neutral agency in the future and agency wide there is a Beanshot challenge to identify areas where we can meet any or all of the 5 Earthshot challenges.
Read more, with winning ideas to be implemented in 2022.

Economic – Playing Nicely – We ensure all products and goods are responsibly sourced and treat our suppliers as partners, working with them to achieve the best results. We pride ourselves on building relationships and trust and paying them promptly – aware that cash flow is key to any small business. In this way we ensure an ethical and sustainable supply chain for our business. In short – we work with our suppliers as we would wish to be treated by our clients.

All-in-all we try to be a nice bunch of beans to work with, or amongst, and of course do our best to conserve our environment for the beans of the future!

Fiona Rickard
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