Planning and publicising your week
Press and social media kit
If you’re getting involved with National Work Life Week, why not shout about it? We’ve created a template press release for you to use to publicise your week, along with some graphics you can use on social media.
To have the best chance that your week will be a success throughout in your organisation, think about a range of activities and events over the week that will offer something for everyone.
Think about people who work at different times of the day, in different locations and in different roles. Think about your customers and local press – if you are proud of the work-life balance in your organisation, people will be impressed so tell them about your programmes.
Your first step is to set up a small team to organise your week. People that might need to be involved from an early stage are senior managers whose overall agreement will be needed; HR; marketing and communications people; budget-holders for any expenditure needed on things like materials or events.
It’s best to have a mixture of managers and front-line people to get different perspectives on ideas, and to get a mixture of people from different parts of the organisation if staff work on separate sites or on varied shift patterns. A union or staff representative group member could help with this. Do invite other people to volunteer to get involved in the planning, as that will get you some creative thinkers and willing workers.
There are two types of activity to include:
- Things that create a better working environment while people are at work – measures that enhance health and wellbeing during the working day, and keep stress levels down.
- Things that help people make the most of their own time away from work – protecting that time; recognising that people have lives outside work and need to go home with the energy and time to live those lives; promoting understanding of colleagues’ diverse work-life balance needs.
Make sure you include some of both, with some fun activities in the mix to bring the serious points to life. Use our activity ideas pages for inspiration to get you started.
Publicising your activity
In-house – Before and during the week, use all your internal communication systems to let people know what is going on – notice boards, intranet, team briefings, newsletters. Send weekly bulletins during September to raise awareness and publicise the programme, then daily “what’s on” information during the Week.
Externally – Consider local press work if you are doing something that would interest the local community – something unusual, something that benefits local families or the wider community. Flag that you are taking part in a national initiative. Include articles in customer newsletters and websites about what the organisation is doing and why.
And after your Week…
Use internal communication systems – email, intranet, newsletters – to thank everyone involved and mention some highlights.
Debrief with the organising team and other managers across the organisation. Prepare reports for management and for PR use.
Feed back your experiences to Working Families – we’d love to know how it went.