Look inside Divido’s first Wellness Week of 2023

Earlier this month, Divido celebrated its first Wellness week of 2023. Here’s what we got up to.

What is Wellness Week?

Wellness Week is a twice-yearly activity that brings people at Divido together around common goals of health, wellbeing, and social responsibility. The idea being to prompt a little learning, introspection and, hopefully, some affirmative action in our lives.

We host two each year – one at the beginning of the year, the other in late autumn. Each week has its own theme to focus our thoughts and activities around. For March 2023, that theme was planetary wellness. 

During Wellness Weeks, we stack our calendars full of interesting activities – from talks by guest speakers, to daily challenges, educational trips, and we always include a social event. To top it off, every employee gets the Friday off to focus on their own wellbeing.

What did we get up to this time around?

Monday – Living Sustainably(ish)

The week kicked off with a talk from Jen Gale, author of The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide. Jen’s talk was not a lecture on becoming the perfect climate citizen, rather it was about how we can make small changes to become ‘imperfectly green.’ 

Did you know that emptying your inbox, for example, reduces the amount of data stored within the Cloud, which reduces the energy needed to service your email account? Meanwhile, apps like Olio and Too Good To Go can help us to reduce wastage. 

Jen’s key takeaway was that small actions made by many people can make a big difference.

Tuesday – Divido’s journey to net zero

On Tuesday, Divido’s newly formed net-zero team took to the stage. They have the task of calculating Divido’s impact on the planet, finding ways to reduce that impact, and championing sustainability around the company. 

It was only fitting, then, that Tuesday also featured a visit from Tim Geller, Co-Founder of Alectro – Divido’s emissions calculator partner.

With Alectro, employees can log their work-related emissions data so we can get a better picture of how much we’re emitting. Journeys to work, business trips, food for the office, and energy usage all contribute to our total emissions, so this data is added together to provide an estimate of the total carbon we directly and indirectly produce. 

Armed with this information, we are taking steps to understand how we can start to reduce our carbon footprint. Things like cycling into work, eating less meat and working with carbon-neutral suppliers can help us to achieve this goal. Where we can’t reduce our emissions, we’ll instead look for ways to offset carbon.

Wednesday – A trip to the pictures

Wednesday’s special guest was none other than Sir David Attenborough himself! Well, not really – we assume he’s a little busy. But while we couldn’t have the man himself, we did plan an excursion to Mondrian, Shoreditch, where employees were treated to a private screening of his recent documentary, A Life On Our Planet.

The film is a retrospective both of Sir David’s life and his time as a naturalist, and the lessons he has learned along the way. It looks at a century of change across Planet Earth, showing the devastating impact that our changing climate has had on our lives – and what we should expect from the near and long-term future.

The message is bittersweet. Yes, there has been plenty of damage done, but humanity’s adaptability could prove vital in helping us to overcome the challenges we are sure to face.

Thursday – Getting in touch with Natural History

Our fourth and final day of planned activities involved a trip to the Natural History Museum for the 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award exhibition. Amidst the images and interactive content is a stark and uncomfortable message: our natural world is under threat. 

The Big Buzz by Karine Aigner, which won the Adult Grand Title, features a group of cactus bees tangled together in a ball competing to mate. Visually, it’s stunning. But the image becomes even more compelling in the description, which explains how the species are under threat due to habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, and farming practices. 

A quote by Sugandhi Gadadhar, wildlife filmmaker and judge reads, ‘In today’s world, where we struggle to grab the attention of the policymakers towards even big mammals, this image helps in bringing the spotlight to one of nature’s most important creatures – bees’.

It’s an uncomfortable message, but it was an important point to end the week on. We launched a ‘divido_green’ slack channel after the trip, for the team to post sustainability related content and continue our planetary wellness conversation moving forwards.

Friday – Time to rest

As with all Divido Wellness Weeks, day five was a well earned day-off. I used mine to reflect on my own sustainability goals for 2023 and which practises I can make a start with.

Keep an eye out for next Wellness Week

Divido’s next Wellness Week will follow later in the year. We’re already planning our new theme and activities to go with it. The good news for you, if you’d like to be a part of the action, is that there’s never been a better time to join Divido.

In the meantime, stay in the loop by following us on LinkedIn and subscribing to our newsletter.