BE INFORMED Welcome to the latest issue of BE Informed in which, aside from our regular features we take a refresher look at the employee benefits available to you through Vitality and our Employee Assistance Programme plus some ‘green’ news and updates. We also find out what our online marketing exec Erica gets up to on an average day and much more…

Darren Williams – Accounts Assistant – started 13/2/23 Christian Ivan Paul Alicuman – CSA, Beech Street – starting 3/3/23

Cristina Marenghi – HR Coordinator – leaving 10/4/23 Sophie Bradshaw – CSA, Minories – leaving 10/4/23 Internal applications are encouraged and in-job training available. Also, our refer a friend scheme offers you £250 if you refer a candidate to fill a vacancy who successfully completes their probation period.

Congratulations everyone who celebrated a work anniversary in February and March.

Sarah-Jane Pitcairn - Assistant Manager – Paddington Samantha Sipple - Centre Manager - Euston Romy Boekman – Admin Assistant – Cheapside Hannah Day – Sales & Operations Exec, &Meetings & Velocity Virtual

Lenny Long – Maintenance Operations Manager

Jayson Jenkins – Finance Director Jade Brooker – HR Manager – Central Services Lauryn Peace - Receptionist – Birmingham (Currently on maternity leave)

Billy White – Maintenance Officer - Cheapside Nada Vuletic - Assistant Manager – Victorian Georgia Lovell - Centre Manager – Euston Dolly Adeyinka – Receptionist – Victoria (Currently on maternity leave) Phoebe Chatfield – Sales & Admin Assistant - &Meetings & Velocity Virtual

Sam Sipple – Centre Manager - Euston 1. When did you start at BE? February 2020, just in time for Covid to hit! 2. Sum up your job in one sentence – Spinning various plates with a smile. -

3. What is your favourite food? Italian – anything pasta-based! 4. What is your favourite book? Outlander by Diana Gabaldon 5. What is your favourite movie? Pearl Harbour or Armageddon. 6. What do you do outside of work? I love spending time with my family and partner and I’m a huge rugby fan! Baking is one of my biggest hobbies as well as a huge love of cruising! 7. Tell us an interesting fact about yourself. After my next holiday in March, I will have visited every Caribbean island at least once. 8. Describe yourself in 3 words? Outgoing, bubbly and creative

9. What song best describes your life? Summer time – Vybz Kartel 10. What makes you smile? My nephews, I adore everything about them. 11. What talent do you think you were born with? Patience – I have the patience of a saint!

Rakesh Steve – Sales Executive 1. When did you start at BE? Back in August 2021 2. Sum up your job in one sentence – Conduct the viewing, get the proposal out, get the licence agreement out and await the email that reads… eSign completed (deal complete!) 3. What is your favourite food? My favourite meal is simply a roast dinner.

4. What is your favourite book? I’m ashamed to say, I do not read much however, Holes, back in school was great. The latest book I read was The Wolf of Wall Street and I really enjoyed it. 5. What is your favourite film? Ouff! Very hard to pick as I love all genres of films but if I had to choose one, it would have to be The Wolf of Wall Street. 6. What do you do outside of work? Gym, spend time with my fiancée and three kids (with one on the way too), play football, watch football, raise kids, go on holidays and social events. 7. Tell us an interesting fact about yourself. I’ve won 2 out of 2 Ultra MMA fights for charity and have fractured 7 bones in total during my life so far! 8. Describe yourself in 3 words? Tenacious, ambitious and spontaneous. 9. What song best describes your life? I have google searched for 30 mins trying to find songs with names such as ‘Always busy’, ‘No time, ‘Always on the move’. I can’t pick a song but I think you get the hint from these searches 😊 10. What makes you smile? My kids! 11. What talent do you think you were born with? The talent to beat anyone at FIFA!

If I’m not feeling too sleepy, I wake up at 6.45am and get ready for the gym. Once I get the train (if they are running), I check my work phone to see what emails I have received overnight. If the trains aren’t running, I WhatsApp the marketing team chat to complain about how rubbish TFL is and I go to find the nearest bus! At 8.45, once I’ve been to the gym (which is literally right beneath my desk), I head upstairs to my computer and turn it on then go grab a coffee, First, I check and respond to my emails. Next I check all our socials across our brands and respond to any posts we’ve been tagged in or any messages we’ve received via messenger. Following this, I will monitor the performance of the social media ads that we are running and maybe make changes if they aren’t getting enough engagement. I will then check for any leads from these campaigns and send them over to Maisie for the sales team to contact. At 10am I go grab some breakfast, always granola and yoghurt, as well as another coffee. I’ve been asked to put some extra focus on promoting Barbican, so I spend a bit of time creating a carousel ad on Facebook and Instagram and begin working on an email marketing campaign that focuses solely on Barbican. I need to edit a photo for the campaign, so I open up photoshop and remove a few objects from the image and export it.

By now it’s 11.30am and I receive an email from one of the centre teams requesting business cards, so I create and purchase these and organise delivery direct to the centre. I then spend some time looking around the website and occasionally notice the need for an update, so I either do this myself or if the site needs altering from the backend, I contact our amazing web developer, Phil. At 12:30pm, I take a break and have some lunch with a few friends. We’ve got a corporate headshot and building photoshoot coming up, so once I am back at my desk, I spend some time contacting different individuals and centres, and creating an itinerary to ensure the day runs as efficiently as possible.

At 2pm, I go back to the marketing campaigns that I was working on earlier in the day with a fresh set of eyes, I notice a few mistakes! I make the changes and then get these sent in for approval by 2:30pm. At 2:30pm, I speak to our Search Engine Optimisation agency, who provide some updates on our Google search rankings and our website performance. They give me a few recommendations which I go ahead and implement. I then check Google Analytics (which shows our website analytics) to monitor our organic traffic to the site. At the moment, it is increasing every day, which is fantastic! At 3:30pm, I pop to another centre to get some content for social media. If an event is being held at one of the centres, I offer a helping hand and capture some content for our socials. It’s such a fun part of the job! I get back to my desk for 5pm and reply to any emails that I have received throughout the day. I also notice that a few of our suppliers have asked to organise our monthly catch-up meetings, so I get these booked in. Andy has asked me to make an adjustment on the social media campaign, so I make these changes and publish the campaign and wait for Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to approve and publish. The email campaign gets approved with no changes to be made, so I schedule this to go out to our database on Tuesday at 9:30am. I finish the day by checking socials and responding to any comments/mentions that we’ve received throughout the day. I then log off and my workday is complete ☺

Huge congratulations to Natasha Rainsford and her husband Tom on the safe arrival of the very beautiful Maeva Grace on 26th January 2023 at St. Mary’s Hospital.

Vitality healthcare offers a whole host of benefits which you might not be taking advantage of so here’s a little reminder of what is available. Some are based on meeting the required activity targets. Free weekly reward from Caffe Nero Free monthly Odeon or Vue cinema ticket Free Amazon Prime membership Free Rakuten TV on-demand movie rental Up to 40% cashback on Good Health food from Waitrose Apple Watch available at much reduced rate Up to £10 off a weekly shop with Mindful Chef Discounts with Expedia and Mr & Mrs Smith Discounted health screenings with Bluecrest Stop smoking support from Quit Genius or Allen Carr’s Easyway Six months WeightWatchers premium membership for £30 Free FiiT membership Discounts on fitbit, Samsung & Garmin devices 50% of monthly memberships at Nuffield Health Gyms and Virgin Active Free one year subscription to Headspace mindfulness app 75% off overnight stays at Champney’s Spa Resorts

Health Assured, our Employee Assistance Programme, now has a health and wellbeing app which is available to us all. It provides proactive wellbeing tools and engaging features to enhance their existing services. The app’s features have been designed to improve users’ mental, physical and financial health by using personal metrics, personalised content and four-week plans to set goals and celebrate achievements. Key support features across wellness, wellbeing, engagement and recognition include: •Wellbeing videos and webinars •Mini health checks •Four-week health and wellbeing plans •Home life support and advice •Work life assistance •Physical and emotional health support •Four-week wellbeing challenges •Weekly mood trackers •Interactive leader boards •Perks and discounts •Health trackers syncing with your Apple Health app My Healthy advantage is available as free download via Google and Apple store, your Employer Code to ‘sign up’ is: MHA120629 Upcoming live webinars are as follows: Nutrition - Thursday 13th April @ 11am https://healthassured.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qsL5GH7hSWKzvPaz-5_R0g Supporting Young People - Tuesday 6th June @ 1pm https://healthassured.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_F0ochIZLSwyAKbnyrd2DCQ Parenthood - To be or not to be - Friday 14th July @ 3:30pm https://healthassured.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hlNurIrTSXuxMleicZhCKA The Impact of the Social Network - Monday 7th August @10:30am https://healthassured.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_mNpCG6ycS3mLYEoK1cj_FQ Anticipatory Grief - Wednesday 18th Oct @12:30pm https://healthassured.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_szmig1LNQlyGq_rMOqh9bg Mental Health & Men - Friday 3rd Nov @2pm https://healthassured.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eEhmXFrcS2mGBowVvgSUyw Stress - Thursday 7th Dec @11:30am https://healthassured.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nY0aLYUbTdK2546aEAkwmw

Our very own sustainability advocate, Julie Tucker, has been shortlisted for the BusinessGreen UK Green Business Awards 2023 in the category of Sustainability Leader of the Year. The awards showcase the very best of the UK’s green economy and this year have been said to have been highly competitive with hundreds of entries and scores of companies, people and projects competing in the various categories. Winners will be announced at a ceremony on 29th June. The Sustainability Leader of the Year category aims to recognise the sustainability executives or green entrepreneurs who have made exceptional progress in advancing the green economy over the past 18 months. Open to any executive working to promote and deliver corporate sustainability improvements and drive the development of the green economy, the award aims to celebrate the individuals who are at the heart of efforts to deliver truly sustainable business models and green business innovation. The judges looked for entrants who have led the delivery of successful corporate sustainability strategy or green business innovations, working closely with colleagues and partners to develop and execute effective environmental initiatives. BusinessGreen is the UK’s leading online publications for green business news and analysis. Companies being recognised in the various categories include NatWest, BBC, Legal & General, Coutts & Co, Barings, Bupa, Coca-Cola, The Office Group, LandSec, IBM and BE.Spoke clients Savills and Ernst & Young.

On Friday 24th March, in recognition of Earth Hour (on the 25th), a team of BE volunteers headed down to the Thames foreshore to take part in a beach cleaning activity. Beatriz Thode Minguet, Michael Walsh, Billy White, Nada Vuletic and Fatima Yamoun joined other volunteers on what is known as the Oxo Beach on the south bank of the River Thames. The volunteers collected around 400 items including cables ties, plastic cups and bottles, PPE and wet wipes, even a child’s boot!

All the recorded data on the gathered waste feeds into a Citizen Science project which helps ascertain the current state of river systems allowing Thames21 to make informed management decisions. If you would like to take part in a future event please get in touch with Julie, or if you are interested in a different type of volunteer experience, be that working in a food bank, helping at a homeless shelter or offering support to a young person as a mentor, please let her know and she may be able to find something for you. Volunteering really is the most wonderful experience, just look how happy it made our team! Upcoming events: 14th April Join Asif Azam for some tree planting in Camden. 22nd May Join Michael Walsh, Billy White, Fatima Yamoun and Asif Azam for beach cleaning on the Thames foreshore (we need one more person). 8th June Join Harman Dhinjan, Michael Stittle & John Edwards for beach cleaning (2 places available).

We are super proud of our zero waste to landfill and produced some impressive stats in 2022 but we still need you to please be mindful of which bins you are using so as not to cause contamination. There are signs on the bins so there should be no excuse.

It’s particularly important that food waste is placed in the food waste bins provided. To help we have created a Green Guide which will soon be available on the lounge. Here are a few screen shots for reference.

Congratulations to Diego, Edwin and their fabulous BE Cleaning Operatives on once again achieving Safe Contractor Accreditation, also to Andrew Miller for all his work on bringing it all together and satisfactorily answering all the required questions pertaining to Finance, Environment, Quality Management, Equality, Modern Slavery, Anti-Bribery, GDPR, Right to Work, References and Building Information Modelling, which have all been verified.

Thanks so much to everyone who took part in the recent photoshoot from which we were able to gather a fabulous range of images which showcase the equally fabulous range of services we offer. We also got a few lovely shots from the Visions and Values workshop that was running that day.

We have some fabulous new reviews to share with you. Congratulations to everyone who has had a hand in creating such positive experiences for our clients. Simon Clear, Red Construction, Victoria

Paul Vaughan, Head of HSEQ, Emico, Beech Street

Adelaide Exchange - Belfast

In a reciprocal arrangement whereby Chapter One is allowing us to take part in their volunteer online literacy programme for free (it should cost £3,000+), we were able to repay their kindness in part by accommodating their quarterly company get-together at Farringdon last week.

There have been some fantastic client events over the last couple of months and a noticeable increase in clients attending. Congrats to all the centre teams for the splendid jobs you do making these events so successful and well attended.

Shout out to our staff social media heroes, some of whom appear on these pages on a regular basis… Molly Grundy, Nada Vuletic, Isabelle Hewitt, Jade Brooker, Rakesh Steve and Sophie Bradshaw and a couple of new faces, Grace Goldstein from Threadsneedle Street and Cerys Morgan from Farringdon. The following pages feature a selection of their fantastic posts. Keep up the great work everyone, it all really helps, and for those of you not already doing so, please make sure you follow your colleagues on LinkedIn plus our various brands on all our social channels to like, share and comment on posts as this helps amplify our marketing messages and promote all the great events and activities that are going on right across the portfolio. We are each of us, in whatever role, ambassadors for the business and we have the power at our fingertips to support each other and the company to create an improved outcome for us all.

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