About Livity

Sam and Michelle are committed to total transparency of business performance lived through their quarterly company meetings, a shared googledoc dashboard of key commercial and purpose metrics such as income contracted year to date, numbers of young people matched up with space on somewhereto, and new recruits to the Live Mag UK team. Sam and Michelle have always been true to the principle Livity have of taking feedback on anything and everything business-wide whether that’s face to face, over email, google drive, or anonymously.  This regularly comes up as something people really respect and enjoy about working at Livity. As well as these regular collective moments Sam and Michelle also take the opportunity to have individual moments that might make a difference to someone’s day or long term - whether that’s bringing ice creams in for the team on a hot day, handing out £20 notes to everyone on ‘blue Monday’ to make it a bit more cheery, bringing those they don’t work with often to meetings with them, having a cuppa with new people, or mentoring those with out-of-work entrepreneurial ambitions - there’s a genuine commitment to personal engagement. How approachable and accessible they are is regularly referenced by their employees, and it’s something Livity will protect, however much the business grows. They also take their themed socials very seriously! This has seen them over the years dress up as the a King and Queen, Cyndi Lauper and a Storm Trooper, a flapper girl and a gangster.

Livity's processes around line management and their coaching culture have shown to support employee development. All employees have one-to-one meetings with their line managers every fortnight to discuss priorities, challenges and development. New employees have objectives set within the first four to six weeks of joining. A three month review takes place and thereafter annual reviews. Additionally, objectives are assessed on a quarterly basis in between annual reviews taking place. At least once a year the leadership team discuss every single member of the team - in terms of them being set up for success, their capability, dependability, behaviours and their potential at Livity long-term in light of all of that information. From there, and along with their own thoughts, feedback and review information, Livity can start to plan pathways for people in line with their business planning although they always leave a little flexibility for the curveballs too! 

Their most recent team event was the summer quarterly company meeting, in which they presented the Livity business plan to the whole business. They did this outdoors in the local park, and added in some fun stuff like rounders and a quiz featuring everyone in the business, so they could all find out more about one another (such as guessing who was a childhood opera singer and who has danced with Pharrell Williams). Previously they went for lunch at The Clink restaurant at Brixton prison a restaurant onsite where prisoners gain experience in a real working environment and have a higher chance of sustainable employment post-release. Following this and a company meeting they took the team out to a local venue for a themed night out. They generally have at least two out of four of their events in a local venue to contribute to the local economy. The ‘Livity Talks’ team have invited many inspiring people to the office to round off the week with a Friday afternoon talk, designed to inform and inspire. The most recent one was by Rob Burnet from Kenya based Well Told Story, a social enterprise that combines the power of good stories with strategy, creativity, deep analysis and hard science, to design and produce communications that spur positive social changes that can be proved and measured. A really aspirational talk for the teams who are working on projects with similar goals.