About White Stuff

White Stuff is a fast-paced energetic business that is ever changing and rapidly growing. The way they communicate and facilitate team interaction starts with their brand vision. White Stuff ‘create together’ and ‘create conversations’ with a few simple home truths. Everyone can make a difference and compelling two-way conversations make their world go around. Teams communicate and interact through two-way conversations in various innovative ways. White Stuff’s intranet, aptly named, The Tea Room houses their online blogs and communities where people from across the business, internationally, can come to collaborate. They share business messages, product information, and business improvements and ask for real time feedback in the weekly trade huddles and monthly Family Gathering meetings in London and the Head Office. White Stuff encourage team away days across the business and often take those opportunities to get outside the office and their shops to get into the community to work together with their local partnered charities and positively influence their charitable activity. They are passionate about bringing people together and like to welcome any new team members to the White Stuff Family by inviting them to their brand induction day. This is a great opportunity for the London and Leicester team members to interact with the new retail management population, share ideas and learn about the vision and values from the very beginning.

In 2016 White Stuff launched Community Chest, an employee small grants programme, which allows staff to apply for funding for causes that they care about in their local community. The scheme was set up with the aim of extending the reach and impact of the White Stuff Foundation beyond supporting their existing partner charities and empowering the team to have a say in the direction of funds whilst having a positive impact on what is important for them. This pilot year saw applications from around 90 employees and funded 17 small grassroots organisations such as Residents Associations, charities and community organisations. The Foundation awarded a total of £20,000 and the winning projects ranged from a Christmas party for elderly people to restoring a community hall kitchen and running healthy eating workshops for children from an allotment. 2016 has been a milestone year for the White Stuff Foundation, hitting a total fundraising income of over £2 million since the charity launched in 2010. Employees across the business continue to drive the majority of fundraising activities. Recently a group of shop managers were keen to show support for a colleague currently suffering from cancer so took on a Race for Life as a group, raising around £1,000. In early 2016, White Stuff established a new charity partnership for the Head Office with south London based Spires, who support rough sleepers, sex workers and disadvantaged adults. This year the People Team ran a CV and Interview Skills Workshops for 40 students from the educational charity Into University. Participants received expert advice on how to structure a CV and how to achieve success in an interview from the White Stuff team and a number of trusted recruitment agencies. In addition, White Stuff runs a work experience programme that allows participants to gain an insight into the world of work.

This year White Stuff relaunched its benefit offer on a new online platform called ‘The Biscuit Tin’. The site went live in June 2016 for the annual benefit selection window and was a huge success, seeing a 65% increase in total logins compared to the same time last year. The Biscuit Tin offers a complete information hub with easy navigation to benefits. Employees can select their benefits whenever they wish, giving them the power to control when and how they access their rewards. The site is fully interactive, containing videos and help guides to enable their family to make choices that are right for their lifestyle. Employees can use The Biscuit Tin to claim on their insurances, access discounts and review their Total Reward Statement. They re-designed the Total Reward Statement for the June 2016 launch and employees can now see the value and split of their package at-a-glance. Staff can drill down on each element of their Reward to explore how the building blocks of their package. There is also access to historical reward statements for detailed comparison of individual’s pay and benefits over time. This year they have also used The Biscuit Tin to build awareness of retirement planning and pension savings amongst their family. There is an interactive pension-modelling tool where employees can adjust their contributions, pension fund and retirement projections to get the most out of their investments. The site gives access to the annual Pension Newsletter that explains the performance of the Default Pension Fund, where 90% of the White Stuff family is invested.