5 things Bluefruit Software does that makes us the Best Place to Work in Cornwall

This year’s Cornwall Business Awards awarded Bluefruit Best Place to Work and Growth Business of the Year. In this post, we’re going to focus on why we’re the Best Place to Work in Cornwall.

We were up against some amazing finalists for the award, but the judges were impressed by what we do to ensure that everyone here benefits from being a part of our team.

Here’s what Gareth Kenward, of CCB Training, had to say about our entry for Best Place to Work:

(You can find all the 2019 Cornwall Business Awards winners here.)

So, what do we do to be such a fantastic place to work?

Top 5 things we do to be the Best Place to Work in Cornwall

5. Flexitime with zero crunch time

Everyone in Bluefruit has the right to access flexitime. We want people to have the time they need around work to be able to rest and recharge, spend time with family and friends, and do the things they’re passionate about outside of the office. This helps our team avoid burnout, which is a serious condition in tech, with over 50% of employees within the tech sector reporting feeling overwhelmed at work. It’s also great for the large number of working parents we have at the office, who enjoy the flexibility we offer around school holidays and afterschool pick up times.

4. Help with mental health and wellbeing

Pressures from within or outside of work, no matter the size, can impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing. Bluefruit offers access to counselling, an on-site gym (for free), weekly yoga sessions and other health benefits. We’ve also helped colleagues train in mental health first aid (like ASIST) to ensure that everyone can get the help they need when they need it. We are disability confident employers and take that responsibility seriously. With in the past month we’ve also introduced a Simply Health plan to help our employees with medical and dental costs.

3. Empower the team

As a Lean-Agile business, we follow lean principles like “Empower the Team”. By doing this our team can help make choices and inform on decisions that make their work and our processes better. The benefits of listening far outweigh the benefits of not, as it can mean the difference between a successful product for our clients or something that’s mediocre or far worse. Beyond project work, we also allow teams to create their own work environments with great laptops, multiple screens and stand up desks.

2. Room for culture

At Bluefruit we believe it’s important to have a chance to find space in your working day. So, we have a Chill Out Room with a free pool table and very comfy seats as well as kitchens on every floor and a café on site. We also have a Social Guild, made up of team members who voluntarily work to organise social events in the business (cream teas for charity, outings, pasty showdowns). On a more formal level we have a company culture champion who works with our HR team to run regular surveys checking how happy the team are and to find out if there’s anything we could do to improve working here. All of this has paid off and we have fantastic scores from our employee surveys and a 5/5 on Glass Door.

1. We Invest in our people

We know, it sounds cliché, but investing in our people is the most important thing that we do here. As a service-based company, we are nothing without our engineering teams. To support them we have a training program with at least one day a week dedicated to training and personal development. Training also allows us to nurture the talent of our team, and make sure our employees are able to grow with us. This means we have regular career progression across the company and a huge opportunity for people to grow and develop while at Bluefruit. We also invest time and money in our wider community to ensure that there are future software engineers and testers through Software Cornwall. And that’s just training. We have a generous maternity and paternity policy, which we’re looking to make even better.

Bluefruit is people

By doing everything we’ve mentioned on this list (and more) means that our people are happy, able to bring their best selves to work and do awesome things for our clients, for Bluefruit and for themselves.

And that’s why we are the Best Place to Work in Cornwall.