We asked you what mattered. You told us.
A pattern kept coming back around fitness, movement, wellness. One of our values, yes — but more than that, it was coming back in your own words.
Patrick said a gym contribution would be meaningful because it's "something I need/choose to pay for anyway rather than being a gimmicky nice-to-have." That line stuck with me. Gimmicky nice-to-have. That's exactly what I don't want to build.
Damian said: "I don't really make time for self outside of work and kids." Colin wanted something that could subsidise running trainers, or just getting out for lunch. Daniel said he "knows exercise makes him more productive" but has been struggling to step away because he feels guilty.
That last one especially. Guilty. We've got unlimited holidays, no set hours, full flexibility — and still, stepping away to exercise feels like something that needs to be earned. That tells me a budget alone won't fix it. What's needed is permission, structure, and something collective behind it.
The obvious answer was a wellness budget. Mostly because no one could decide. Money on a card, spend it how you like. I kept coming back to it, and kept walking away from it.
Partly because of the tax reality. A benefit in kind means you pay income tax on it, we pay employer NI on top, and the amount that actually reaches you is materially less than what we spend. We're small enough to do something smarter.
But mostly because a budget is individual. Everyone disappears and does something different, and we're left with ten small things and no shared story. Not to mention that it’s hard to manage. That's not what I want to build here.
I want something collective. Something you'd tell someone about when they ask what it's like to work at MWI. Something that over time becomes part of who we are. A tad more impactful and meaningful, not different for the sake of it, but opinionated and directly aligned with our values; not just loosely aligned in some throw-a-way “budget”.
Here's what I'm proposing.
Every quarter, we pick one wellness theme.
We buy everyone the same product related to it. We build simple challenges around it. Competitive ones perhaps with games and prizes. We take 90 mins of the week away to focus on it. And we even centre our quarterly retreat on it.
Collective. Opinionated. “Specific enough that a new hire would tell a friend about it” is how I’m thinking about it. But it has to be used and meaningful. What’s the worst that could happen?
Here's how I'm thinking about each quarter.