10 ways we gave back in 2020

As we near the end of 2020 and I reflect upon the year as a whole, I cannot quite believe the sheer amount of amazing work CCM has done as a team to support people in need, as well as be there for our people internally. Our purpose changed this year to ‘Enabling Greatness’ and this purpose is underpinned by 5 key principles. One of the principles being, ‘we do what we can to give back.’ The team has gone above and beyond in fulfilling this principle, and to celebrate the achievements, I’ve highlighted 10 ways we made a difference in 2020.

1. Free Marketing Support

As a business ourselves, and one that fortunately pivoted and thrived in 2020, we felt it important to support businesses who were facing challenges due to the pandemic. After researching the market, it became more apparent that businesses may have lost sight of their marketing strategy, with the need to cut budgets and limit their in-house resource. Our Client Marketing team launched a marketing recovery initiative, offering our paid service of marketing audits, completely free! We wanted to help businesses pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses so they could improve their strategies, plan for the long-term and retain business during a turbulent period.

After such a positive response, we then launched a free rebrand competition, where we were delighted to announce Healthy Minds, Healthy Business led by Jackie Shears as the winner. Jackie won a new logo as well as printed marketing materials. It felt great to support a business holding similar values to our own.

2. Implementing Wellness

If you haven’t put a wellbeing strategy in place at your company yet, you really should be thinking about doing this in 2021! This year our longest standing Director, Chelsea Peek, stepped up to the role of Head of People and implemented a crazy amount of impactful employee and culture initiatives. This includes, Wednesday Wellbeing, Friday Yoga, Wellness Action Plans, our Wheel of Reward, and so much more. It’s really helped how our teams communicate, particularly through the pandemic, but we absolutely won’t be stopping there. There’s so much more to come from Chelsea and her plans, and we can’t wait to see our staff satisfaction rate rise alongside our staff retention rates.

3. Hand Sanitiser Donations

Back in April, just after the first lockdown was announced, CCM Group had access to PPE whilst other businesses faced adverse supply chain issues. After an outrage in the news regarding limited access to PPE supplies, it was without a question or doubt in our minds that we turned to helping those most in need. 

We donated thousands of supplies to local care homes, hospitals and schools, as well as businesses, such as garden centres and salons, who needed the resource in order to reopen and operate safely.

 4. Donating 10,000 Children’s Masks

In August, we donated 10,000 masks specifically manufactured for children to worthy organisations nationwide including Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, King’s Mill Hospital, Girlguiding Nottinghamshire, Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity, Sneinton St Stephen’s C of E School and more. The feedback we received from the organisations was truly heart warming, and I am proud of the difference we were able to make to so many during such a challenging time. 

5. Supporting The Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity and Rainbow Trust

This year, we built some fantastic relationships with amazing charities such as The Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity and Rainbow Trust. The Children's Hospital Charity raises money to build a better future for children who visit Sheffield Children's Hospital, and the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity provides emotional and practical support to families who have a child with a life-threatening or terminal illness.

As well as donating 1,000 children’s masks to each charity, we ran an online quiz with both of them too, raising over ￡300 each in text donations. We also helped Rainbow Trust during the peak of lockdown, by providing our creative and marketing services free of charge in making a printable Homeschool Hacks activity pack (this was at the point where home-schooling was starting to get pretty repetitive!), so we were happy to help not only the charity, but parents too!

6. Trusted PPE’s Customer Support

One of the most heart warming things for the company this year was the conversations we had with our amazing Trusted PPE customers. Not only did we have various customers directly phone us to place orders after hearing our advert on the radio, but it was some of these exact conversations that led us to our next product innovation. With many customers not having access to the internet, the phone calls we received opened our eyes to how important our service was and still is. A lot of our customers were elderly and vulnerable, living in fear of leaving their homes, so it was incredibly overwhelming to be given insight into each individual's situation and offer them the support they needed to go about their everyday lives safely. The whole reason we set up Trusted PPE earlier this year, was to help support those in need struggling to access PPE.

You can listen to Ron, a customer of Trusted PPE’s, story here.

7. Family Giveaways

Something that blew up on our social channels was our free Disney+ subscriptions, which we offered at the very start of lockdown. The messages we got from the recipients were extremely heart warming. It was at the point where parents and carers were wondering what on earth they’d do during lockdown, so our giveaway gave a quick and easy fix!

But we didn’t stop there. From April up until September, we ran additional social media competitions giving our followers the chance to win Love2shop vouchers, as well as a meaty (pardon the pun), Miller and Carter competition, which saw the winner bag a meal for two, all paid for up to the value of ￡100!

8. Enabling Togetherness

Sometimes you know certain gestures are going to make an impact, but I really don’t think we could have predicted how well our internal Enabling Togetherness campaign went down. We sent care packages to each employee at CCM in November, including sweet treats, candles, alcohol, party hats and more. We also included a calendar of events which would enable us to all feel together in a time where we were physically apart. The events included CCMaster Chef, CCM Bake Off and a 10,000 steps a day walking challenge. We cooked, we baked, we walked, all alone and in our own homes (or through fields), but we shared photos (evidence!) of what we cooked, baked, and walked in our Slack channels each day and it really brought a sense of connection between us all.

9. Virtual Quizzes

We started a pretty epic virtual quiz series, which CCM Group hosted with guest quiz masters on various nights of the week during lockdown. Yes, everyone seemed to jump on the bandwagon, but as mentioned above, we proudly partnered with both Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity and Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity to raise money too! Collectively, our quiz videos have had over 9,000 views on our YouTube channel. We didn’t quite envisage how much of a positive impact our virtual quizzes would have on our followers, I remember one week we had people messaging us for more, and for me personally, that was truly heart warming to see.

10. University Care Packages

After the worrying spike in coronavirus cases within the Nottinghamshire area in September, and the national effect the pandemic had on students and universities, the Trusted PPE team developed and distributed 500 free care packages for students to keep them safe and entertained whilst tighter restrictions were enforced. This initiative was something our Trusted PPE team felt so passionate about, and as a result we were fortunate to get BBC and ITV news coverage of the kind donation.

So there you have it! What a year. Through the ups and downs, the laughter and tears, I think we can look back with pride at what we’ve achieved at CCM Group this year. Here’s to 2021, with so many exciting plans in place already, I am sure it will be another year to remember.