Local company up for national wellness award

KILCOOLE company Interactions Research has been selected as finalists for the Small Firms Association 2020 award in the category of Workplace Wellness.

This will be the first year that the SFA has awards a business specifically for its approach to well-being.

Interactions Research carry out qualitative and quantitative market research and service auditing. They specialise in the psychology of behaviour, resistance to change and social marketing.

Interactions has been in business since 1993, and has made employee satisfaction a cornerstone of their growth and recruitment strategy long before ‘wellness’ was a cooperate buzzword. Over the years, the company noted that the majority of the high calibre researchers it looked to employ were women who were desperate to find balance.

Creating flexi-time and part-time positions while in-cooperating an understanding about the pressure women workers face was the backbone to the workplace wellness approach.

Additionally, the company has always had a strong focus on sustainability and has aligned themselves with research projects that work on socially and environmentally interesting projects and has worked closely with national transport companies and sustainable energy producers.

Project Coordinator Andrea Mitchell recently joined the research team after learning about the company’s dedication to sustainability and focus on employee flexibility.

‘I choose to work for a smaller firm because they have such good plans in place to accommodate my need for a flexible work schedule, and I also really liked that I could be part of a team doing work that felt like it made a difference to the planet,’ said Andrea.

The company also promotes community involvement with coffee mornings, access to yoga, a policy of taking work outdoors when possible and a dog friendly office.

Speaking about the award, Managing Director, Eileen O’Connell said: ‘Workplace wellness is often seen as something for the biggest cooperation like Google or Facebook to focus on, but rather than filling the office with bean bags and table tennis tables, we’ve stayed true to our values and carefully listened to what our employees want. Becoming a finalist for the Small Firms Association Award because of this makes our whole team feel very proud.’