Stronger together: workplace well-being

Several action points focus on promoting well-being in the workplace.

We have decided to appoint a confidential advisor who colleagues can turn to for private conversations. This could involve issues related to workload, conflicts with colleagues or managers, or any other situation where someone needs a listening ear or confidential advice. Our appointed confidential advisor will soon undergo training for this role.

We are also raising awareness about ergonomics. Since our employees primarily do sedentary work, they often spend long hours at their desks. An ergonomic workspace and good posture are therefore essential.

Additionally, we are organizing a workshop on resilience. Work can sometimes be stressful, so we believe it’s important for our employees to gain insight into managing stress and improving their resilience.

Since these topics are not only relevant to our in-house employees but also to the many freelancers we work with, we are exploring ways to involve our broader network as well.

Furthermore, we plan to develop and promote a preventive alcohol and drug policy. Voka’s comprehensive baseline measurement highlighted this as a gap, as having such a policy is mandatory for businesses in Belgium, yet we do not have one in place. Of course, we also recognize the benefits of implementing this!

One of the defining aspects of Mediaforta is our way of working. Many employees work from home or from co-working spaces, which isn’t always straightforward. To better support remote employees, our CEO, Tom Peeters, is following a tailored coaching program at Voka on remote work and flexible work arrangements. Naturally, he will implement the insights gained in our company.

This year, we also want to focus on disconnection and establish a policy ensuring that everyone—CEO included—can truly step away from work during vacations or outside working hours.

Learning for the future: building sustainability knowledge

We also aim to deepen our knowledge of sustainability, particularly in the area of sustainable communication.

To achieve this, we will learn from Statik, an agency that prepares organizations and businesses for a sustainable future. Through their informative webinars, we hope to gain insights into digital sustainability, inclusion, and accessibility.

A key focus will also be familiarizing ourselves with CSRD reporting. Our goal is to develop expertise in this area and offer it as a service to our clients. CSRD, or the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, is a European regulation requiring (larger) companies to transparently report on various sustainability topics under the categories of Environment (E), Social (S), and Governance (G). To prepare for this, we are following training programs on sustainability and sustainability reporting. Additionally, through the VCDO program, we hope to gain practical knowledge on corporate sustainability and become a sustainable partner for our clients.

Sharing our sustainability journey

This blog post is itself part of an action point: communicating about our sustainability journey. We do this not only through blog posts like this one but also by adding relevant updates to our website and sharing our progress regularly on social media channels like LinkedIn and Instagram.

Not just safe offline, but also online

We have also set two action points related to digital developments.

First, we have established an AI policy, which we will make publicly available on our website. This policy outlines ethical, transparent, and safe use of AI within Mediaforta, serving as a guideline for responsibly integrating AI technologies into our business processes.

Second, we are focusing on improving our cybersecurity to ensure digital safety for our employees, freelancers, and clients.

Stakeholder analysis: sustainability across our network

We also want to engage our stakeholders in our sustainability efforts.

To do so, we will gather insights from freelancers on how they approach sustainability. We will conduct an online survey among our freelancers to assess their practices and attitudes toward sustainability and energy consumption.

At the same time, we want to initiate sustainability communication with our clients. This will involve an online survey—potentially as part of a broader customer satisfaction survey—where we gauge the importance they place on sustainability and sustainable communication. This survey will also be linked to our own sustainability journey.

Year-end gifts with impact

And we’re ending on a celebratory note—with champagne!

We are looking for local suppliers for the year-end gifts (chocolates and champagne) that Mediaforta sends to employees and clients. Since local champagne is not an option, we will source our champagne from Lions Club Kortenberg Hertog Jan, which funds social projects. This includes Christmas packages for the most vulnerable clients of the Kortenberg Welfare Center and Cidar, an organization supporting young people with behavioral and educational challenges. Each champagne bottle will include a note explaining the social projects we are supporting.

We are excited to implement these fourteen action points. Curious to see if we can accomplish them all? Stay tuned for updates later this year!