Pass the croissants. 

Business Breakfasts are quarterly corporate social events organised by Richard House. They are offered as a chance for our corporate partners to network and share knowledge around CSR trends in their respective sectors or across all industries.

Each event has a key topic or theme, with panelists or expert speakers from leading organisations offering insight, plus the chance for all attendees to debate and voice their own concerns from within their own company or sector.

We also give attendees behind-the-scenes insight of Richard House and the challenges our families are currently facing, or the emerging plans for the future of the hospice, and the chance to apply your business skills to supporting us through the next stage of our journey. 

Our Business Breakfasts take place around East London and the City, typically for up to 45 attendees a session. We welcome the partnership of our corporate supporters in hosting and determining the next topic of these events; as these breakfasts are not designed to fundraise, but instead to offer an interactive platform that puts your corporate interests into the spotlight.

Covid-19 is not deterring us and we have already delivered our first virtual Business E-Breakfast, in November 2020; you can read more about this below!

If you would like to register your interest in being the host venue for our next event, or have an idea that you wish to share with us/offer to speak on, please complete our short form below. 

Register your interest in Business Breakfasts

Save the Date - Our next event is on the horizon! "It's OK not to be OK: How to support yourself, and colleagues, when burnout happens"

As Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns have drastically affected our work-life balance and working environments, workplace burnout has become a common topic of webinars and training. However, whilst it is always best to prevent burnout as the outcome of long-term stress, what happens when preventative measures aren’t enough? According to a recent survey undertaken by Mental Health UK, 1 in 5 UK workers felt ‘unable’ to manage pressure and stress levels at work.

Join us via Zoom on 23rd September, 9:30-11:00am to hear from an expert panel on how to deal with burnout after it arises, both from an employee and employer perspective.

The three questions we will be exploring are:

• How can you create a culture of openness and no judgement, where it is ok to say you’re not ok?

• What are the first steps to take when you’re experiencing burnout or someone tells you they’re feeling burnt out?

• How can you use some of the aspects of transitioning back to pre-Covid working patterns to help avoid further burnout? 

Our panellists include Ashley Fry from Paws in Work, Lucy Gower from Lucidity UK, WWT and our very own Carol Butwell who manages our STaR Team at Richard House. And, as always, being virtual doesn't mean no breakfast - when you sign up you will get a complimentary breakfast voucher delivered to your inbox! 

Sign Up Here!

Want a Bespoke Breakfast, just for your Business? 

Like our wellbeing services, the Richard House Corporate Partnerships Team is happy to accommodate your needs for a bespoke Business Breakfast, served up just for your team or stakeholders and focused around a subject that is unique to your company CSR goals or challenges being faced. 

Get in touch with the team to discuss your vision and how we can help you create the perfect breakfast event in return for support to Richard House.  

Corporate Spotlight: Recent Business Breakfasts

March 2021: "Beyond Ticking Boxes: Making Diversity & Inclusion Meaningful"

The topic for our March event this year was formed off the back of a tumultuous 2020 which highlighted the diversity among us: the disproportionate impact Covid-19 has had on communities, the financial struggles of those more impacted by a potential double-dip recession, and the Black Lives Matters movement that has resulted in one of the biggest international conversations about race to date. 

We saw our partners, and organisations across all corporate sectors, taking swift action to adopt better awareness and integration of diversity and inclusivity into their staff training, policies and procedures. Organisations were needing to take action to make this conversation top of their business agenda, and empower their staff by respecting and appreciating what makes them different.

Recognising that this big shift was already underway, our March breakfast posed some questions to experts working in the field of D&I. Our main focus was around making sure these conversations and trainings actually changed business cultures rather than simply being a "tickbox" exercise in response to an international crisis that then never took root in the organisation. We wanted to explore how to build a culture of awareness, honesty and inclusivity from boardroom level to new starters, and how to create shared understanding and meaningful training opportunities to all. Our incredible partner Baker McKenzie sponsored the event and we had one of our highest attended breakfasts since the series began in 2018.

Joining our discussion around keeping Diversity & Inclusion on the agenda permanently were: 

Meera Roy-Chowdhury, Diversity & Inclusion Adviser at Business in the Community

Waseema Ibraimo, Client and Operations Manager at Ashby Jenkins Recruitment

Sara Hazzard, Assistant Director Strategic Communications at The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy

Michelle Venson, Facilities Manager at Baker McKenzie

Ratul Ahmed, Managing Director Market Risk at Commerzbank

Mo Kanjilal, Co-Creator of Watch This Sp_ce

We were also joined by one of our Richard House parents, Katie, who shared her experience of finding an inclusive environment in Richard House where her family felt respected and valued.

Request Your On-Demand Recording

November 2020: "Transitions: Supporting Teams Through Personal and Organisational Change"

Our November Business E-Breakfast focused on different transitions that organisations and their teams could be facing now or in the coming months, and how to develop resilience, managerial skills and supportive environments to help staff thrive throughout these periods of change.

We recognised 2020 was a significant time of change for us all, regardless of our profession or seniority, as we adapted to a new working world challenged by COVID-19. Professionally, more uncertainties were on the horizon; redundancies, transitioning back to office-based working, and/or undergoing large-scale business renovations to remain sustainable which we know then impact on the mental wellbeing of teams who have to adapt.

Personally, we are also all going through transitions; juggling multiple roles, living more limited lifestyles and having to deal with new stresses or potentially challenging situations without the support on hand that we might be used to from our colleagues and loved ones.

There was a wealth of webinars around the impact of the pandemic, and we felt that our specialist team of therapists could bring a voice of hope to the conversation. Though the future is uncertain, we can keep working towards a better horizon, and “change” can offer us “chance”! 

 The session focused around three key topics under the umbrella theme of transitions: 

"Office to home and back again" - How can you keep staff motivated and feeling proud of the work their organisation is doing across the current pandemic, returning to core business priorities to foster positive change and boost both resilience and morale?

"Coaching staff through transitions" - How, as a manager or policy advisor, can you offer every member of your team insightful and tailored support to coach them through the tough times ahead, whilst also monitoring your own good mental health to be an effective leader?

 "Entering a remote workforce" - How can you make early careers feel settled, valued and in control of their professional  development, when they are facing the most surreal and potentially alienating time to enter the workforce in recent history?

To offer solutions to these challenging questions we were joined by a panel of speakers who could offer their own success stories and specialist advice: Doug Cooke, Executive Chairman at Principle Cleaning Services; our own Isabella Barrand, Therapies Practitioner at Richard House; and Stacey Kingshott, HR Director at World Wide Technology.

Recognising the risk of "Zoom Fatigue" we identified a new platform to host our first virtual breakfast, Remo. This allowed for the closest experience of live networking and interaction that we could provide, to retain the key value of our events bringing our partners together. Thanks to our generous event sponsors, Holt Energy Advisors, we were also able to uphold another key event tradition: providing the breakfast! Attendees who opted in had a delicious breakfast box delivered to their doorstep ready for the event, meaning they could attend the session ready to network. 

  

February 2020: "Building Bridges Beyond The Project"

This event was tailored to our corporate partners in the construction and development sectors. It focused around how to make a worthwhile contribution to existing communities when developing, and how to protect the welfare of workers on site.

We saw that the landscape of East London is rapidly changing, with decades of further development already planned, and felt Richard House could offer a unique perspective; we are a local service that has been a pillar of the East London community for 20 years. We wanted to offer a platform of discussion for how developers could be sensitive and inclusive to the needs of existing communities; looking at good examples of community initiatives and support programmes, plus Section 106 requirements and how to go above and beyond to facilitate real progress in the community for everyone.   

Our existing partners had also spoken with us about the alarming statistics for construction workers, including the tragic fact that there is an average of one suicide every week in the UK. Occupational health and wellbeing should be a key concern in any business, but we saw that there was an urgent need to bring this to the forefront of conversation in the development sector. By inviting speakers who are already making great strides forward in this arena, we felt able to contribute positively to this nationwide concern and offer our partners an achievable starting point in how to make changes within their own organisation.

Knight Dragon Developments Ltd were our generous hosts, who shared their expertise around community support and Section 106 with relation to their massive Greenwich Peninsula development. They also offered insight into the support services they offer to their workers, and what they view as being the essential ingredients for Occupational Health and Wellbeing.

Joining them as fellow industry experts were Mount Anvil, who spoke on how they offer a detailed programme of employment and skills training in the local community through their site in Whitechapel. They also detailed the vast array of Occupational and Mental Health procedures and initiatives in place on their construction sites, offering some very unique ideas that were proven to have injected a major boost to worker morale and wellbeing. 

Wrapping up were Isabella Barrand and Chris Baker from Richard House. Isabella is our Therapies Practitioner and across her career has had experience in dealing with suicide ideation and prevention, plus a host of other crucial wellbeing factors including fostering good mental health and managing stress. She shared her insight with the group and detailed the various wellbeing services that could be offered to corporate teams through her role at the hospice.

Chris, CEO of Richard House, then translated the message of the morning into the key development work essential at Richard House over the next three years - in order to ensure we remained at the forefront of palliative care for children and young people. This included how our partners in the construction sector could support us through those plans to create a full circle, win-win relationship that helped our shared community. 

Despite being held on the morning of a snowstorm, we had excellent attendance to this event from our partners in development; London City Airport, Red Door Ventures and Taylor Wimpey being among the companies that joined us. Feedback from the event was that it had offered real inspiration, with many companies pledging to implement similar ideas into their own policies and also requesting further support from Richard House around our wellbeing services.