Being supportive is in our nature

When you join Hastings Direct, you’re joining an organisation where you can make a real difference – to our company, our customers and our local community. But most of all, it’ll make a real difference to you.

Why? Because you’ll be part of a company that listens to your opinions, respects your individuality and supports and encourages you to develop to your true potential. A company that’s constantly moving forward and looks to your ideas to take it to new and exciting levels. A place where you can learn new skills, make new friends and develop a new future for yourself.

You’ll discover a sociable atmosphere, where senior managers are approachable and supportive, colleagues are always ready to help each other out and great work is celebrated and rewarded. And you’ll be able to make a real contribution to local communities. What’s more, the rapid pace of change here means there are always exciting new opportunities to build on your career in any business area.

Focused on your wellbeing

We want everyone who works at Hastings to have the chance to achieve their full potential whilst putting their wellbeing at the heart of everything we do, so they can live healthier and happier, both inside and outside work. That’s why we launched our Wellbeing programme in 2017.

Join us and you’ll have a variety of wellbeing programmes to support your mental, physical, financial and social health. Activities may include:

Various awareness and educational wellness initiatives throughout the year
Access to a vast library of wellness support and information to help you live a healthy and happier lifestyles.
Personalised financial support from our financial partner, Nudge.
Access to the company’s Colleague Assistant Programme (CAP) which also has a free app for colleagues to download accessing a range of webinars, factsheets and four week programmes to support you and your dependants wellbeing needs.
Access to our mental health app in partnership with Thrive which supports colleagues who have not just poor mental health but good.

Learning and development

From day one, you’ll have access to a wide range of training and development opportunities. It all starts with your initial induction programme that gives you everything you need to kick off your career with us.

You’ll also have access to our online ‘yourcareer’ portal. This opens the door to an exciting variety of learning programmes, from practical workshops, to blended learning modules and apprenticeships.

Being a good neighbour

We aim to play a key role in our local communities. Our colleagues are allocated time away from their day to day role, to fulfil an exciting community day every year. Whether you choose to support a local charity or fundraise for a good cause, our community days are a great opportunity to give back to the areas where we live.

Our education programme ‘Futuready’ is an innovative and unique course, designed to help local year 9 students in Bexhill and Leicester. The programme is designed to help remove barriers that may make students disengage from school and in life and provide them with life skills to help shape their future and give them the opportunity to make a difference to their education and career paths. Our colleagues volunteer as business mentors to help support the students with anecdotal and professional advice and guidance.

By giving grants to communities, donating throughout the year and taking part in local programmes, we play an active role in the areas where we work.

Listening to you

At Hastings your opinion matters. That’s why we run an annual engagement survey, designed to understand how colleagues feel about life at Hastings and what we do for our 4Cs. We use the feedback to form company-wide and local action plans.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. Our colleagues have the scope to voice their thoughts and ideas - in fact, whatever’s on their mind - through a weekly newsletter, monthly colleague forums, annual colleague roadshows and even in the coffee queue.

Saying thank you

Join us and you can expect more than just a thank you for going the extra mile and producing great work. Our 4Cs Awards offers colleagues the chance to nominate team members for their achievements and for going the extra mile for our customers, colleagues, company and communities on a monthly and annual basis.

In 2021, we had 3,800 nominations, with many colleagues receiving monthly recognition and our most popular category was Colleagues' Colleague which received 1,330 nominations. The teams and individuals, who were chosen as our overall winners across seven categories, received their coveted awards at our annual 4Cs Awards black tie event.

Active in our communities and supporting great causes

Throughout the year our colleagues make massive efforts to raise money for our charity partners, as well as contributing to the local communities we work in through a wide range of fundraising events and activities. In 2021, we supported 163 local charities, schools and community groups, including the delivery of over 3,000 food parcels to those most in need, and gave over 7,000 hours of practical or professional advice or support through our community days.

We're very proud of our colleagues' activity in the community. Scroll through the images to see us what they have been up to.

Playing cricket in support of mental health charity, Heads On.

Team ARC donned gardening glove to clear a forest school in Hastings.

Colleagues have used community days to keep the beach clean all year.

Team Insight & Counter Fraud walking 5k to support a colleague in need.

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