The BFA (British Franchise Association) recently completed its inaugural National Franchise Week with franchisors, franchisees and sector suppliers taking part in a diverse range of events, designed to help them step away from their desks, focus on their mental health and wellbeing and raise money for charity.
Over 100 companies took part across five themed days, logging 2,230 miles of movement, attending 14 online classes, raising almost £1,000 for charity and supporting their local communities through volunteering.
Also, during the week, mental health training company Cinder revealed the results of the first franchising Wellbeing Survey.
Pillars of wellbeing
National Franchise Week was split into five pillars of wellbeing: Move, Learn, Connect, Be Present and Give Back, with different events organised by the association each day.
Move day – sponsored by My Fit Pod
32 individuals from 16 different brands took part, with donations being made to the mental health charity, Shout. Participants logged their movements in a private Strava group, with fierce competition for the top spot. In total, they walked, swam, biked and ran 2,230 miles and over 520 hours, the equivalent of completing more than 85 marathons and spending nearly 22 full days in motion.
The winning positions for distance and time were taken by Rachel Fay-Sedwick, founder of Little Learners, who walked and rode a total of 354 miles around the North East, along the Devon coastline and on her exercise bike at home, and Andrew Dick, standards manager at the BFA, who exercised over 50 hours during the month. Rachel said: “Exercise has never really been my thing, so it was definitely a step out of my comfort zone; pushing myself showed me how much it can help both my body and my mind.”
Learn day – day 2
Day two was made up of 14 individual online lessons, delivered by 13 brands to over 100 attendees, covering subjects from breathwork and mastering organisation, to how to take confidence building selfies and finding your ‘why’.
Connect day – day 3 – sponsored by HSBC UK, Platinum Wave and Morton Michel
Connect day saw 86 companies and 150 delegates attend EWIB (Empowering Women in Business) at the West Midlands Safari Park.
Delegates heard from six powerful speakers on everything from ‘Purposeful Growth’ to ‘Situational Leadership’. A raffle was held in aid of The Cycle charity, which raised over £980. The Cycle is a nonprofit empowering women and communities through sustainable sanitation, gender equality, and improved menstrual health.
Be present day – day 4
Jen Chapman-Boffin, founder of mental fitness and resilience company Cinder, ran an online wellbeing retreat and revealed the results of the first franchise sector mental health survey. They showed that although there is much work to be done, 73% of franchisees and 89% of franchisors said that being a part of the franchise industry had maintained or improved their mental health and wellbeing.
Give day – final day – sponsored by Barclays
Sponsored by Barclays, the final day saw the franchise community doing voluntary work in their local communities. Members of the BFA team spent the day with the Retail Trust site in Derby, where they painted and restored outdoor furniture to help revitalise a valued community space.
Malcolm Heslop QFP from PartnerWise Franchise, whose team logged 368.55 miles of activity in June, said: “This has been a great initiative that has helped raise the profile of franchising and enabled people to get involved in a way that is personal to them.”
CEO of the BFA Pip Wilkins QFP said: “What an extraordinary week; enormous thanks to our generous sponsors and to everyone who took part, be that as a presenter or an attendee. We are delighted that whilst continuing to uphold the highest of standards in the UK franchising industry, we’ve also been able to create space for people to take a moment and prioritise their mental health, which is so important to us all and we hope the lessons learned will continue to support them in the future.”
For more information: https://www.thebfa.org/
