Why we love an anniversary here at Mantis 

Next time you are at the checkout in Tesco, look at the badge of the person serving you. The badge will tell you how long the wearer has been employed there for. I now treat it like a game of Top Trumps, and my record breaker came a couple of weeks ago when I met a lady who had worked there for 35 years. Since the very first day that store opened.

So obviously, for various reasons, I asked ‘why?’

And she told me it fitted in with her life. That it had seen her through her ambition to work in the first place, her children coming along, and she’d worked in several different roles, coming back to the checkout at the end of her time there because she likes helping customers.

It got me thinking about our team at Mantis. November is a great month to be working here, as half of us celebrate our anniversaries. This year, that’ll be a combined 31 years between me, at seven years, Gavin and Toby at 11, Bryony at three and Liz at one.

All of us have different reasons to celebrate our anniversaries, beyond the longevity and fulfilment of our careers here. For Gavin and Toby, our founders, it’s the quiet acknowledgement of having built and sustained the business.

For me, it’s been seven years of developing myself and others through interesting times. Liz has made a triumphant return to work after maternity, bringing order to us all.

This November, the team member whose anniversary I’d most like to celebrate is Bryony. Any clients who have her on their team know how lucky they are. She’s got an astonishing media relations record and I’m so proud of the knowledge she’s amassed of our sector in the past three years. She gives it to you straight if you ask her opinion, and best of all, she’s been responsible for a whole heap of change, in her life, in her son’s life, and in our client campaigns. I’d like to think that Bryony, and myself, and all our staff, will think about our careers here the same way as that lady I met in the supermarket. That we fit our staff’s lives. That we offer diversity and flexibility and the chance to do what you most enjoy. And of course, that we get to enjoy making a decent difference to our customers.

Here, we celebrate in the best way we can think of, by having the whole day off. Everybody deserves a day off to reflect, don’t they? And that’s why, as well as loving anniversaries at Mantis, we all celebrate our own annual day in our own way. Teamwork as it should work.