As I drove to BACP House on a cold and dark Wednesday morning in October, rain lashed at my windscreen and Autumn leaves blew across the road. It felt like one of those days where it was never going to get light. But after a dash into the office from the car to avoid the downpour, I spoke to some of my colleagues about the lovely feedback from members on our recent supervisors event. I had the privilege of congratulating our marketing team on well-deserved award successes. I joined our senior management meeting to hear the latest updates from my busy colleagues.
All this filled me with an overwhelming sense of positivity, and I credit our wonderful staff with creating that.
This month I want to use my blog as an opportunity to focus on the people who make BACP special and who are so dedicated to working on your behalf.
Our staff.
We have an incredible bunch of people here. They’re absolutely committed to making your experience as a BACP member the best it can possibly be.
And I want to say a huge thank you to each and every one of them – for everything they do.
Out of 162 staff, 32 have worked here for more than 10 years and 14 have started with us in 2024.
That’s a diverse mix of employees with different life experiences, skills and knowledge. Some are highly trained therapists, using their extensive professional knowledge to further support our members, the profession and the public. They’re both members and staff. Others are well-qualified experts in other professions, bringing what they’ve learnt from careers spanning a range of organisations and industries to help BACP meet its aims and objectives.
I know from speaking to people around the profession over the past year, that our staff team is highly regarded by many of our members, who are complementary and caring about our employees. That is fantastic to hear.
But the reality is as a professional organisation with 70,000 members, we make decisions that are not always popular.
Our motivation is always what’s best for the profession, our membership and for clients. But we know members may not always see it that way, when things affect you in a certain way as an individual.
And this can lead to difficult conversations.
Often, the common ground here is our shared passion for the profession. Really, we’re all working together because we know counselling changes lives, and we want more people to be supported by counselling if they need it.
I hope we can remember these shared aims and work through our differences.
And I hope even in these challenging situations you recognise the effort our staff put into their work every day.
It’s been lovely recently to see some of our teams recognised externally for their achievements. Our marketing team received the best email newsletter award, and our communications team were highly commended for best public awareness campaign at the 2024 Memcom Awards. Our policy team were shortlisted for best lobbying campaign at the same awards.
In November, some of our teams will also attend the Association Excellence Awards, where they’re nominated for best development of an existing association event, best lobbying campaign and best public awareness campaign.
It’s great to see our teams honoured by their peers with awards like this. It’s well-deserved. But I also know that not every employee and department’s work lends itself to this sort of external recognition.
As CEO, I want to ensure that we have a culture and workplace where every individual is valued and recognised for their work and what they bring to their role. So many of our people go above and beyond and are exceptional in different ways.
I want every staff member to know the difference their work is making to the Association.
My hope is that even on a rainy morning in October, staff feel that positivity when they walk through the front doors of our offices, or turn on their laptop at home and log on for the day.
And I want our members to know that we are all in this together, staff and members, rain or shine.
