Prime time benefits for football ref and carer

Here at Prime we pride ourselves on offering employees a flexible working environment to promote a healthy work life balance. 

Semi-professional football ref Dan Stokes and care home volunteer Liz McMillan are both benefitting from our innovative flexitime initiative.

The flexible hours, which are offered to all employees here at Prime, have allowed aspiring football league official Dan, an accounts senior from Bromsgrove, the time to travel the country for crucial midweek matches, while audit accounts manager Liz, 28, gets the opportunity to study and train for her part-time role at a care home.

Dan, 25, a level four referee officiating in the National North and South Divisions, explained: “Joining Prime at the start of this year has been a real game-changer for me and my football commitments. You’re able to work the hours which suit you best, which is great for me in respect of my regular midweek matches. My usual working day is 8am to 4pm, so I’m still doing my 37 hours a week but finishing earlier means I’m no longer rushing to get to games. We often have journeys of around an hour or an hour-and-a-half and have to be at grounds for 6.15pm ahead of a 7.45pm kick-off. Finishing at 4pm means I now arrive in good time for the game and can eat properly before matches, too. It makes a big difference.”

Liz, who’s from Redditch, is making a big difference with her Age UK volunteer work at a local care home courtesy of a flexible working day. She said: “Prime’s flexitime approach has been a big help for me in pursuing this volunteer work at the care home. The initial Age UK training process and induction course was only available between 10am and 4pm, so I had to arrange my work hours to allow myself the time to attend. Prime were really supportive so it wasn’t a problem at all and now I have the best of both worlds – time to enjoy my job and time to devote to caring for the elderly. I find it really rewarding working at the home, sometimes just sitting, chatting and listening to people, can make such a difference to their day. Some don’t have visitors, don’t have any family so you are the regular, friendly face they look forward to seeing. I help out wherever I can, wherever they want me to and just giving those few hours, a week gives me a nice, happy feeling knowing that I’ve had a positive impact in some way and someone has benefitted from me being there.”

Kevin Johns, managing director, has said: “Our attitude is that we want our staff to have a rich and rewarding life at work and in their own time, so we offer benefits such as flexitime and a relaxed dress code, which hopefully makes them feel more comfortable and allows them to work around their out of office commitments  and maintain a healthy work life balance. We believe having happy and fulfilled people on board is a huge benefit for our business and for society – Liz and Dan are superb examples of this.”