Here at Goupie, you won't find any employee working more than 30 hours a week. In fact, most of our employees are on an hourly rate choosing to keep their time at work to 12 hours a week. We love this! It's important to us that our employees feel like they have a life outside of work, and that they are in control of their own work-life balance.
We have two employees working in the factory, the rest is done by Janet or her daughters Grace and Hanna. It's hard work in the factory, and much more of a physical of a job than you might expect. As every batch is hand mixed, cut, topped and bagged; there's an awful lot of repetitive movements, attacking muscles you never knew you had, and all of it on your feet. Of course, once you've worked in the factory for a some time, you work up these muscles and don't feel the burn quite so much! Even so, we feel it's important that no one is subjected to that kind of strain for more than 6 hours at a time (ideally only 4 if we can help it!).
Aside from our employee's physical health, we're interested in their mental health. As dedicated to Goupie as our employees are, they also have families and lives outside of the Goupie life. Our flexible working schedule means that we can offer work to those who may not have been able to find anything that fitted in with their existing lives.
When employees start with us, we discuss their schedule and arrange their working days around what's best for them. We then have an annual review to make sure that everything's still working for both of us. For example, Karen (who owns the farm the factory sits on) can only work Monday-Wednesday due to her other commitments around the farm.
It's a simple thing, made easier by our small size, but it's important to work with your employees.
So how does a week at Goupie look?
Well, we make everything to order so no two weeks look the same. Maybe a large wholesale order has come in that requires entire dedicated batches of Goupie. Maybe we've got a wedding to make favours for, or a special order from a hotel. It could be a week full of making our chocolate Jen the Hens with some Goupie on the side. Perhaps we've run out of chocolate and our supplier has too.
Every day is different and full of surprises, but it always smells delicious!
Of course, for certain jobs, those kinds of shifts can't work. We need to make sure that our customers can contact us during all business hours. Janet spend most of her working week at the factory, organising, answering messages, and making Goupie. Grace is currently acting as a consultant, participating in meetings and providing valuable advice, as well as forming solid relationships with local independent businesses. Hanna spends her time on the website, making sure everything is working as it should and that our stock, blogs, and recipes reflect the season. She's also there to answer customer queries and populate our socials (and sometimes she even experiments in the Goupie test kitchen to come up with new products and Goupie flavours like Cookies & Cream).
It's a small team in a small factory, but everyone is rested and determined to give the best that they can whilst they're at work. We fully believe that we get 100% out of our employees at all times, and attribute a great deal of this to the fact that they can enjoy the rest of their life without worrying about work! We're sure there are some frowning faces out there, wondering why anyone would commit to a 30 hour week - but it seems to work for us!
We hope this has given you a little insight into a week at Goupie, if you have any questions about how we operate please do get in touch! We'd be delighted to answer questions and are always open to suggestions for improvements or new information...
