Learning by doing

We actively encourage people to go out and try new things. From research and design, to coding and processes, feedback loops are built into everything we do, allowing us to consistently learn from what we’re doing and improve.

Openness and transparency

We create an environment that is open and transparent, and information is shared freely. To do this, as a company, we ensure we’re honest and don’t exaggerate or deceive and we share as much as we can about what we’re doing.

Continuous improvement

We know more today than we knew yesterday. Reflection, open minds, and a willingness to challenge the status quo, enables us to explore new technologies, create new opportunities and constantly strive to improve lives.

Healthier relationships

We like people. Working closely with our customers, and including them as part of our project teams, encourages collaboration and allows us to learn from each other. We acknowledge the achievements of others, as well as our own, to help us grow.

Care and attention

We are passionate about what we do and committed to delivering value to our clients, and their users. We are large enough to bring a breadth of experience and small enough to maintain high standards in everything we do.

Social values

We think carefully about how our approach impacts our team, our clients and our environment. Care and attention is one of our core values - we apply this to equally to our people, our clients and the wider ecosystem we work within.

Our culture

We work hard to create an inclusive, healthy culture where people grow and are happy. We want to find and nurture people who can help us create an impact.

Open-minded recruitment

We actively look for people who can bring diverse perspectives and experiences to our team.

We avoid role requirements that could exclude people who haven’t had access to more traditional career paths or who’ve taken an extended career break.

We provide a supportive working environment to help everyone grow and create impact in their role.

A diverse team

We’re proud to have recruited a diverse team. For example, we’ve made a conscious effort to attract more women to Unboxed. Through flexible and remote working, a more adaptable annual leave system and family friendly policies, we now have a fantastic team made up of more than 50% women. Half of our developers are women, which is unusual in the tech sector.

Nurturing our people

Learning by doing is one of our core values. We give our people as many opportunities as we can to grow within and beyond their discipline.

We offer everyone up to 10 innovation days each year. They can use these days to explore an idea that could create a positive social impact in the future, or to learn, watch or read. Many of our team spend these days together to share skills and experiences.

We also offer mentoring and reflection sessions and encourage everyone to attend conferences and training that could help them expand their role.

We use The Honeycomb Works toolkit to get feedback from our team. In our last survey, the majority of our team felt they were given equal opportunities to grow and develop through their preferred way of working.

We believe in healthy, positive relationships and support every Unboxeder to make strong connections with each other and with our clients.

Supporting younger people

We offer regular work experience placements to young people and graduate students interested in product or service design or a career as a developer.

Several members of our team are volunteer mentors for the #bemedigital mentoring programme supporting young women and girls from black and minority communities to get into STEM careers.

Wellbeing

We believe that a happy team is a more productive team. We have a dedicated Wellbeing champion and run regular, research-informed workshops to help Unboxeders learn about simple, practical ways to support themselves and each other in the workplace. We treat every employee as an individual and encourage employee-led growth and development - we will help people to learn in the way that is most appropriate for them.

Our footprint

We have invested in the tools that we need to work effectively with clients, service users and research participants in a hybrid way..

We are implementing a carbon strategy to track our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and commission regular Amazon Web Services (AWS) reports into carbon usage for our server.

We work with The First Mile recycling services to fulfil our Zero to Landfill commitment. We do this through careful choices in the supplies and materials we use in the office, making it easy for our team to reduce energy use.

We use Freecycle to give away office equipment and furniture that can be reused. Wherever possible, we fix and refurbish phones and laptops to give to new team members, rather than buying new ones.

We encourage cycling through a cycle loan scheme and a discounted rate for employees to use London’s Santander city bikes. In 2022, Unboxed joined Ride the Change, a 225 mile cycle tour aimed at engaging people with the goals of COP27.

In 2022, we helped young aspiring footballers to reduce their use of single use plastic, through our sponsorship of the Palma Foundations annual football camp and our #playersagainstplastic campaign.

Our work

We have a breadth of experience improving services in the public sector and within the NHS. We want to use this experience to develop new opportunities in healthcare, education and combating the effects of climate change.

When we find an opportunity for meaningful change, we’ll invest our time and skills into exploring its potential. For example, Unboxed conceived and developed char.gy, now a successful start-up delivering public electric vehicle charging to communities across the UK. We also co-created LoGov, a community interest company that makes it easier for the public sector to share digital products that work.

We work hard to ensure that any products and services we develop can be used by the people that need them. Our designers and developers work to Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) 2.1 and we support every team member to improve their knowledge of accessible, ethical and inclusive design and technology.