Employee benefits

There are many benefits to working at Kent Wildlife Trust, including the following:

Flex First - Agile Working Policy

You can work flexibly from a range of workstations, locations or hot desks within a Trust hub, out in the community with third parties, home working or a combination of these.

Agile working is not always reasonably practical in certain roles, however we encourage and aim to support flexibility wherever we can and your line manager will be open to these conversations from day one of employment.

The application of various elements of agile working will always be subject to business needs first and the agreement of any requests to work from home will depend on whether or not the role can be done effectively from a home base in addition to other considerations such as health and safety. 

Annual cost of living rise

We recognise the importance of fair pay. Finances permitting, there will be a cost of living rise each January equivalent to the rise in the Retail Price Index over the previous 12 months,

Two paid volunteering days

Enjoy two additional days off each year to support the cause of your choice by volunteering your time.  

Competitive pension scheme and Group Life Assurance

Safeguarding your future is important to us. After three months in post, eligible staff will be automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme. The Trust will contribute 9% of gross salary provided you contribute a minimum of 4%. You can make your contributions via salary sacrifice or by net monthly salary deductions. 

All employees are automatically covered by up to twice their annual salary death benefit under the Group life assurance scheme.

Enhanced sick pay

From time to time, you may feel unable to work due to illness. We offer enhanced sick pay and some time off for elective surgery and gender reassignment from day one of employment. 

Incremental annual leave allowance and holiday purchase

Conservation takes passion and dedication and to do a great job we all need a break once in a while!

At Kent Wildlife Trust, we offer you 23 days annual leave for all new starters which increases by one day for every two full years of service, up to a maximum of three extra days (pro rata). Bank Holiday entitlement for full time staff is 8 days per year, pro-rata for part time staff. This is all complemented by additional days off over Christmas when the main offices are closed. 

You also have the option to purchase up to one week of additional annual leave, whereby the value of the additional leave is paid for through a reduction in salary over 12 months of the same annual leave year (or the remaining months of the annual leave year where the holiday is purchased part year). 

Employee Assistance programme

Your health and wellbeing is very important to us.  At Kent Wildlife Trust, you have a dedicated online resource designed to support you. As well as providing counselling and CBT training, the online portal provides confidential access to wellbeing fact sheets, videos, self-help programmes, interactive tools and educational resources to help with life’s challenges.

Wednesday Well-being Hour

Every Wednesday between 14:30 to 15:30, every member of staff is entitled to take an hour off work no questions asked. This is time to reconnect with your own wellbeing management mechanisms – invest in your mental health, reboot returning to work, hopefully with a refreshed perspective and clearer mindset.  No internal meetings are to be scheduled unless absolutely critical and by mutual agreement. External meetings should be avoided during this hour where possible.

We run topical webinars, and everyone is welcome to set up their own activities during wellbeing hour to support others.  But, during wellbeing hour, we encourage you to take the time to do what you know is best for your own wellbeing and to share pictures, ideas, comments of what you get up to if you want!

Tech scheme

Our Tech scheme lets you get the latest tech through us. You then spread the cost with up to 12 payments from your salary across 12 months and make a National Insurance saving of up to 12% too. Best of all – you own the products from the beginning and there’s no end of hire fee.

Complimentary eye tests

Through SpecSavers, Kent Wildlife Trust shall, if so requested by a user (as defined by HSE), offer an eye and eyesight test to be carried out and may offer either a fixed sum or eyecare voucher towards such a test and any subsequent spectacles prescribed.

Annual Wellbeing programme

We invest in an extensive and considered wellbeing programme throughout the year to support you on your Kent Wildlife Trust journey.  Workshops and webinars on areas such as mindfulness, healthy eating, stress, overwhelm and change are just some of the issues we address.  Dynamic topics are given a deep dive when particular issues rear up.

Investment in training and career development

We actively support your personal learning and development through regular Wildlife Trust training courses.  We support your development by funding professional memberships and encouraging you to take external learning opportunities which we will finance.

Sabbatical

The Trust recognises that a break can be a good thing for our long-term employees.  Therefore, there is an unpaid period of up to three months available for sabbatical leave at the end of each continuous five years worked for the Trust.  

Cycle to Work scheme

At Kent Wildlife Trust, we encourage environmentally friendly travel wherever possible and the Cycle scheme makes cycling to work a reality. Our easy-to-use salary sacrifice initiative allows you to obtain bikes and accessories through us, whilst spreading the cost over 12 months and making savings through tax breaks.

Family friendly

We offer enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption pay and time off for fertility treatment for qualifying employees from day one of employment.   

There might also be times when you need some extra flexibility to accommodate your parenting responsibilities so we offer qualifying employees parental leave and shared parental leave opportunities.