The Clarion Way: Creating better lives for clients, colleagues and our community

Here at Clarion, we recognise the privileged position we occupy and the level of responsibility that comes with that.

The Clarion way has always been such that we put our clients first, care for our employees and deliver on our longstanding charitable interests through the Clarion Welsby Foundation.

Put simply, this is our ethos, looking after others comes naturally to us. And whilst these values naturally run in our DNA, we wanted to formalise matters and rate ourselves on how well we care for clients, staff and the wider world.

‘Best Service, Best Workplace, Best World’ is a project that sits within Clarion’s stated core purpose of ‘creating better lives’. It formalises how we do things and holds us accountable, ensuring our focus is maintained.

The project focuses on three areas – clients, colleagues and the wider world and each quarter we assess our progress and score ourselves on how well we are meeting our objective.

Clients

It goes without saying, that our clients are our priority. Our holistic approach to financial planning ensures we are involved with our client’s to such an extent that we inherently understand their objectives and help them achieve their goals as part of our ongoing service.

Colleagues

The project benefits our team in two ways. We have assessed the financial aspects for our staff as well as the wellbeing and lifestyle elements. Some of the newly enhanced benefits are mainstream, such as increasing pension contributions and a new healthcare scheme, but we don’t want to stop there.

We see past the 9-5 and recognise the importance of looking after our staff holistically, sitting firmly in line with our approach to financial planning. All staff members are offered a free gym membership, an electric car scheme and flexible working hours. We also love to organise social events throughout the year.

These new measures have already helped with team bonding (as evidenced by the various intra-office fitness challenges already issued!) and helped our new members of staff settle quickly into the Clarion Way.

In addition, we encourage and support our staff in broadening their own personal knowledge base and life skills, such as mastering a new language or a musical instrument. We plan to engage with a language tutor and hold lunchtime sessions – once we have agreed on which language to learn!

The Wider World

In terms of the wider world, the project is centred on two areas: charitable work and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) activities.

We have always been a charitable firm, having supported many small charities through the Clarion Welsby Foundation over the years, where we feel our involvement can really make a difference and help them springboard to the next stage.

In the ESG arena, we are aiming to be carbon neutral by the end of the financial year, implementing various working methods and strategies to achieve this. Aside from this and as a separate commitment, we pledge to plant 10 trees for every new client who comes on board, with the most recent batch totalling over 400!

Our new electric car scheme further enforces our dedication in this area.

Clarion Wealth Planning is committed to creating better lives for clients, our team and our community.