Over the last five years, we have made a small but worthwhile difference to lots of worthy causes, including local charities, friends of our team (such as Life of Lyra) and larger charity organisations. This year we have turned to our doorstep again to support a charitable organisation doing valuable work within our local community – Brighton & Hove Impetus.

Impetus is an independent organisation supporting local people through various services aimed at improving wellbeing and the quality of life for vulnerable people within our city. One of their key services is a neighbourhood care scheme which I am personally involved with. The scheme recruits local volunteers to support elderly people, people with physical disabilities that may feel isolated in the community and also their carer’s.

The scheme operates in 10 neighbourhoods in Brighton & Hove, embracing about half of the city’s population. By volunteering your time, as little as once a week can make a huge difference to someone’s life. It can help build their confidence as they feel more connected to the local community and it helps with depression. The scheme users build valuable friendships and have the chance to have new experiences. Below is a short film by Anna Dütsch ‘Remembering Today’ about the neighbourhood care scheme.

Not only does the scheme benefit the person in need, but volunteers feel like they are making a real difference and they also value the friendships built and have fun. It is highly beneficial to both parties and such a worthwhile thing to do with your spare time. If you are thinking about doing something similar and you live in Brighton and Hove, then please do contact the neighbourhood care scheme, there may be someone in your local area that is in need of your time and friendship.

As well as the neighbourhood care scheme, Brighton & Hove Impetus support people with learning disabilities, mental health issues and those affected by cancer in various different ways.

So how are Leapfrogg supporting Impetus? As well as volunteering ourselves, we are raising money to support the organisation and also helping to spread the word about what they do and how you can get involved.

We are currently filling our bellies with yummy food in our ‘Great Frogg-Off’ baking and cooking competition. The money raised each week will be going to Brighton & Hove Impetus. So far we have raised £220 and are currently in the quarter-finals of the competition.

We love raising money for such great causes – it’s hugely rewarding, brings us all together and we get to have fun along the way.

Impetus Brighton & Hove have also launched ‘The Yellow Rose Campaign’ to connect friends, build communities and help to spread awareness about isolation in our city and surrounding area. Using a yellow rose as the emblem, the campaign features fundraising initiatives across the city connecting residents and businesses with Impetus’ varied services.

The campaign will coincide with the UN International Day of Friendship on Saturday 30th July 2016, and on this day volunteers and the staff will be on the streets of Brighton and Hove giving out yellow roses with a pledge to change someone’s situation.

If you want to get involved with the campaign then visit their website here. We will be joining in with the social Thunderclap to increase awareness and will continue our fundraising this year to support such a wonderful and local organisation.

If you don’t live in Brighton and Hove, then see what you could to do support your local community but if you do live in this wonderful city then please take the time to look at what B&H Impetus do and see how you could make a difference here.

You can also keep up to date with our fundraising initiatives by following us on Instagram.

Well hello there! I’m Libby, the Office and HR Manager here at Leapfrogg and my sole responsibility is to ensure that Leapfrogg is a fantastic place to work. To do this, we strive to create a happy and creative environment where development is encouraged and employees deliver excellent work to clients because they enjoy the work they do, the environment they work in and the team they work with. We like our clients to think of us as an extension of their business and that our employees are a part of one big Leapfrogg family!

So how do we invest in our employee’s happiness?

Our team is our most important asset and we invest in their happiness as much as we can whether that’s buying them a chocolate bunny at Easter or providing healthcare, flexible working patterns, volunteering opportunities, recognition initiatives, monthly innovation meetings or simply enjoying a juicy piece of fruit on a daily basis. Leapfrogg’s customer first ethos filters through to how we approach employee engagement.

We care!

The digital and retail industry are a fast moving landscape and that translates to agency life where we are constantly evolving our working methods to stay ahead of the curve and to deliver impeccable service and results. This sometimes comes with additional pressure, but we ensure we invest in their wellbeing and mental health to give them the skills and platforms to build resilience and thrive on the challenges we are faced with.

This year, we have already taken time as a team to concentrate on our wellbeing. We’ve learnt about how the pressures of everyday life can affect our bodies and how we can build resilience and excel under pressure. We took part in a workshop to practise mindfulness and learn how to ‘be’ rather than ‘do’. It is so important to listen to our bodies and learn to cope with stressful situations because we will all experience them from time to time. It is very important to me and to Leapfrogg that we don’t ignore our mental health and that time and money is invested into every employee’s wellbeing.

We even have happiness jars to capture those moments that put a big smile on our faces!

We have fun

It’s so important to have a laugh as a team, and we certainly do that on a daily basis. I run the social team who ensure we spend quality time together outside of work – whether it’s going to the pub on a Friday for a cheeky pint on Leapfrogg, mackerel fishing in the summer or spending the afternoon in a pottery café learning to throw, paint and decorate ceramics.

We grow

Development branches outside of everyone’s job descriptions and we encourage everyone to open their minds to other areas of personal growth. If someone wants to learn something new, then we encourage that even if it isn’t currently a part of their job description. I’ve introduced the team to learn something new lunches on a monthly basis. So far we’ve had sessions on how to speak Lithuanian, play poker and make origami. It’s not just about learning within your role, we like to encourage personal growth in every aspect of life.

We listen

We encourage all employees to have a voice and input into the direction of the agency. If they have an idea we want to hear about it and we like to include everyone in some decisions across the agency. I like to think that everyone at Leapfrogg has an open door policy and that we can all speak to each other and build a supportive network. Through weekly/bi –weekly check in’s with managers and chats with the Managing Director, everyone has a chance to speak and be heard on a regular basis.

So that’s just a little insight into life at Leapfrogg, if you want to see what the team has been up to then please take a look at Instagram and Facebook.

If you would like to learn a little more about working at Leapfrogg then visit our careers page and get in contact if you have a question or you would like to join the team. We are always on the lookout for talented and inspiring individuals, and that might be you!

As a very busy January has now come to a close, I thought it was about time we reflected on the previous year and provide a little insight into what went on at Leapfrogg Towers in 2013.

2013 was a significant year for many reasons, not only did Andy Murray become a Wimbledon champion, a future King of England was born and online Christmas sales reached a record high, Leapfrogg also turned 10 years old!

Having been a part of the Leapfrogg team for more than half of its lifetime, I felt rather proud when we made it to double figures in December. In true Leapfrogg style we celebrated this momentous occasion by having a right old knees up. On the 6th December we all put on our dancing shoes and partied the night away, acknowledging all the hard work that has been put into the success of the business and those that have been an integral part of the journey. It was a cracking evening and our very own Ben Potter took to the spinning tables and got everyone moving and shaking. I think it’s safe to say that we all had slightly fuzzy heads the next morning! Thank you to all of those who joined us and made it such a good night.

Alongside making it to double figures in 2013, another key achievement for Leapfrogg was raising a huge amount of money for Chestnut Tree House – the only Children’s Hospice in East and West Sussex who care for over 280 children and young adults. Every year we nominate a different charity to fundraise for through our various activities and we were delighted to raise a whopping £1185 for Chestnut Tree House, which for a small team is absolutely brilliant.

We had lots of fun fundraising and here are just a few of the ways in which we made the money:

We gallantly joined in with National Super Hero Day and looked totally awesome…

We filled our bellies with treats for a childhood memory themed MasterChef competition.

We then ended the year with a good old fashioned Christmas raffle. We asked our personal contacts and clients to donate prizes for the cause and managed to gather a rather fantastic selection of prizes including vouchers, food and drink, fashion accessories and homeware. I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to some of our clients and contacts for their support and participation in the raffle including Lulu Guinness, Biscuiteers, Fruitdrop, Camouflage Company, MIH Jeans, Filofax, Anna Lou of London, Pink Lining and the Secret Linen Store – you all helped us to reach that final figure, so thank you.

A big thank you also goes to those who have supported our fundraising activities throughout the year and helped us raise such an amazing amount of money for Chestnut Tree House. The money will make a big difference to the many families that are supported by the great work of this amazing charity.

The Froggers have already nominated a new cause for 2014 so please watch this space for details.

As well as our 10th Anniversary and fundraising, we also enjoyed some great team building days out of the office including a very competitive ‘Game Changing’ sports day in Hove Park. Most of us managed to go home without any injuries, but it wouldn’t be a good sports day without a few scrapes…

That’s a little taster of some of the fun things we got up to in 2013 as well as the many achievements we made. Let’s just hope 2014 can knock last year’s socks off and show us a good time!

As the end of the year is fast approaching I thought it was time to have a Leapfrogg news update, so you can see what the Froggers have been up to since August. Apart from being very busy, of course, we have managed to squeeze in another social excursion and another bake sale for Macmillan as well as some very exciting news concerning two of our female froggers!

One of my favourite events of the year has to be Halloween. The trees are just about stripped bare,  it’s time to get your fur coat on and dust off your witch’s hat and broomstick. What better time is there than to do a themed bake sale to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. As well as bake sales and other various fund raising exercises we’ve been doing this year we’ve also begun a relationship with the Macmillan Sussex team by creating a social media policy to help boost the Sussex Facebook page. We hope this will help the team to create a larger community base and to use the page as a tool for family and patient support as well as a platform for Macmillan news in the local area.

So far this year we have managed to raise £221.86 by mainly eating, which is no bad thing! The Halloween bake sale was a hit and the table was covered in gruesome treats, here are some photo’s to feast your eyes on!

Freaky eyeball cake pops by myself and Emma Jane’s fantastically decorated day of the dead biscuits.

Amelia’s delicious devil cupcakes and Suze’s witches fingers (aka sausage rolls).

After a few days of munching through the baked goods I don’t think any of us wanted to see a cake again………

The following week it was time to get out and about on a little Brighton jolly. The social team arranged a lovely afternoon taking in the sights of Brighton on the big wheel, by the pier, followed by a quick pub stop before an evening of wine tasting at Ten Green Bottles in the North Laines.

The sun was setting when we took to the skies which made the lighting quite spectacular. It’s always nice to see the place you live from a different perspective, we also learnt a few new facts thanks to the voiceover by Steve Coogan!

The view was lovely but I think a few of the frogger’s suffered from the height and movement so spent most of the time looking at the floor rather than the panoramic view. Leapfrogg are all about conquering  fears which was well demonstrated by our trip to Go Ape earlier this year!

Next on the agenda was the wine tasting challenge at Ten Green Bottles. We were split into three teams and given a sheet with descriptions of three reds and three white wines. Each wine was bought out and poured from a carafe, in our teams we had to taste the wine and match it to the descriptions on the sheet, it really tested our senses and was a lot of fun to pretend to know what you’re actually talking about!

It was a great relaxing evening full of laughter and wine! Next stop, the Christmas do, which everyone is looking forward to.

In other exciting news, over the last few months our lovely Lucy and Aliki both gave birth to baby girls, so we have two new recruits to the Leapfrogg team. I am awaiting the day we can be really cruel and put them in little frog outfits! So big congratulations to both families and their little ones.

That’s it for now, it’s been a busy autumn, just under 4 weeks to go till Christmas and there’s a lot to do……

Until next time.

Last Thursday the ‘froggers’ went on a little summer jolly to Barcombe Mills to mess about on the river and eat a lot of barbequed food!

Our usual minibus from Mr.Clive travel collected the ‘froggers’ from Brighton and drove us to the Anchor Inn & Boating at Barcombe, a beautiful country pub set on the River. The sun was shining thankfully, there was a few little drops of rain later on in the evening but we stood firm and British and continued to enjoy the alfresco dining!

The twelve of us  plus two little boys and a million wasps enjoyed a couple of drinks before hopping on the boats and meandering down the river, swallows and amazons style. Great photo opportunity was had when our crew realised we were all wearing nautical stripes, non-intentional of course!

Once on the boats it was clear to see that the excursion on the river became a boy’s VS girls competition and the Freshwater-Burgess family against everyone (very competitive genes!)

There were a few hairy moments when our boat went head first into a bramble bush, (the consequence of a water fight with the boys!) Aliki and Gwen had to do the limbo and try and push the boat away with their oars, there was panicked laughter but no one got hurt,  we were all just a bit damp apart from Aliki who was completely soaked.

We even managed to do some blackberry picking and sample the local produce with a bit of banter with the cows who were enjoying a mud bath on the side of the river.

We hadn’t seen the other girls the whole time we had been on the river,  finally they rocked up with some fabulous looking ‘been in a bush’ hair styles, great to see the glamour was still being maintained!

When we arrived back on dry land we had a well-deserved BBQ feast that we royally tucked into. We followed dinner with a good old fashioned pub quiz and Nick and Ben Adam were crowned the Pub Quiz champions even though they really struggled with a question about Phil Collins’ involving his hit ‘Groovy kind of Love’……………

There was so much left over food we couldn’t possibly waste it so we asked for doggy bags to take back to Brighton. We all enjoyed the leftovers on Friday, making sausage/steak and chicken sandwiches and trying to eat a million spicy chicken wings.

It was a lovely day and a nice break from the hustle and bustle of Brighton. Who knows what we will get up to in the autumn? The social team will be busy brainstorming ideas for the next team adventure, so keep your eyes peeled for more ‘frogger’ news and pictures.

Here at Leapfrogg we believe it to be very important to socialise together. Every quarter to keep morale high and to relieve ourselves from the stress of the office environment, the social team organise some good old fashion fun for the team, this has ranged from a summer sports day to a cultural trip around Arundel Castle!

For April’s outing the social team came up with four varied options for everyone to vote on. At the beginning of April the voting commenced, I always get very excited about what the outcome will be and what adventure the froggs will endure. It was so close and pretty much neck and neck until the last couple of votes came in but the winner for April’s outing was, drum roll please……….Go Ape!

I think there were a few scared faces amongst us when Go Ape was announced but everyone seemed to remain positive and up for the challenge. The date was decided and I booked my troop of Apes in for an afternoon of fun. We were set to go the end of April, the wettest month so far this year with howling winds and flood warnings, but we weren’t to worry because Go Ape remains open no matter what the weather as long as there are no threats of electrocution from storms or gale force winds that would throw us from the trees! It actually turned out that we picked the perfect day with not a drop of rain….a complete fluke, thankfully.

I spent the morning in the office making everyone a packed lunch for the minibus trip to Bedgebury Forest, consisting of a handmade sandwich, a packet of hula hoops, a banana, a Kit Kat and a bottle of water, as we all know the frogs are rather fond of food so lunch went down a storm and I believe the little bag of treats was a highlight for some. The minibus ride was by no means boring with Rosie preparing a couple of games to keep us entertained. An hour and a half after leaving Brighton we arrived.

When we approached the Go Ape cabin excitement was bubbling as we all signed our lives away and awaited further instructions from our Go Ape instructor, Jack. We were taken round the back of the cabin and our induction began, harnesses were attached  and slight confusion followed as we lined up to do some basic cable training, I think a little bit of panic and hysteria started to set in for a few of us even though we were still on the ground.

The most important piece of training we had to remember was to…….

We then headed to a small practise area which was just off the ground so Jack could see that we all new how to attach ourselves and go across the cable. Then we were on our own and sent up to the tree tops to face our fears. We couldn’t all stick together as it would of taken weeks to finish the five part course but I know that those scared of heights and those unsure of certain obstacles (especially when you are 13.5 metres above ground) were supported tremendously by their fellow froggs.

The courses consisted of  ladders to climb, wooden platforms, tight ropes, plank bridges, log bridges, net bridges and Tarzan swings with each course ending with a long zip wire to the ground. On course four and five we could decide whether to go extreme or easy, one of the extreme parts in course five was a real physical challenge (I think!) which consisted of foot stirrups to get you across the gap, very difficult and hard to get your foot out, but quite a few of us rose to the challenge and managed it.

All in all it took us 3 hours to finish, no one gave up and everyone gave it their best shot. Once on the ground after the last zip wire, with time to reflect, I think everyone thought it had been a grand afternoon.

So these froggs turned into Ape’s and lived happily ever after……keep your eyes peeled for Leapfrogg’s next adventure!

As you may have seen from the Skydive post or heard on the twitter grapevine Leapfrogg embarked on a company MasterChef back in June, raising money for Rockinghorse Children’s charity.

We obviously thought it would be a really awful thing to have to do, eating delicious, sometimes very indulgent food, every Friday for many weeks, but we took up the challenge even though we don’t enjoy eating at all!!!

I am sure you want to know how we organised it so you can do your own at home or in the office, so here goes. Nick Dodd put together a well thought out MasterChef table (branded and colour coded of course) and the pairs going head to head in the first round were revealed. Each week it swapped from savoury and sweet dishes, to sample the treats we had to pay two pounds each (one pound per dish).

I can’t even describe the excitement that MasterChef bought to the office, not only was it a great way to raise money for charity but it bought us all together as a company, every week, to fill our greedy bellies. So without further ado I would like to share some mouth-watering photos with you from the past five and a half months right through to the grand finale between our web optimisation team Suzanne Taylor and Ben Adam.

First round saw Amelia’s scrumptious chocolate fudge cake and Aliki’s yummy banoffee froggy pie.

   My pretty raspberry cheesecake brownies.

Rosie’s impressive homemade peanut butter fudge, marshmallow with strawberry’s and chocolate tiffin, you can see presentation was key!

I needed to share this one before I announce the overall winner. The above picture was Suzanne’s very popular full english breakfast quiche, yes that’s right, a quiche with all the ingredients of the full english in it! I believe it will go down in history and the boys here will forever love her for making it.

These photos are just a snippet of the genius culinary delights served to the Leapfrogg team, the level was continuously raised every week which made it a very exciting final. Thursday 8th of December was a tense morning, Ben against his mentor Suzanne, head to head in the bid to win Leapfrogg Masterchef 2011. To make it slightly more interesting a Christmas theme was added to spice things up, below are the sweet dishes of the final.

 Ben made two different types of Whoopee pie, a chocolate and marshmallow and a Christmas pudding interpretation both with Christmas pud decorations……….very impressive!

 Suzanne presented us with a mulled fruit, caramel and pecan Pavlova with a mulled wine sauce……delicious!

I thought it was such a tough decision as both finalists did extremely well and by the sounds coming from around the office I think everyone was in agreement.

There could only be one winner though, so without further ado the winner of The Leapfrogg MasterChef 2011 was (drum roll please)……Mr. Benedict Adam. So big congratulations to Ben who won a wicked set of sharp knives for his future culinary adventures.

The whole competition was brilliant and we raised £362 which we are very proud of……we do like eating after all.  Combining what myself, Ben Potter, Lucy Freeborn and Nick Dodd raised on the Skydive in September we’ve made a total of just under £3000 for Rockinghorse, what an achievement!

So that’s it for 2011’s charity fundraising but watch out for Leapfrogg’s challenges next year, who knows what we will be up to.