LighterLife, Harlow based weight-loss company, has achieved ‘First Class Star Status’ with the Best Companies Accreditation 2009 project, after demonstrating healthy work practices and high levels of employee care.
Best Companies Accreditation has been established to acknowledge excellence in the workplace and 
the great leadership skills, strong company values and positive impact a company has on the local community. These areas were highlighted as areas of excellence for LighterLife.
Staff comments included, “My organisation makes a positive difference to the world we live in”, “I am excited about where this organisation is going” and “This organisation is run on strong values/principles”.
Based on staff feedback the Michelin style elite accreditation system rates organisations on leadership, management, personal growth, wellbeing, the extent to which employees feel their organisation has a positive impact on society, employee’s feelings towards their immediate colleagues, levels of engagement and pay and benefits.
Already exceeding all criteria of the Investors In People Standard, LighterLife entered the Best Companies Accreditation project to be benchmarked against other businesses and it is considered exceptional for a first time entrant to be awarded star status. LighterLife will also be featured in the Best Companies Guide, an annual reference guide that provides independent and unbiased information on some of the UK’s best workplaces.
LighterLife aims to help people with weight loss to get them out of the obesity danger zone and reach a healthy weight, whilst at the same time working towards creating a healthy attitude, healthy work practices and a healthy company.
Commenting on the accreditation, Octavia Morley, Chief Executive Officer, said “There is no better way of testing the health of your company than by providing your staff a confidential opportunity to tell it how it is. It provides staff with an opportunity to appraise the company they work for and offers us real and usable insight into the areas which we need to develop further. We have always thought LighterLife is a great company to work for, but it is fantastic to have this validated”.
About LighterLife
LighterLife is a weight-loss and weight-management programme for people who are one stone or more overweight and with a BMI of 25 or above. Over 100,000 people have successfully lost weight with LighterLife since 1996. The unique LighterLife approach offers specific overweight and clinically obese weight loss programmes in the form of diets using nutritionally complete soups, shakes and bars combined with specialised counselling using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and transactional analysis (TA) techniques. Clients benefit not only from rapid, safe weight loss but they also learn the behavioural changes needed to sustain it. Founded in 1996, the LighterLife Programme was developed by three of its directors – Jackie Cox, Bar Hewlett and Rebecca Hunter.
