Avenue Thorn Recruitment Services Limited

Avenue Thorn is a recruitment agency. We offer employment finding services to candidates and companies in the local area. In recruitment agencies we see more candidates and even clients at crossroads in their lives often with high amounts of stress and strain caused by unhappy employment environments or stressful job searches. We want to make a difference, and so we offer a more mindful candidate and client process designed to offer support and guidance to those struggling with mental health throughout their employment journey.

How does your organisation contribute to preventing suicide and supporting those affected by it?

Many people find work itself or their lack of work a cause of mental strain and stress and we aim to create an environment that will ease this for as many people as possible. We offer candidates an initial open telephone call and then a face to face consultative registration meeting with an ultimate aim of helping them find a new job. We aim to mitigate any work finding stress and prevent candidates from reaching a potentially vulnerable psychological position resulting from a difficult or pressurised job search. We then aim to match their skills and experience to one of our local employers.

We provide an open and confidential forum to express any psychological troubles arising from or in connection with being unemployed or having mental struggles relating to the workplace. We support struggling candidates appropriately. We aim to place candidates in new environments that will help them to have a fresh start. We offer continuous support until they are settled in their new role.

What are your current priorities?

To evaluate and continually improve our service step by step with regards suicide prevention.

To increase our support for vulnerable clients.

To make our unique recruitment agency approach more widely known to local companies and encourage other agencies to join this more psychologically supportive way of working.

To educate local companies of the value of this unique and considered recruitment approach as well as about the potential vulnerability of some job seekers.

What challenges are you currently facing?

Some companies do not yet prioritise the safeguarding of vulnerable employees or candidates.

Awareness of our unique approach is not as widely known as we would like yet.