Boost your health and wellbeing baseline

Unilever is a multinational consumer goods company employing around 6,000 employees in office, factory and R&D sites across the UK and Ireland.

Unilever has worked with Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, an organisation that trains people to support individuals experiencing mental ill health since 2013. Since then, Unilever has trained around half of its line managers and 450 employees through their Mental Health First Aid Programme.

The course teaches managers and employees to support their teams and colleagues with any mental health concerns by listening to them, normalising constructive conversations about mental health, and signposting them to the wide range of professional support tools available to Unilever employees.

In addition to MHFA training for managers, a peer-to-peer mental health support network was launched in 2017 called ‘Time to Talk’, which sees dedicated teams provide additional support for employees as part of their wellbeing. Each Unilever UK & Ireland site has a Time to Talk team and there are currently 270 Time to Talk volunteers available to support colleagues with any mental wellbeing concerns.

MHFA training and their Time To Talk networks are part of Unilever’s wider wellbeing strategy, which aims to destigmatise mental health issues in the workplace and to ensure that no employee is ever more than one chat, one call or one click away from wellbeing support. Their Wellbeing Strategy focuses on four aspects of employee health: mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing and a sense of purpose, as they believe these key areas of wellbeing are interlinked and must be looked after simultaneously.

Legal & General describes its ethos as ‘inclusive capitalism’ – a recognition that the benefits of economic growth must be shared by all. Through its strategies, Legal & General target investments that both deliver economic returns and address societal and environmental needs, securing lasting value for our customers, shareholders and broader society. This action is built on the belief that health is a critical factor in driving societal and economic wellbeing, using their scale and influence to tackle the injustice of health inequity.

Tackling health inequity

Health inequity is the idea that there are unfair, unjust, and biologically avoidable differences in health outcomes between different population groups. These inequalities are typically the result of systems that negatively affect people’s living conditions. The work to date has looked at how the government and the NHS can reduce health inequity, but no-one had really considered the role that business could play. 

In April 2022, Legal & General established a ground-breaking partnership with Professor Sir Michael Marmot and the UCL Institute of Health Equity; world leading experts on health inequality. 

The work so far

Through the partnership Legal & General has: 

• Commissioned new research 'The Marmot Review': 'The Business of Health Equity' to identify how businesses can improve long-term health outcomes
• Established a 'UK wide place-based network' to identify local needs and has hosted 4* events across the UK 
• Begun developing guidance and tools for businesses to measure health equity impact, guidance tailored to small businesses, and recommendations for international businesses that will take into account differing health priorities around the world.

Watch this film to find out more about the addressing health inequalities partnership. You can also learn more about the role of business through the stories of George and Sumita on how business can shape health.

Leading from the front

As stewards of £1.4tr trillion of capital, Legal & General uses its role as a major shareholder to encourage companies to play their part in reducing health inequality. Recent examples include:

• Encouraging a major supermarket chain to pay real living wages for all its staff
• Asking global pharma companies to work with governments across all levels of income to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, including sharing intellectual capital and manufacturing capacity.

Other examples of using our power as a shareholder to improve health outcomes include:

• Working with McDonalds to reduce antibiotics in the food chain to address antimicrobial resistance
• Exploring how as investors we can support companies as they transition towards cleaner air and healthier eating.

Advancing research and action

Legal & General has also developed long-term partnerships with leading public and private sector organisations to advance research and action, establishing the Advanced Care Research Centre (“ACRC”) with the University of Edinburgh, the University’s largest philanthropic programme to date.

Through its long-term partnership with Newcastle Council and Newcastle University, Legal & General is also undertaking research into improving ageing health span with The National Centre for Ageing. £5m has been donated by the business to fund independent living facilities for older residents and provide core funding for a 20/25-bed “new model” residential care home, driving improvements in infection control and helping to minimise negative effects on residents living with dementia.

Rolls-Royce is a global industrial technology leader with 45,000 employees and operations in over 50 countries. We recognise the link between employee health and business performance and that for an individual to perform to their full potential, they should enjoy good mental, physical and social health in an inclusive and empowering environment.

The value proposition is that a healthy workforce is engaged, productive and high performing. Workers are able to thrive in a constantly evolving work environment, creating top line growth through innovation, productivity, and focused execution.

Our Wellbeing Strategy aims to empower employees to make informed, healthy choices to improve their wellbeing, reduce the business impact of lifestyle risks and maximise performance at work.

Workers spend a significant proportion of their time in the workplace and as such the work environment plays a significant part in influencing an individual’s health behaviours. The design principle behind this approach is based on creating the opportunity for every individual to make a positive choice around their own wellbeing.

Previous wellbeing initiatives had primarily focused on educational campaigns to highlight health risks and encourage individuals to adopt healthy habits. Such initiatives often have limited and short-lived effects. Research demonstrates that the main drivers of healthy behaviour are the physical environment, individual motivation and knowledge of what constitutes a healthy life. As such, our Wellbeing Strategy focuses on creating a physical and cultural environment which is supportive of wellbeing.

In order to move away from the former ad-hoc approach, we designed and implemented a systematic framework of minimum standards to drive improvement. All sites are now committed to participate in the mandatory internal 'LiveWell Accreditation' process.

The design of the LiveWell Accreditation scheme recognises that sites vary in terms of work environment and facilities. It also takes into account that, due to the wide geographic and cultural variation that exists across a global organisation, imposing a one size fits all approach is not appropriate.

Sites are awarded Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum levels of accreditation upon achieving prescribed LiveWell criteria. All sites with more than 50 employees were required to achieve Bronze level accreditation at a minimum by 2020. Since achieving the 2020 target, we have refreshed the criteria to include financial wellbeing and to place even greater emphasis on mental health and nutrition with a new target for all sites to achieve ‘Gold’ by 2030.

The wellbeing strategy is also subject to public reporting in our Annual Report as well as external validation through the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The fact that this commitment has been made externally has been an integral driver for successful implementation.

Analysis of sites achieving the highest (Platinum) level of accreditation has shown a correlation with other performance indicators such as lower absence levels, increased engagement and fewer quality issues. To date the programme has reached 53,000 employees, across 80 sites in 17 countries. Of the 80 sites, 54 have exceeded the original target, with 8 sites achieving platinum level of accreditation, indicating a very high level of engagement with the wellbeing agenda.

Panasonic's senior management team selects colleagues at random for a weekly wellbeing call to support mental health.

Panasonic is a global company that provides consumer, automotive, industrial and lifestyle solutions and products. When the firm closed its offices for the first national lockdown, they decided to continue with a holistic approach to support its employees’ mental health and wellbeing. This included physical, mental, financial wellbeing and responding to working from home challenges. It was important for the business to create a feeling of openness and honesty and a culture of approachability. A decision was taken by the senior management team to call a number of colleagues each week at random to discuss how they were feeling. The feedback from staff was that this action sent out a positive and caring message. Furthermore, an action that was most appreciated by Panasonic’s employees was the creation of an in-house magazine that was emailed out on a regular basis. It contained wellness tips and fun competitions for employees to take part in, but also good news stories from around the business and the press to counter the challenging news of the pandemic that people found difficult to take in. For the magazine, the firm asked employees to share their personal stories and images as to how they were supporting their mental health. The business has also continued to provide webinars to help people with personal finances such as pensions and budgeting.

AXA Health, for example, has started to collect feedback from employees on a regular basis by shifting to Pulse surveys, short and focused surveys measuring a few components at a time, helping to quickly identify areas of improvement. Each year, AXA also sends out two surveys to all its employees globally (covering over 100 000 employees in 22 languages).

Barnett Waddingham is an independent professional services consultancy at the forefront of risk, pensions, investment and insurance with over 1,300 employees across eight offices in the UK. During the pandemic, it was key for them to understand how the workforce was coping with remote working, the impact on employee wellbeing and remaining connected throughout the pandemic.

The company undertook several employee pulse surveys over an eight-week period, asking questions around mental, physical and financial wellbeing to understand the level of support employees felt was being provided to them, and how they found the quality and level of communication. Key trends that became visible were concerns around mental health and the impact of COVID-19 on employees’ families.

Following the results, the firm issued regular COVID-19 update emails, listened to their employees and responded via an FAQ and dedicated hub on the intranet. Barnett Waddingham implemented ‘Fitness for the Mind’ sessions, incorporating techniques for being present in the moment, daily gratitude and mindfulness and sessions around building resilience and full adoption to an agile ‘doing what you can’ approach. Additionally, the firm provided online training for their managers to help retain firmwide culture and help them support their teams within the virtual environment.

The sessions provided employees with tools and techniques to build resilience, with 88% reporting that the session inspired them to think differently. Managers have reported they feel they are better able to support their teams and help motivate them to remain engaged.

Going forward Barnett Waddingham is planning to continue supporting employees to achieve a happy, healthy, work-life balance which in turn helps the company to continue to support clients, teams and individuals.

In 2015 Centrica employed circa. 34,000 people across a range of roles, providing employees with the standard range of health and wellbeing benefits from sick pay, an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), to a range of Wellbeing programmes and providers and various incapacity pension plans

Over time, a number of challenges began to emerge across the group, and these were broadly split into two buckets.

• Administration burden – Administering the varying range of health provisions within Centrica was challenging as there were approximately 135 organisations each offering different aspects of OH, Health and Wellbeing Services
• Data – Sickness absence data was limited. The data provided by the different internal health and HR teams department was not robust. Centrica’s EAP and Healthcare Plan data were limited to the reporting on activity and the reason for that activity (but little else). The pension and Group Income Protection data was limited due the stage at which a claim was triggered. Furthermore the Wellbeing programmes did not collect any data on effectiveness.

Transitioning to an integrated model

To address these challenges, in 2016, Centrica appointed healthcare rm to deliver an integrated model, as well as to establish a more proactive approach to Health and Wellbeing.

Six years on Centrica now understands much more about what drives ill-health in its workforce and impacts on wellbeing. These insights have been achieved by:

• Bringing the majority of services into one system
• Assessing underlying causes of conditions as well undertaking standard clinical assessments
• Capturing all data (quantitative and qualitative) in a single system
• Ensuring that any company health interventions look to address both, the clinical condition whilst also digging deeper into causation to hopefully reduce the risk of future ill-health.

It has only been by challenging the traditional approaches to workforce Health and Wellbeing that this transition has been possible.

The results so far

Musculoskeletal disorders, mental health and digestive problems have been identified as the three main reasons for ill-health at Centrica over the five years. And a strong correlation between ill-health and inactivity, excess weight, poor sleep and sub-optimal nutrition has been identified. Understanding that these factors need to be addressed has changed the way Centrica has developed its Health and Wellbeing strategy, and a plan is now in place for 2022 – 2027.

What’s next?

At Centrica, the focus is now on measuring more and more outcomes. This includes engagement levels and what interventions achieve the best results. It is about understanding what people want and need and what the obstacles are. And finally, how data can be collected on the “well” to improve the proactive nature of the offering.

KPMG develops programme to support and retain female talent after maternity leave. The company recognises that the progression of women, mainly in client-facing roles, is key to achieving diverse leadership. Also key to achieving diverse leadership is a culture that actively supports working parents.

Starting a family is a key point at which women consider their career options, so KPMG wanted to ensure that everything possible was being done to retain maternity returners and support parents generally as they go through this life transition. Find out more.

Belzona introduced a new Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that they made available to employees’ partners and children between the ages of 16-24. Find out more about their story, and EAPs.

TSB supports new parents with return to work buddy system.

TSB is a bank that is keen to make it easier for women to transition back into work after they have taken a career break. One of the reasons for the higher proportion of men in senior roles is the difficulty women face when returning to work after taking a career break – mostly to care for children. They can feel disconnected and disengaged upon their return to the workplace.

The company has introduced the Partners for Partners programme to support women during this key moment in their lives, and to prevent talented women from leaving the business. Partner is the name TSB uses for its employees. The purpose of the programme is to match parents that are going on parental leave with employees that have returned from parental leave. The employee going on parental leave is contacted 12 weeks before leaving through an automated system and is matched to a buddy. The buddy helps the partner throughout their leave and return to work. The goal is to create a network of ongoing support: employees that take part are encouraged to become a buddy themselves.

To support the roll-out of the programme, TSB has developed training and additional materials aimed at line managers and buddies to upskill them and to give them confidence for their new supporting role. T

he programme has been received very positively, and 19 employees have been matched so far. Employees who have participated have reported an improvement in wellbeing, increased engagement whilst on leave and a smoother transition when returning from leave and back into the business.

Over time TSB is planning to widen the buddy programme to include different strands of diversity as part of their inclusive approach. This will enable all employees to benefit from having a buddy to help them tackle different challenges.

Medigold Health creates occupational health and wellbeing solutions for employers across the UK.

The challenge

Medigold was brought in following the divestment of a small part of a power company – a single site with around 70 employees. These employees were used to being able to access a comprehensive and dedicated occupational and wellbeing resource. The power company had detailed policies and processes in place, as well as an ethos and focus on employee health. It was vital that this was continued by the new provider from day one.
 
Going from a large corporate environment to a business of around 70 employees – to be known as West Burton Energy – meant that there was a higher than usual expectation around implementation. The context of the sale of the business added additional pressure and requirements for a detailed manager and employee training programme to ensure confidence at a time of change for the business.

Though a broker had been appointed to help manage the transfer of the occupational and wellbeing services by the agreed deadline, there was a struggle to find a single provider that (a) could support a now SME, West Burton Energy, at the  level required, whilst (b) delivering all of the required service requirements, and (c) continue the level of clinical and account management support the client was accustomed to.

Due to the pending sale, time was of the essence and implementation was an important area that needed to be managed effectively, with all services needing to be operational from the day of completion.
 
The journey

Medigold Health Protect was a great fit for West Burton Energy's requirements. Continuous communication and a detailed and effective implementation plan was crucial to the success of the programme to ensure the consistency needed was delivered. Key members from the Medigold senior clinical and health surveillance team, supported the Medigold Health Protect Account Manager to make visits to the site to assess facilities, and were integral to a successful implementation. Support was also provided to help review:

• Risk assessments and matrices
• Occupational Health policies
• The transfer of medical records from the incumbent provider.

Multiple sessions were run for managers at West Burton Energy to meet the new Medigold Account Management team and to become familiar with the new system. Processes were developed to support the West Burton Energy’s Health Surveillance, Fitness for Work programmes, Annual Flu campaign and wellness day and access counselling and physiotherapy services when needed.
 
The outcome

Everything West Burton Energy needed in terms of product and support was either already within the core Medigold Health Protect package or could be easily added and accessed as an additional service.
 
Feedback throughout the implementation phase and beyond has been excellent, with the client renewing their service for a second year and providing testimonials. The broker was also suitably impressed that a service of this level was available to an SME business with around 70 employees, and, how the quality and expertise involved had made things very simple for them.

The learnings

The complexity and expectation of West Burton Energy challenged the Medigold Health Protect team and helped validate the chosen concept and approach. This inspired Medigold to gather more feedback from other clients it was working with and consider adapting how the business was approaching the development of its service.
 
Medigold made changes to its implementation process and have since rebuilt aspects of the Medigold Health Protect resource portal to make it easier to navigate, with dedicated sections and content specific to managers and employee. The business has also added a lot more health and wellbeing content from a across a broader range of topics.
 
These changes have also bolstered confidence that Medigold Health Protect can work for a much wider variety of SME businesses and help deliver a level of service not currently available to organisations with smaller headcounts.

ReConnect: Vodafone’s returner programme to support women back into work after a career break.

Vodafone, a British digital communications company, aims to become the world’s best employer for women by 2025. Recognised as one of The Times Top 50 Employers for Women for three years in a row, Vodafone is committed to gender equality. Having met its initial target of 30% of Vodafone women in senior roles a year earlier than planned, the company recently raised its target to 40% of women in senior positions by 2030.

Building on its ground-breaking maternity policy, in March 2017 Vodafone launched ReConnect, the world’s largest recruitment programme for women on career breaks. Open to men as well as women, ReConnect aims to attract returners, talented people who have taken time away from work – in most cases to raise a family – and are looking to return to work on a full-time or flexible basis.

Returners often face a variety of challenges, such as finding a role at the right level of seniority, refreshing their skills and making professional connections. To help, ReConnect focuses on recruiting women into management positions and provides training, coaching and induction programmes to enhance the professional skills of returners in their first six months at work.

Vodafone’s global target is to hire 1,000 ReConnect recruits over three years across 26 countries. ReConnect recruits for senior roles in functions like Business Intelligence and Analytics, Commercial, Customer Operations, External Affairs, Finance, HR, Legal and Technology. To date, the company has offered roles to 346 returners, of whom 82% are women, globally.

Alison Davies, a Senior Customer Experience Manager at Vodafone UK, joined Vodafone through the ReConnect programme. Before taking a three-year career break to focus on her family, she enjoyed a successful career in the IT industry. In 2018 she decided to return to work but was unsure if employers would still recognise the value she had to offer and wondered if she would find a role with the flexibility she was looking for.

With ReConnect, Alison found the right balance between family life and her career. The programme also helped her transition back into work in a supportive, structured manner.

Benefits of a returner programme:

1. Returner programmes benefit both the employer and the employee. The employer attracts talented, motivated people, and employees returning to work can restart their careers and build their confidence
2. Businesses interested in creating their own returner programmes will find useful guidance and case studies in Returners: a toolkit for employers, developed with the Women’s Business Council and Government Equalities Office. The toolkit is available here.

Channel 4 is a publicly-owned and commercially-funded UK public service broadcaster, with the goal to represent unheard voices and reflect the diversity of the UK.

Throughout the pandemic, staff wellbeing has been the firm’s number one priority, so they started to track wellbeing through regular employee surveys. After they heard that staff were exhausted by back-to-back video calls the company decided to take measures, being particularly aware that during the winter months it was even more important that employees could get outside during the daylight hours.

To give staff a break from Teams meetings and a chance to get out for a walk or take some time for themselves the company implemented a C4 lunchtime between 12.30 – 2 pm to take normal hour-long lunch, where no meetings were held, and staff were encouraged to use the time to do something that supported their mental health and wellbeing. Channel 4 also introduced company-wide Meeting-Free Fridays where staff could have a day off from video calls and some headspace to think, breathe and catch-up. This was communicated by the CEO as part of a package of measures to support staff wellbeing and implemented with immediate effect. It was a simple but effective way to support staff through the pandemic and respond to their feedback.

The pandemic has made it more important than ever to be responsive to the needs of staff and to make wellbeing a top priority, clearly communicated by the senior leadership. It has brought challenges but also opportunities and the firm believes that a more open dialogue around mental health and wellbeing will bring long terms benefits for the business.

pirkx creates a platform to provide affordable health and wellbeing benefits to all workers.

pirkx is a platform designed to deliver affordable health and wellbeing benefits to the contingent workforce - contractors, the gig economy - and employees of SME businesses. Historically only employees in large companies had access to affordable health and wellbeing benefits. Everything that existed in the market (core physical and mental health services) was either expensive, hard to access or couldn’t be used for a team of self-employed people. Driven by the experience of its founders, pirkx set out to find a solution.

The platform pirkx created has no complex onboarding processes. When people are on the platform or app, they have access to the full range of benefits, which currently includes a 24/7 online GP, 24/7 dedicated counselling and mental health advice, access to an interactive app to improve mental health resilience, virtual gym classes, discounted gym memberships, discounted health insurances, money advice, credit score advice and debt help. Self-employed people can sign up and pay for themselves, business owners can sign up and invite their team for an affordable price. pirkx also offers complete flexibility, so people can pay monthly, quarterly or annually and cancel at any time in line with the chosen subscription period.

COVID-19 has highlighted the need for all elements of the UK workforce to be supported from a physical and mental health perspective. And it is particularly important that in an evolving world of work businesses keep up with these changes and provide relevant support to their teams.