Five years on and five lessons on promoting wellbeing in the workplace

We didn’t plan for my attendance at this year’s annual Health and Wellbeing @ Work Conference earlier this month to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the pandemic’s onset in the UK. But it was certainly apt given that Covid-19 both vindicated and accelerated our wellbeing agenda.

Back in 2019 we’d already consulted employees across the company on their priorities for our development of a Wellness Charter. Mental health was one of the eight pillars of the resultant ‘Wellness for All’ charter that was created by our people, for our people. But mental health took on a whole new level of importance during the pandemic and its aftermath.

When the public health crisis struck, we had to think hard and fast about how we could look after our teams. As well as introducing health controls, we rolled out digital training courses, webinars and other wellbeing initiatives faster than planned during 2020 as a result. The positive feedback we received reinforced the buy-in at all levels to our wellbeing initiatives and the business case for fostering a wellbeing culture.

Investing in wellness has measurable results

We continued to embed this culture, and the results over the next couple of years speak for themselves. Long-term absences reduced by 11% from 49.9 days in 2022 to 44.1 in 2024. Long-term mental health absence reduced from 47.66 in 2019 to 46.5 in 2022 and 42.3 in 2024 (overall an 11.2% reduction). And this was despite a 24% jump in the total incidences of sickness due to mental health issues being reported, reflecting the open and honest culture we fostered. Overall, the average number of days lost per absence fell by 11% to 2024. This reduction in non-productive time equated to over £1 million in 2024, which shows a return on our investment in wellbeing many times over.

For companies weighing up their own commitments to wellbeing in the workplace this begs the question: Does strategy lead culture, or does culture drive strategy? Is it top-down or bottom-up? In my experience, it’s both. Wellbeing, company culture, and encouraging engagement among employees (one of SUEZ UK’s nine strategic goals, along with safety) are closely entwined.

Back in 2019, promoting wellbeing was just one more part of the day job for the operational HR team. The following year, we created a Wellbeing & Inclusion Manager position as a development role and I worked closely with them and their subsequent successors who also took the opportunity to develop their knowledge and expertise in this area. Since then, we’ve built a team that includes three dedicated regional Wellbeing & Inclusion Officers, trained a network of voluntary ambassadors, and last year appointed a wellbeing expert, Beth Burton. We’ve also integrated wellbeing with health and safety.

Integrating health, safety & wellbeing

Our industry-leading Safety in Mind behavioural programme has been running since 2012. Full integration with wellbeing means that all our safety teams – again, both full-time H&S postholders and volunteers who act as representatives for their colleagues on health and safety matters – have benefitted from additional training. Both safety and wellbeing are seen as a critical success factor in our business strategy. Everyone is empowered to challenge things in their working environment that threaten people’s health, safety and wellbeing, including their psychological safety.

So, we provide training for everyone on unconscious bias and ‘banter and boundaries’, as well as having an extensive number of our people trained in First Aid for Mental Health. People learn how to identify mental health conditions, start a conversation, and signpost colleagues towards professional help. We have recently started training our Health, Safety and Wellbeing Reps and aim to train all people managers to the higher Level 2. Our Ambassadors and HR team are trained to Level 3 First Aid for Mental Health and in complementary skills, such as self-harm awareness, suicide prevention and domestic violence. We also integrated wellbeing into our drivers’ accredited CPC training.

How our wellness agenda evolved

This integration can also be seen in the evolution of our Wellness for All agenda over the last four years. Mental health was our initial focus as determined by our people, and accelerated throughout to the pandemic. Based on our employees’ feedback, each year we update our programme of wellbeing activities and initiatives. These include webinars, annual roadshows, sharing sessions, and one-to-one appointments with experts. In 2021, we concentrated on inclusion and diversity, then physical health, followed by men’s health, and resilience building during 2024. All of which build on what has gone before, not replace it! These initiatives create lasting cultural change and, over the last few years, we’ve grown our focus on inclusion and diversity.

As part of our diversity and inclusion programme, I set up our first support network in 2019, the Women’s Network. This was followed by our Inclusion & Diversity Network – and others, including our veterans network, multicultural network, disability network, pride network and parents network. These groups are led by passionate employees to provide a safe space without judgement where people can connect, share experiences and influence change in attitudes and even company policy. Employee feedback and analysis of wellness data prompted a new network for cancer support in January. Another network for carers will come into being after the summer.

This year, our wellness programme theme is heart health. Our data shows that cancer and cardiac disease are our people’s two biggest risk factors. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is now our second national charity partner, alongside Macmillan Cancer Support. We are sharing tips on managing heart health, promoting understanding of blood pressure (Know Your Numbers) at our health roadshows, and are trialling blood pressure monitors on a small number of sites. Many of our people have availed of the BHF’s free CPR training.

Five key lessons from our wellbeing experience

As well as reviewing our wellbeing journey at this year’s Health and Wellbeing @ Work Conference, I also shared with attendees what I believe are the key takeaways from that experience.

• Start with engagement. It’s essential to engage people if they are to join you on the journey – ask them what they want.

• Focus your efforts. Wellbeing is a big agenda – it’s not possible to do everything. Identify what aspects are most important to your people. And concentrate on doing one or two things really well.

• Build momentum. You will go further if your employees are generating the ideas. Trust your people to own the initiative. They will take you beyond where any Board-driven initiative would reach.

• Communicate, communicate, communicate. It’s not just about frequency but also forms of communication. For example, we use videos and ‘huddle cards’ to spark team discussions among our frontline employees. During BHF’s Heart Health month in February, the cards with HeartSmart tips encouraged people to share thoughts, experiences and opinions.

• And measure your impact – whether it’s levels of engagement, sickness rates, or people’s feedback. They all provide valuable insight and evidence to support your business case.

Our latest survey showed that wellness initiatives were appreciated, and employees recognised the company’s genuine commitment to their health, safety and wellbeing. As one colleague put it: “Our wellness scheme for employees is amazing.”