Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace Conference
Earlier this month CMA’s HR Division hosted a virtual Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace conference via Zoom. It was supported by VIVID, the winner of the CIPD award for Best Mental Health and Wellbeing Initiative 2020. Speakers included Trevor Rawlings, HR Manager, Projects and Metrics Lead for VIVID and Andy Bibby, CEO of 87% who supported VIVID with their wellbeing initiatives.
Mental health in the workplace was an easy choice of topic to kick off our events calendar for the year. Zoe Martin, Senior Consultant in CMA’s HR division says: “During our conversations with the HR teams in 2020, we saw it was clear when approaching the end of a very tough year that the HR community were putting Mental Health and Wellbeing top of their agenda for 2021.”
This webinar gave participants the chance to take interactive polls, ask questions and hear insights from both VIVID and 87% on how they approached workplace wellness initiatives. Zoe says: “The session acted as a great way of sharing ideas on how to reach your employees with technology and various other methods.”
The polls included questions such as ‘How many people in the UK will experience a mental health problem every year?’ and ‘What proportion of people with mental health problems experience stigma?’. The answers were sometimes surprising, but Zoe says: “The interactive quiz and Q&A session during the event really highlighted how well-informed local organisations are on wellbeing issues and taking a more proactive approach.”
VIVID’s award-winning wellbeing Initiative
During the conference Trevor Rawlings told VIVID’s story. He was joined by Andy Bibby, CEO of 87% Limited, their wellbeing support partner, who shared 87%’s unique approach to measuring, managing, and improving mental wellbeing in the workplace.
Part of this data-led approach uses 87%’s unique app, which enables the HR team to monitor employee’s wellbeing using different metrics such as ‘Work Stress’ or ‘Work Life Balance’. 87% explains: “The data from this can inform the organisation of shifts in trends and when staff might be experiencing elevated stress.”
This data helps create a clinically valid measurement which builds a unique mental wellbeing profile. The employee is recommended ideas and tools from the 87% knowledge hub which provides signposts to training, curated articles, videos, and helpful bitesize tips.
The app and data support from 87% worked alongside VIVID’s wellbeing initiatives. Trevor says: “I’m just delighted to share VIVID’s story of our People Team initiatives that helped win the much coveted CIPD Award for Health and Wellbeing 2020! Hopefully participating HR leaders will take away insights to help support their own organisations to put people and their wellbeing at the heart of what they do and see these translate into tangible bottom-line benefits for their business too.”
Q&A with Trevor Rawlings, HR manager at VIVID
Following the conference, we asked Trevor to share some of the key insights from VIVID’s initiative.
What is the secret to your success?
“It was our employees who won the award as they are VIVID. They’ve all contributed and done really great things – so our success is down to our people.
“In 2020 we incorporated a wide range of interventions as we discussed. We focused on shaping our approach to our people including the creation of an adult to adult culture, reinforced with relaxation of formal processes, and encouraging a dialogue of honest conversations.
“Our CEO, Mark Perry and Director of Resources, Duncan Short signed our commitment to the ‘Time to Change’ pledge and created a team from all levels in the company, called Stigma Busters – tasked with introducing a range of initiatives encouraging colleagues to share their personal mental health stories more openly – including what a ‘good’ day looked like for people with different perspectives. It was these personal blogs and vlogs that made the most impact initially.”
Can you tell us more about this top-down approach?
“We were very fortunate that a senior leader wrote a blog about their personal struggles with mental health. This blog broke new ground and was a catalyst to removing barriers, especially across parts of the new organisation that were previously quite reticent.
“This breakthrough encouraged others to start sharing their problems and demonstrated how serious we were about tackling the issue. We now regularly have people wanting to share their stories, which gains so much more engagement and interest across the business.”
What other support do you offer?
“We also raised awareness of external routes for help and offered access to an employee assistance programme, with counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy included as standard.
“We ran additional training courses for our managers and drop-in sessions for all staff. This provided a forum for our people to voice any concerns or gain advice in a safe environment and, equally importantly, it encouraged people to speak to one another about mental health issues, so improving transparency and breaking down the stigma.”
“I just wanted to say thanks for the webinar today it was very interesting and great to see how you are engaging with local businesses on important and topical issues like mental health at work.” – Lindsey Clifton