Promoting staff wellbeing

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Organisations should look after staff wellbeing, including supporting a good work/life balance, addressing workplace stress and increasing staff resilience.

Improving resilience contributes to better wellbeing by helping staff to cope better under pressure which protects their mental and physical health, increasing staff retention and reducing sickness absences.

Positive wellbeing is crucial in ensuring that staff feel supported and remain with the organisation, enabling them to focus on providing good quality care and support. Organisations need to develop sustainable approaches to enable the positive wellbeing and mental health of the workforce, ensuring that there is a positive workplace culture of wellbeing. This should be organisation-wide and be a shared responsibility of HR practitioners, senior leaders, line managers and employees themselves.

Top tips:

Provide visible leadership and encourage staff to talk and share concerns within their team and beyond, creating an open and ongoing dialogue within and across all levels of the organisation. Supporting managers to provide this leadership and to fully embrace their role in positively influencing their team’s wellbeing culture is crucial.
Consider the role of wellbeing in the values and behaviours you want your organisation to embody.
Use ongoing conversations to better understand the wellbeing support needs of staff, involving all people in developing your wellbeing strategies and programmes. You should consider what free resources you can share to support staff in taking care of their own wellbeing.
Consider implementing wellbeing champions, who support the mental health and wellbeing of their colleagues according to the context of your organisation.
Develop a wellbeing charter based on staff input and your organisational culture and values.
Flexible working is about more than just retention. It can unlock new opportunities and contribute to people’s mental health, wellbeing and engagement with their role

Case studies

Looking after our team’s wellbeing: David Lewis

Sue Hunt, Director of People, David Lewis

What we did:

We provide a comprehensive support system for our staff’s physical and mental wellbeing with in-house roles to support them.

Why we did it:

Our strategic ambition is to attract and retain the best people, we have a number of elements that focus on supporting this and one is supporting staff wellbeing.

How we did it:

Each new care worker has access to a mentor and all our staff can access our own in-house muscular skeletal therapist who helps our staff with their physical wellbeing due to some of the physically strenuous elements of the job role, and our own in-house counsellor who can support staff with their mental wellbeing and offers training around resilience. We also offer staff a range of discounts and benefits to help them financially including a Blue Light Card, free parking, cycle to work schemes, which helps to reduce stress around financial issues – especially during the current cost of living crisis.

The results:

Through our combined efforts to support retention we’ve seen that the percentage of people who have left their role within the first year of employment has dropped 14% from 2019/20 to 2021/22.

Developing a wellbeing plan for Adult Social Care

Devon County Council

What they did:

Developed a wellbeing plan for Adult Social Care.

Why they did it:

The Council recognised the need to develop and expand its wellbeing offer. They wanted to establish a sustainable model for staff wellbeing that would support staff to be happy and effective in their role, whilst also supporting recruitment and retention of the workforce.

How they did it:

The Council developed a wide-ranging support offer regarding wellbeing. They developed a network of Wellbeing Supporters who signpost and promote wellbeing activities at frontline level. Though nothing is mandated, Wellbeing Supporters signpost support and disseminate information. Wellbeing Supporters, and team managers, have wellbeing sessions and drop-in events to share experiences and foster knowledge exchange and the sharing of good practice.

The Council also works closely with partners and builds relationships to support its work, working closely with Trade Unions, fellow councils, and with Mind to provide training for managers.

They have offered resilience workshops for whole teams, ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ online sessions and a Wellbeing Reference Group, comprising staff representing Adult Social Care that assisted in the co-production of resources and service plans for wellbeing.

The results:

87 per cent of the Adult Social Care workforce feel that the organisation is supporting their wellbeing and 93 per cent of staff know where to get support for their wellbeing.

Find out more.

Useful links

Local Government Association’s Top Tips for Embedding a Wellbeing Culture

Skills for Care’s Creating a Positive Workplace Culture

Skills for Care’s wellbeing support information

Local Government Association’s Workforce and HR Support on Wellbeing

Samaritan’s Frontline

Mind’s wellbeing resources including five ways to wellbeing

Isle of Wight’s multi-agency response to enhance care provider staff wellbeing

Federation of Small Businesses’ Guide for Small Businesses to mental health in the workplace

ACAS Sickness Absence toolkit

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