Healthy workplaces

Businesses and organisations can directly influence their employees’ health.

We want to encourage, inspire and support employers to create health-enhancing, engaged and productive workplaces through the use of health and wellbeing frameworks such as our Local Healthy Workplace Award and the Good Work Standard.

• Importance of workforce health and wellbeing
• Reducing health inequalities
• Workplace health and wellbeing frameworks
• Workshops
• Resources

Importance of workforce health and wellbeing

Promoting and supporting employee wellbeing is important for better work and working lives. An effective workplace health and wellbeing programme can deliver mutual benefits to people, organisations, economies and communities.

The CIPD's 2022 Health and Wellbeing at Work Survey identified the top three benefits of increasing focus on employee wellbeing:

• A healthier and more inclusive culture
• Better work-life balance
• Better employee morale and engagement

Reducing health inequalities

Health inequalities lead to productivity losses of between £31–33 billion each year in England alone.

In partnership with Legal & General, the UCL Institute of Health Equity have launched 'The Business of Health Equity: The Marmot Review for Industry' which sets out three ways business can improve people’s lives by reducing health inequality:

1. Promote the health of employees through pay and benefits, hours and job security and conditions of work
2. Support the health of clients, customers and shareholders through products and services they provide and investments they make
3. Influence the health of individuals in communities through investment influence, procurement, and supply networks

Workplace health and wellbeing frameworks

Evidence based health and wellbeing frameworks can be a structured way for businesses and employers to consider workforce health and wellbeing and play a role in reducing health inequalities.

Benefits include:

• Benchmarking your organisation against an independent set of standards
• Using an evidence-based blueprint to design your employee health and wellbeing programmes
• Gaining recognition as a top employer

Local Healthy Workplace Award

We administer the Local Healthy Workplace Award, which uses a framework developed by the Mayor of London's Office and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (previously known as Public Health England). It acts as template for good practice and recognises employers in the borough who invest in their employees’ health and wellbeing.

The framework is made up of three pillars:

• Corporate support for wellbeing
• Mental health and wellbeing
• Healthy lifestyle promotion

For more information about the Local Healthy Workplace Award and how to sign up, email publichealth@richmond.gov.uk.

Good Work Standard

The Mayor’s Good Work Standard is a simple and easy-to-access accreditation scheme with a programme of communications and events for a community of employers interested in good work.

Achieving this provides clear and easy steps for employers to make their workplaces healthier and happier.

The standard has been developed in collaboration with London employers, professional bodies and experts. It is organised into four key pillars:

• Fair pay and conditions
• Workplace wellbeing
• Skills and progression
• Diversity and recruitment

You can find more information on the requirements of the Good Work Standard on the GLA website.

Workshops

We have hosted a series of online workshops for local businesses. The workshops were delivered by Let’s Improve Workplace Wellbeing – a non-profit Community Interest Company whose aim is to support workplace wellbeing.

Why employee wellbeing makes commercial sense for your business

This session covered:

• Defining what wellbeing means to your business
• Why wellbeing makes commercial sense
• Actionable next steps for your organisation to take on your journey to being a healthy workplace.

How businesses can support employee mental wellbeing

This session covered:

• Defining mental health
• Current landscape and legislature
• How do we reduce stigma around mental ill health
• How you can encourage and build supportive communities and promote open conversations
• Aligning and thinking about tangible actions you can take to support management knowledge and behaviours
• How to improve employee resilience and knowledge.

Employee financial wellbeing

In this workshop we visited some key actions an employer of any size can begin taking to support and foster conversations around positive financial wellbeing.

This session covered:

• The current climate and wellbeing measures
• The relationship between poor mental health and financial wellbeing
• Discussion on the Living Wage and highlights of some key resources and links

Resources

Resources are available to support employers and organisations in the borough with their journey to a healthy workplace.

Diabetes workplace wellbeing

Most people living with diabetes are of working age (aged 16-64). This support resource for employers sets out suggested actions that businesses and organisations can take to support their employees around diabetes wellbeing. 

Making Every Contact Count (MECC) training

MECC is an approach to behaviour change that uses the thousands of day-to-day interactions that organisations and individuals have with other people to support them in making positive changes to their physical and mental health and wellbeing.

How MECC works

It supports the delivery of consistent and concise healthy lifestyle information and enables individuals to engage in conversations about their health at scale across organisations and the local population.

About the training

Wandsworth Council has developed a series of short online training courses to support staff in developing the skills needed to:

• Identify people who could benefit from additional support
• Raise the issue with them through a conversation
• Signpost to local services

How MECC training supports a healthy workplace

By equipping a work force to be better able to help others, job satisfaction is likely to improve.

In addition, a number of courses are of direct benefit to the staff themselves (see ‘Emotional Health and Wellbeing’), and consequently their friends, colleagues, and family.

You can find out more and access the training.

Contact

If you need further information or support about any of the above, email publichealth@richmond.gov.uk.