"As a Council, we have identified the importance of the health and wellbeing of our staff and formed a group of representatives from across different areas of the Council to discuss what we are doing in related activities and support.  This enabled us to start to identify gaps and needs and has given good insights that have supported further developments.  Coming together as a group has enabled us to develop Health and Wellbeing Champions across the Council and Mental Health First Aiders.  These are volunteer roles from existing staff who are now well placed to provide support for access to what’s on offer, act as point of contact and first line support and signposting.  Alongside this, a few support groups are starting to emerge supporting specific staff needs, such as menopause, race, religion and culture networks and men’s wellbeing.  So, we feel like we are really starting to get a good understanding of individuals needs in the context of their health and wellbeing.  We have had very positive support with this at all levels, including senior managers – it is easy to see that ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff contributes to our principles, values, and ethos.  It also can have a direct impact on staff absence and staff leavers so important to us.

When the Healthy Workplace award was launched, we saw it as a great opportunity to enable us to benchmark where we are and to understand what gaps there might be related to our support offer.  Because the standards are defined as Bronze, Silver, and Gold, of course we will aspire to be Gold, but our reality is that it is a journey and having a template that enables us to know where we are in supporting health and wellbeing, is a key tool that enables us to benchmark our position and understand what we need to do to further progress.

We have designated a role that is taking a lead on the activities to support us to position ourselves.  They are currently engaging in the benchmarking and will be conducting focus groups to get a broader understanding where gaps are identified of what the needs are that we need to further develop.

Investing in staff wellbeing is critical to a positive and safe working environment that demonstrates care and support and understanding and is important to us, especially in the context of more hybrid ways of working and the greater challenges being felt from the current circumstances we are all existing in,  alongside our residents.

As we explore and develop our position on health and wellbeing, it has highlighted greater opportunities for us to engage with our members who are also similarly affected, and our work to support them in a wider health and wellbeing strategy that is being developed across all of CBC.  It is also our opportunity to work with colleagues across the BLMK who are also faced with similar issues and challenges."

Here is a video testimonial from Clearview

"I am absolutely blown away by how easy the whole process is (I thought I had misunderstood something from reading on the website but you confirmed it is exactly like that). I am impressed that I am fully in control of the time it takes to achieve any of the standards and that it is free. It feels like one of those things where you are thinking "So what's the catch?" or "It's too good to be true".

Here is a video testimonial from Aiimi

Here is a video testimonial from Ceetak.

Here is a video testimonial from Cranswick

"We first heard about the Healthy Workplace Standards from the council through our smoking cessation programme and thought that it would tie in really nicely with our QOF indicator focussing on staff wellbeing.

Our first meeting with Lisa was really informative and she gave us the tools to set up a wellbeing survey to get some baseline data anonymously from the staff. This provided some insight into the current trends among the staff and an idea of where to start with the standards. We are working on the mental health and the leadership standards as a starting point and are making small changes in the workplace in a hope to build up to much more substantial change. The staff are really enjoying collecting the evidence to demonstrate all the efforts made to improve the workplace and are looking forward to earning their first award! It has provided an opportunity for all staff to work collaboratively and to champion wellbeing.

As well as helping us to understand the standards, Lisa has put us in touch with local services that can offer financial support to the staff and teams that can support us with some issues we are having with rough sleepers using the surgery. Lisa is working at our pace with as much guidance as we need, and we cannot thank her enough for all of her support with this project."

Katrina Bonwick – Practice manager