A Health Advocate is someone who is passionate about health and wellbeing, wants to help raise awareness of health topics, and contribute to developing a positive wellbeing culture in the workplace - and even beyond. This can be anyone in the organisation, regardless of role or experience. The Health Advocate role is voluntary, and can be a great addition to a CV. It is a good opportunity to develop and practice skills such as communication, persuasion and motivating others.
As a top tier COMAH site our organisation prioritises the health and safety of our people. By equally investing in Health and Wellbeing we can further safeguard our workforce. BHAWA was the obvious choice for us to build on and strengthen our offering in line with our company values.
The framework has provided our business with the tools to understand the wellbeing needs of our rapidly expanding workforce. Through the support of our local coordinator, and collaborating with others, we have been able to develop a more robust health and wellbeing agenda and embed this into our culture.
The wellbeing of our colleagues is incredibly important to us. As an organisation we understand the impact and benefit a good wellbeing strategy brings. We also believe that wellbeing has to be an ongoing campaign, the focus has to be constant not just something you write about in a policy or the provision of good flexible benefits. The award provided structure for us to formulate that strategy and annual activities plans force us to think about a variety of offerings and initiatives.
It provides structure, idea and something to work towards. It helps us to think about better ways to engage people in what we do.
Our Hospice values the health and wellbeing of our staff and volunteers and the award is a fantastic way to be able to formalise our approach and provide a structure and focus to delivering health and wellbeing campaigns to our workforce.
The award has helped us to plan and focus more strategically on our priorities for campaigns and events with regards to health and wellbeing, following the structure provided by the award and with support from our workplace health lead.
We wanted a structured approach to improving the health of employees tapping into the support available and taking the opportunity to benchmark with other organisations to help us improve the health and wellbeing of our people.
The award has been successful in helping us organise dedicated teams and resources as we work through the criteria. So far the campaigns have been very well received by our people and our new Wellbeing strategy has helped us to bring this all together in a framework all our staff understand.
We wanted to provide staff with the tools and awareness to improve their health and wellbeing as well as improving communication and signposting our staff so they can make informed decisions on any support they need.
The award has assisted in improving communication and developing relationships with staff on all levels. The step challenge we held proved to be an excellent engagement tool and we intend to roll this out again this year.
Firstly, and most importantly, we recognise the benefits of supporting the wellbeing of our staff and secondly, as a charity it’s great to get some recognition for what we do.
The process is strong as it leads the organisation through a series of logical steps to the award. Staff have really engaged in the process and it’s a great motivator for staff.
