Employees at the heart

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, employee wellbeing has been thrust into the spotlight. Human Resources magazine editor, Kathy Catton, spoke with three organisations that are taking wellbeing seriously. We share their advice on how to integrate wellbeing into the workplace.

Unisys: promoting holistic wellbeing

It took Unisys, the global IT services company, just 48 hours to move 98 per cent of its 18,000-strong global workforce to working from home in March last year. But, as many of us experienced, after working from home for several months, some negative aspects of the experience started to arise. Staying healthy and getting the same amount of exercise as they had before the pandemic restrictions kicked in was difficult for some.

“We wanted to give our people a tool to put their own wellbeing first,” says Andrew Whelan, Vice-President – Client Management, Unisys Asia- Pacific. “So the HR and internal communications team developed an Asia-Pacific-wide voluntary step challenge, called ‘U-Move’, that ran throughout September 2020.”

Step challenge The objective was to get people moving away from their desks and to begin socialising again with their teammates. To implement the programme quickly (three weeks from concept to launch), the Unisys team used the 10,000 Steps mobile app, created by CQUniversity in Rockhampton, Queensland, to log daily step activity. The app also allowed other types of activity, such as yoga, to be converted into steps.

Participants were encouraged to form teams, both cross-functionally and cross-geographically, using a ‘find a team’ service to help connect not only with people in the office but also new people in other locations. “For some, that meant connecting virtually to train together, while others involved their families in extra physical activity,” says Andrew. “We had 368 people from 8 countries (including New Zealand) form 46 teams. Interestingly, 40 per cent of New Zealand participants opted to be in international teams.”

The results were very encouraging. Polling after the challenge found that 77 per cent of participants said the U-Move programme had helped them be more active. In fact, the proportion of employees participating in daily exercise almost tripled (from 24 per cent to 86 per cent). The percentage of people who felt they had adapted to working from home increased from 24 per cent to 47 per cent, almost double.

The future

“This initiative highlighted the importance of the physical side of wellbeing and its positive relationship to mental health and social interaction, as well as the need to ensure smart use of technology across a predominantly work-fromhome workforce,” says Andrew.

By encouraging diversified teams, people were exposed to others in the organisation they would typically not have the chance to interact with. All this was done in an open, collaborative, safe and social way.

Air New Zealand

Air New Zealand knows a thing or two about change. Having been through an enormous amount of change during the COVID-19 pandemic, Air New Zealand is clear about its wellbeing strategy.

Me, we, us

“We have a multi-layered approach to wellbeing: Me, We and Us,” says Rachel Moon, Senior Manager, Wellbeing. “We seek to empower people with individual ‘Me’ tools and resources, as well as cultivating a culture of support (‘We’) through peer-to-peer connections and wellbeing leadership, and ensure organisational facets (‘Us’) such as work design, environment and policies all encompass wellbeing.”

Amongst these individual ‘Me’ tools and resources is a Wellbeing Hub.

Wellness tips for working from home

• Initiate a discussion with your teams about techniques they can use to create boundaries between work and home life (for example, packing up work zones at the end of the day and committing to screen-free personal time).

• Work with staff to define their core working hours. While some flexibility is essential, teams also need time to relax and reboot.

• Discuss options that can provide team members with a break from being at their desk for the whole day. A walking meeting, for example, can be a great circuit breaker if safe and practical.

• Remember your colleagues are human: ask how they are doing (and listen).

• Share something of yourself, for example, post a photo on your internal social channel of something that made you happy, see what response you get.

This is an online source of wellbeing information and resources, accessible from any device, anywhere, with wellbeing programmes and challenges, livestream sessions with wellbeing and financial experts, workshops (such as mental health awareness and stress and resilience) and EAP.

“It’s important to Air New Zealand that the organisation considers how people feel and function every day – not just while at work, but also away from work,” says Rachel. “People’s mental and social wellbeing, as

well as their physical wellbeing, is important to the organisation, so that they can participate in meaningful activities and engage with evidencebased, easily accessible support for themselves, their whānau and their communities.”

Peer support network

In addition to the individual tools and resources, Air New Zealand also recruits, manages and supports a network of volunteers who provide support to their colleagues and peers across the business. These volunteers are trusted people who employees can contact for support and advice and who sit alongside the other support services. It’s seen as a valuable option if employees are wanting to speak to someone they identify with, who understands the specific pressures and demands of their role, culture and life, as an alternative to EAP, their manager or HR. These volunteers are trained and supported collaboratively by the Wellbeing Team and Lifeline, which is a partner in this project.

“Also key here is encouraging and empowering leaders to have real and meaningful connections and conversations with the people, and ensuring they have the knowledge and skills to be able to listen and guide their people to the right support option available both inside and outside of Air New Zealand,” says Rachel.

Rachel Moon’s advice for HR

• Ask your people and find out from them what they are struggling with. Use a survey or focus groups to hear from your people about what would help most enhance their wellbeing while at work.

• Don’t just rely on initiatives and programmes to improve people’s wellbeing or ‘patch up’ the problems; look at the root cause. Investigate the organisational factors that affect people’s wellbeing while at work, such as workload, environment, rosters, relationships and culture, and work to improve these. Your initiatives will not create sustainable change otherwise.

• Establish a benchmark so you can continue to measure the impacts of your programmes and how you are tracking.

Foodstuffs North Island

Foodstuffs North Island has had an active wellbeing strategy for over three years. Until recently, though, the strategy was predominantly mental health focused, before the team shifted to a more holistic model, which encompasses physical, mental, financial and social wellbeing.

Quadrants of wellbeing

“Our business operates on four financial quarters, so we align our four wellbeing quadrants with the four financial quarters,” says Michelle Cooper, Head of Safety and Wellbeing. With more than 22,000 employees in over 350 stores and 2,500 in Head Office, it was important to find a way to reach all staff in a meaningful way.

Under the physical quadrant, the organisation facilitates a fitness or walking challenge for staff to get involved with. With mental wellbeing, Michelle and her team are working on the COVID-hidden pandemic of stress and feeling overwhelmed. Using the Five Ways to Wellbeing slogan of “It’s okay not to be okay”, the organisation uses a simple approach: Recognise, Respond, Refer, and, as such, the co-operative has worked to modernise its EAP offering.

“We now have Clearhead’s online platform available to our team,” says Michelle. “It’s an integrated system that provides interactive wellbeing tools and educational information in the palm of your hand as well as access to 200 therapists for counselling services, if required. The business also gets an anonymised analytics report so we can better understand our employees’ wellbeing needs and ensure our future initiatives are targeted to the needs of our people.”

Under the financial quadrant, Foodstuffs North Island offered superannuation workshops and budgeting information. And with the social quadrant, a gratitude programme has been started, allowing staff to appreciate their working environment, colleagues and home environment.

Tracking upwards

As with all wellbeing initiatives, it’s essential to measure success. With engagement survey results trending positively, it’s clear real progress has been made.

“We ask two key questions in the survey relating to wellbeing. One is ‘Does my manager care about my safety?’ and the other is ‘Does my manager care about my wellbeing?’,” says Michelle.

“For us, it’s about caring with credibility,” says Michelle. “It’s about providing meaningful support to staff, without doing it for them.”

According to Michelle, the CEO and executive team are now deeply involved and invested. “Everyone is human,” says Michelle, “and we are here to help staff figure it out.”

With this leadership from the top, people leaders are also trained in coaching and having difficult conversations. “It’s not common for Kiwis to play in this space, but we are supporting our people leaders through leadership development programmes to step up to leadership,” says Michelle.

Michelle Cooper's advice for HR professionals wanting to introduce a wellbeing strategy to the business

• Talk to your people about what they need.

• Make an effort to connect with people’s hearts and minds.

• Get buy-in from the top. It’s not about fluffing pillows and putting out fruit bowls; you have to show that you genuinely care at all levels of the organisation.

Conclusions

Looking after employees’ wellbeing is not just the right thing to do morally, a commercial bonus is also involved. The more an organisation looks after its people, the better and more valued they will feel, and the more engaged they will become. HR’s challenge continues to be how to integrate employee wellbeing strategies and initiatives in a values-driven way, getting senior leaders onside with the importance of wellbeing.