Award Winning Employee Health and Wellbeing

17 Dec, 2019

But first, let us take you back to where our journey began…  

The Worcestershire Works Well (WWW) initiative is designed to improve the health and wellbeing of employees, something we are passionate about.  We started our WWW journey earlier this year and after achieving our Level One Accreditation, were keen to progress to Level Two, showing our commitment to our ethos of looking after our people so they can continue to provide exceptional support to our clients.

Since starting our journey we have introduced a variety of advice and support to the team for both their physical and mental health and wellbeing.  Some of the initiatives introduced included a flexible working policy, healthy team lunches and mental health first aider training.  However, we wanted to do more to ensure our team’s needs were met so we enlisted the help of Registered Mental Health Nurse, Carie Workman.

Each month, the team are encouraged to participate in a private hour long session with Carie.  These sessions provide a safe environment in which they can offload their worries and concerns and develop effective coping strategies.  The support from Carie has been well received by our team who rated the sessions almost as highly as our flexible working policy and having their birthdays off.  It has given them the opportunity to unload their worries, helping them to feel ‘lighter’, ‘more confident’ and ‘better able to concentrate’.

This initiative also received great feedback from the WWW panel who were “impressed with the approach to mental health including the support of the mental health nurse, employee engagement and reward, and team cohesion”.

The panel also commented that “health and wellbeing was strongly embedded within the workplace” and they were “impressed with the positive culture throughout the organisation”, the “fantastic response based on the needs of employees” and the “huge range of innovative initiatives”. 

The exciting news…

In June, we became one of the smallest SMEs in the County to achieve Level Two Accreditation and were invited to the WWW bi-annual event in November to be officially presented with our Accreditation… and an ‘Outstanding Achievement Award’ which we are incredibly proud to achieve.

This Award has been created to recognise those businesses who are taking steps to improve health and wellbeing which are above and beyond the accreditation requirement.

The panel commented “ISO Quality Services is clearly an organisation which considers people to be its biggest asset and the mental health program put in place significantly supported this core value.  The provision of an on-site mental health nurse who was able to offer face-to-face sessions to all employees was embraced by all.  This clearly demonstrates the importance ISO QSL put on ensuring that mental health is given the priority it deserves.   ISO QSL is truly an ambassador organisation and a very deserving winner of the WWW Outstanding Achievement Award”.

Debbie Farr, Director of HR and Facilities Management added: “We are incredibly proud of our achievement and the team’s commitment to our health and wellbeing initiative.  We are a family business with strong people-orientated values and in order for our team to perform at their best and provide exceptional support to our clients, we need to establish a working environment geared towards creating happy and health employees.  We look forward to continuing our work with the team, helping them to make healthier lifestyle choices and achieve a better work/life balance”.

 If you’re interested in finding out more about the Worcestershire Works Well initiative, please visit their website.