Creating a Wellbeing Working Group
This month, I'm going to be looking at who needs to be involved in a health, mental health or well being strategy for that strategy to be successful, sustainable, and make changes in the organization for the long term.
Now, in previous months I've covered who needs to lead your mental health or well being strategy. And we've talked about the fact that actually mental health can become a bit of a political football around the organization.
This month, I'm going to focus on not who leads it, but who needs to be involved. Because the reality is, is if you want a health, mental health or well being strategy that's going to change culture, and impact people on the ground, you need to make sure that mental health and well being become part of lots of different people's day jobs is the easiest way to do it without spending resources and money. And to actually impact change.
Variety is, as they say, the spice of life. So the first reason I think you need to set up a well being working group, including all different parts of the organization, is that if health mental health and well being is run from one particular part, then it can become siloed. And what I've seen is that if mental health and well being is run with DNI, it tends to be DNI with a little bit of mental health sprinkled on top. If it's run by health and safety, it tends to be health and safety policies with a little bit of mental health around the side.
If it's run by HR on its own, then it tends to be policies, strategies, procedures, the easiest, cheapest and best way of making a long term sustainable health, mental health and well being strategy is to create a working group with the expertise of all of these people, and turning health and mental health into lots of many people's day jobs. The second reason for that is not one of these groups has all of the skills around health and mental health, everyone is experts in their own domain. So having the input from all of these different people into your well being working group means that you get a much more integrated long term solution, I also suggest to organizations is they need to make sure they actually have the skill set around health and mental health.
So that could be bringing into your workplace strategy. And your workplace group, somebody with the expertise either a provider, a consultant, but somebody who has come up with a really robust strategy, that's going to work. The final reason why I think you need a well being working group full of lots of different viewpoints is that what I often see is that a health mental health and well being strategy is written by HR or some team who tend to sit in head office. So they're writing a policy or strategy that's designed to reach people on the shop floor, if you like, but without any representation from the shop floor as to what their jobs are like.
So by having a well being working group, not only do you have the expertise of all the other people I've just mentioned, but you can have employee representatives, but actually what you're proposing to put into your strategy is going to be of the most effect to them. So there's that dialog, you're creating something that people want, that works for them, that's going to fit around their day jobs. And that's the easiest way to get culture change, and to get quick engagement for your strategy once you decided to launch it.
Next week, I'm going to be sharing my article about how I think you can set up a wellbeing working group that will enable you to put together a strategy which has got variety is going to work with people around the ground, and it's cost effective and can be sustainable for the long term. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What is it like working with other people? Do you think collaboration is the way forward?
Is there anyone that I've missed that you think should be involved or someone that I've suggested that you really don't think should be right below and in the meantime, I'll see you next week.
