About the Award

 

For too long, the North East has had a reputation for being of being an ‘unhealthy’ place to live and work; unfortunately borne out by our fairly shocking life expectancy rate and high long-term sickness and disability figures.

To help combat this, a partnership project unique to the North East was created and the Better Health at Work Award was established to take health and wellbeing into the workplace.

This partnership has now been taken forward by the Northern TUC, with the support and endorsement from Public Health England.

Workplace Health is an important and integral part of the regional public health strategy and is even more relevant in these challenging times, when companies need to use every tool available to ensure their productivity and competitiveness.

With more than 400 regional employers participating in the scheme so far, as well as the very favourable findings of at least two independent evaluations, both the need for and effectiveness of the Award for all concerned is clear.

Individuals benefit from increased access to health information and interventions where they wouldn't normally - in more than one instance, workplace activity generated by the Award has potentially saved lives - identifying dangerously high cholesterol levels and early stage cancers.

At the same time, employers benefit from improved morale, dramatically lower levels of absenteeism and increased productivity.  There are few more apparent win-win situations.

 

You can download and view the Better Health at Work Award Employer Guide below, to read more on the award process, the structure of the award and find out about the role of health advocates.

 Employer Guide

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.

- Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe, North Tyneside

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.

- END. Clothing, Sunderland

We wanted to improve employee engagement in health and wellbeing as it’s the right thing to do as a business and may also contribute to improvement in morale, a better people culture, and reduction in sickness absence levels in the long term.

As a business running this award, it shows we are committed to employee health and wellbeing and it improves employee engagement.

- Port of Tyne , North and South Tyneside

We participated to provide a further structure, focus and sustainable framework to our wellbeing programme.

The Award offers full support in terms of co-ordinator and resource information including best practice ideas and structured targets to aim for  – it feels like we’re working together rather than in a silo!

- Northern Housing Consortium Limited, Sunderland

At the time of enrolling on the BHAWA SUEZ did not have any health strategies in place. We started off on a blank canvas and were given the freedom by the plant manager to run our first campaigns. The wider business soon caught on and we now have an amazing wellness for all charter and Wellbeing and Inclusion Manager.

It gave us the starting point to a wider company movement and now wellness is a hot topic for the whole business. Enrolling every year onto a new level gives the site its focus and an end aim of achieving the award. The award recognises good work we do, and we also received the special recognition award in 2022.

- SUEZ TeesValley, Stockton

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.

- St Cuthbert’s Hospice, Durham
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