Railway Mental Health Charter is Shortlisted for a Workplace Wellbeing Award

The RMHC has been shortlisted for ‘Best Mental Wellbeing Initiative’ in the Great British Workplace Wellbeing awards. Now in their second year, the Great British Workplace Wellbeing awards already have a reputation for focusing on topical wellbeing issues such as support for remote workers, so it is good to see pioneering work for rail being shortlisted. An appreciation of many of the features of the RMHC reveals just why it has been shortlisted in the ‘Best Mental Wellbeing Initiative’ category.

The risks to mental health for staff working in rail are varied and include high work intensity, exposure to potentially traumatic events and far more varied than in other industries, including fatigue. This makes addressing mental health in rail vital. The Railway Mental Health Charter (RMHC) provides a robust but practical framework for organisations to use in prioritising their strategies for staff mental health, with organisations signing up to become charter members.

The requirements for becoming a member are deliberately kept broad to encourage participation throughout industry. Signatories need only two things: to be organisations in the rail industry and committed to improving mental health in their organisation. It doesn’t matter whether an organisation is completely new to action in this area or already has some policies or programmes in place. All organisations in rail can join the charter and obtain expert support. These features all give the RMHC a strong base as a powerful tool for change.

The initiators of the charter were focused on the practical needs of organisations from the beginning, and this has informed both the content of the charter and its accessibility. The charter framework is based on best practice in mental health programmes and covers seven different areas for action. However, each signatory decides how it is going to address each of these areas, in tandem with expert support and the RMHC peer network. By design, the RMHC is free to use so that cost is not a barrier to participation. This key feature is possible because of RSSB’s unique commitment to help improve safety and health throughout the railway.

It is impressive that despite only being launched in 2021, the charter already has over 90 signatories. This shows over 90 organisations already benefitting from the expert support it provides, and the RMHC having a positive effect on a whole industry.

These are just some of the reasons why the RMHC is a truly worthy shortlisted candidate for this award. The result will be announced on 16 March 2023 in London. We wish RMHC every success in that competition.