The winners of the first Railway Mental Health Charter Awards
Earlier this year, RSSB was proud to announce that the 100th organisation signed up to the Railway Mental Health Charter (RMHC). This is great news for the mental wellbeing of staff throughout our railways, but we all appreciate this was not an end in itself.
That’s why, in May 2023, RSSB hosted the first face-to-face event for RMHC signatories, to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week. The event proved a fantastic opportunity for rail organisations to get together and discuss the challenges they all share, how they can start to tackle them, and to review the progress they have been making against their promises.
It was also a wonderful opportunity for us all to recognise some of the amazing projects and changes we have seen in railway mental health and wellbeing during the last year. The event culminated with the RMHC Awards to highlight some of the most impressive projects. There were four awards up for grabs:
- Leadership Award, which recognises companies whose senior leaders have truly ‘walked the walk’ in prioritising mental health.
- Impact Award, for companies that demonstrate how their work has positively impacted employees.
- Best Frontline Initiative, which recognises companies that have developed initiatives to support frontline colleagues.
- Innovation Award, for companies that have overcome barriers to deliver something meaningful for their organisation, tailoring approaches to meet the needs of employees.
And the winners are...
While all awards categories had numerous impressive entries, unfortunately there can be only one winner for each category. Read on below for more on the winning initiatives and the difference these organisations and individuals are already making.
Winner – Leadership Award: Pino de Rosa, Bridgeway Consulting
Pino Showed a commitment to supporting mental health across the company by leading from the front. His initiatives included talking about his experiences in a company podcast, hosting Q&A sessions with staff, promoting a peer support network, and including mental health as a standing item on the board agenda and safety meetings.
As well as raising awareness, he has, together with the wider leadership team, introduced a wide range of improved benefits in 2022 to support staff’s mental health, in particular recognising the anxiety that additional financial pressures at these times can cause.
The staff survey in May 2022 showed the most used adjective to describe Bridgeway’s culture was ’supportive’ (96%). It also showed a 15% increase in the number of respondents who feel cared about at work.
WINNER – Impact Award: Transport for London
The Drug and Alcohol Treatment Service was established to provide assistance for employees who are experiencing problems with alcohol and/or drugs with the aim of a safe and timely return to the workplace.
The team assesses needs to inform support options. Employees using the service have access to an ‘open door’ policy, 1-2-1 therapy, regular reviews, reunions and specialised events. Most importantly, they offer peer-to-peer ‘shares’ for those who are in the assessment process at the beginning of their journey.
Since 2004, 400 employees have successfully completed residential treatment and returned to their substantive role, many becoming ambassadors, who regularly return to share their experience with the employees that have come forward today.
Winner – Best Frontline Initiative: Volker Rail
In 2021 Volker Rail created the BROS (Building Relationships On Site) initiative to ensure frontline employees proactively engaged with mental health campaigns. The programme encouraged employees to react to situations at work in the same way they would in normal life, substituting work behaviours for personal behaviours and encouraging individuals to treat colleagues how they would family or close friends.
In the 12 months since its launch, the BROS initiative has been successfully briefed to more than 80% of the business. The company has identified an increase in engagement, with resource and information requests now coming directly from construction mangers, over mental health champions.
One employee said: ‘I had the BROS initiative briefing and took to it like a duck to water. I started noticing changes in my colleagues’ behaviour which I wouldn't have picked up on before. I even noticed mistakes in emails and phoned the individual to see if everything was okay, to which I then found out they were having a bad time and gave an ear to listen to their problems and hopefully helped them.
Winner – Innovation Award: Dyer & Butler
Looking to improve usable mental health data, the company created a tool to record the activities and conversations of their mental health first aiders (MHFA). As a result, Dyer & Butler designed their own conversation tool using data from MHFA conversations to generate a dashboard style report which could be used by the executive team and mental health ambassadors to improve organisational mental health.
The data collected has provided valuable information to inform decisions on how to best support employees as well as MHFAs, while also demonstrating the value of MHFAs.
A member of the executive team said: ‘Being able to monitor and measure the mental health conversations that take place within the workplace is critical to understanding the relationship between the individual and their work and personal life. The data captured from these conversations is the key to making further improvements in our culture to ensure that our employees feel that they are protected and supported in terms of maintaining good standards of mental health.
