Project preparation

Before joining the project, Company C had drafted a strategy for mental health in the workplace. They had also appointed a new occupational health wellbeing manager to lead on strategy implementation.

Organisational challenges

Company C identified the following workplace wellbeing issues:

  • exposure to verbal abuse 
  • bullying
  • stress at work
  • sickness absence due to mental health. 

Organisational challenges, meanwhile, included:

  • poor staff perception of health and wellbeing support 
  • organisational change post-pandemic 
  • ongoing industrial action. 

Project objectives

Company C’s overarching goal was to implement its mental health strategy. The strategy aimed to embed good mental wellbeing in the organisation and make mental wellbeing everyone’s responsibility.

The project lead began the process of trying to implement the strategy but quickly changed the approach after encountering several barriers. A number of lessons were learned during this process, and these should be considered when implementing a health and wellbeing strategy.

Lesson 1: Lasting change is built on firm foundations 

To create lasting change, it is important to build the foundations of a strategy. If resource is limited, time is best spent getting the fundamentals right. Once Company C started to implement their strategy, they realised it was aspirational but not realistic. For example, they wanted to increase visibility of health and wellbeing support and run wellbeing events, but the project lead realised there was not enough resource to do this effectively. So, they focused on building the strategy around fundamental principles such as establishing leadership support, developing effective people management, and reviewing work design.

Lesson 2: It pays to understand your organisation

Change, particularly a change in organisational culture, is gradual. To create meaningful change, there is a need to first understand the organisation. Being new to the role, the project lead at Company C needed time to fully integrate into the organisation and understand its culture and how different parts of the business function. Taking the time to gain a better understanding of the organisation shaped the project lead’s approach. For example, they recognised that different departments function differently due to operational tasks and culture, so a departmental approach, rather than a company-wide approach, was needed to successfully implement their strategy.

Lesson 3: Quality data is important

Consistent data collection and analysis are important for informing a health and wellbeing strategy. Prior to the project, Company C’s data was collected across different parts of the business, but it was not analysed together to provide a bigger picture. For example, sickness absence data, Employee Assistance Programme usage, and outcomes of the employee engagement survey were all collected. But these were not routinely analysed in a coordinated way. The project lead was able to review what was happening across different parts of the organisation and take a more joined-up approach. 

The data was used to inform their health and wellbeing strategy. The project lead said the data will enable them to feel more confident in selecting interventions in the future: ‘Knowing that I am using the data, I can justify why I am doing or not doing certain things.’ 

Additionally, using multiple measures and understanding the context of the data have been essential for Company C to create a plan for supporting health and wellbeing. For example, by using multiple sources of data—including sickness absence, the staff survey, and industry data—Company C has planned to raise awareness of certain health conditions. This approach has also made it easier for Company C to identify gaps in knowledge and where additional data needs to be collected. This has led to the creation of a general feedback form where employees can select the service used and provide feedback directly.

Lesson 4: Collaboration is critical

The lessons learned during the process of implementing the initial intervention led to a different approach that required collaboration with different parts of the organisation. The outcome was that a new, wider health and wellbeing strategy was created, which pulled together the different elements of health and wellbeing to create a cohesive, actionable plan.