Niamh Kelly: The University of Wolverhampton’s health and wellbeing strategy

As one of the three largest employers in the City of Wolverhampton, in 2016 the University of Wolverhampton (in conjunction with the council and NHS), was part of a Healthy City initiative, which included application for the Public Health England Workplace Wellbeing Charter. This charter is an opportunity for employers to demonstrate their commitment to the health and well-being of their workforce by benchmarking and assessment.

Health and wellbeing strategy

To achieve charter status, we had to demonstrate that we provide leadership and promote collaboration on issues that have an impact on the health and wellbeing of the working population and that we have a culture that promotes wellbeing and a positive work-life balance.

The work included a significant review of all health and wellbeing (HWB) initiatives at the university resulting in a new HWB Strategy.

We launched a joint HWB Working Group including unions, health and safety and academic colleagues, looking at impact on a rage of statistics including the number of work absences due to ill health, an analysis of staff turnover and the number of flexible working requests that can be supported.

In addition, we carried out a review of comparable data including absences due to stress and occupational health referrals. We introduced new HWB initiatives such as the ability of OH to refer to a ‘mindfulness’ practitioner (in addition to specific referrals to physiotherapy for MSK issues) and we analysed staff engagement focus group responses as an indicator of HWB.

The university has a large workforce and is geographically, culturally and linguistically diverse. The strategy reflects this diversity and provides direction on related issues and challenges in order to support the development of effective solutions and outcomes.

Student population

An overarching tenet of the strategy was the impact that staff HWB would have on student welfare and many of the initiatives introduced benefited both staff and students. These included:

Several health fairs with free NHS health checks
Advice and guidance on alcohol and substance misuse and healthy eating
The introduction of free monthly smoking cessation clinics
A specific pulse staff survey on healthy workplace initiatives
The introduction of an employee assistance programme (EAP)
Organisational membership of Carers UK

Research

Ultimately, a healthy and engaged workforce impacts positively on the student experience and helps us achieve our ‘Student First’ mission. But we are lucky in that we have a Faculty of Health, Education and Wellbeing which includes ‘Public Health’, thus allowing us to provide student research opportunities that can enhance our HWB.

In our first year of this initiative, we funded support of a student project into ‘Grab and Go’ healthy eating alternatives. This resulted in the enhanced promotion of healthy eating options for all staff and students via catering outlets at university and was cited as ‘best practice’ by Public Health England.

We are working with the academic lead within Public Health to commission other pieces of work from students in the 2017/18 academic year, including a project on how we can support those staff experiencing the menopause.

The article was written by Níamh Kelly, acting director of human resources, University of Wolverhampton