Bringing wellbeing and diversity and inclusion teams closer together will help ‘join the dots’

Centrica has been addressing wellbeing for around three years now. When Covid-19 started to affect us, I felt reassured that we had already got some of the building blocks in place to support our people. As a result, we’ve had to adapt what we do rather than start from scratch.

I think we’re in a better position than we’ve ever been to deliver wellbeing support to our people. We have in place a mental health platform, physical health initiatives, mental health first aiders and a careline. In the past, we had difficulties reaching some employees such as those who work in the field. Now, we have much more content and collateral and our propositions are well understood. Covid-19 has also had the effect of raising everyone’s awareness about wellbeing.

We have recently welcomed a new CEO at Centrica who is very passionate about mental health and the wellbeing of our people. When there’s someone at the top of the organisation who supports this, it flows through the whole company.

To date, we have been focused on physical, financial and mental wellbeing. This has now started to interact with social wellbeing as well. It’s been about building connections and generating momentum with colleagues and managers – and ultimately, that’s also about leadership.

There is a balancing act to determine how much we can achieve under the banner of ‘social wellbeing’ as part of our wellbeing programme, and how much relates to wider issues such as leadership and engaging our people.

Both leadership and engagement also interlink with diversity, equality and inclusion and we can do more in that area. We want to make sure that all of our offerings and services and the way we interact with our people are inclusive.

A lot of the benefits and services we offer have to meet the needs of a very diverse organisation, both in terms of the roles within the company and individuals in the workforce. We have a separate diversity and inclusion team and want to bring it closer to our wellbeing team and ‘join the dots’. How do we make sure we bring more fairness and equality to everyone? One aspect of that is addressing preventative and reactive approaches to wellbeing, using tools, insurances and carelines to meet everyone’s needs, not just those of senior staff.

We still have work to do around assessing the effectiveness of our wellbeing offering. People know it’s there – but do they use it? How effective is it? We know people are using the services and I think it’s important to make sure people know that they’re being cared for from a company perspective.

Covid has made wellbeing become so much more important – it’s all encompassing now.

The author is Vish Buldawoo VP, global benefits and wellbeing at Centrica.

This article is also featured in our Employee Wellbeing Research 2021. Download your copy of the report.