REBA Award Winner: YBS Group - Mental – fewer than 5,000 employees
Size: 3,900
Sector: Financial
Initiative: My Mind
What Yorkshire Building Society did
Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) wants all of its staff to feel respected, valued and proud of where they work. With a mission to provide “real help with real life” for its 3 million customers, YBS makes sure that it can deliver the same for all of its employees. A period of mergers and business change over 2017 and 2018 meant that staff needed help more than ever in adapting to new ways of working and building resilience. To help address this, YBS launched its mental health programme, My Mind, in June 2017.
My Mind is part of My Wellbeing, YBS’s broader workplace wellbeing strategy, which also includes modules such as My Finances and My Body. My Mind brings together YBS’s short, medium and long-term objectives for employees’ mental health. A short-term focus is to improve awareness of mental health and mental ill-health amongst its staff. In the medium term, YBS wants to help colleagues stay well and to support them when they are not. Its long term objectives include creating a culture where employees feel able to bring their whole self to work. YBS’s vision for mental wellbeing and its delivery has been led by employees themselves.
To help build the vision for wellbeing and create a plan for action, YBS surveyed around a fifth of its workforce (over 800 colleagues) and found that 79% wanted more information about mental health, rising to 91% in its branch network. Judges were impressed by YBS’s cross-organisational approach to mental health. Colleagues from the building society’s HR, legal, health and safety and corporate affairs teams are all involved – and YBS has also taken external inspiration from Thriving at Work and signed Time to Change’s Employer Pledge as well as working with staff unions.
The last year has seen a major evolution in My Mind. As well as sharing colleague stories through its “This is Me” series of videos, employees now have a new Employee Assistance Programme and access to online mental health platform Unmind. YBS has also provided bespoke training for senior leaders and managers in conjunction with the Mental Health Foundation. Charles Canning, YBS’s Chief Customer Officer says “Being open with colleagues and sharing how I feel at times has not only helped me personally but I hope has also encouraged colleagues to realise that it’s OK to sometimes feel vulnerable. It doesn’t make you a poor leader and can be turned into a real positive.”
Why Yorkshire Building Society won
YBS’s holistic programme stood out for our judges, with strong KPIs and well-defined outcomes. They liked the short, medium and long-term areas of focus in the strategy as well as the integration between My Mind and YBS’s broader My Wellness strategy.
They praised YBS’s engagement with a broad mix of stakeholders from different parts of the business. In addition, YBS’s use of external sources of best practice, such as the Thriving at Work report, Time To Change and Mind, showed that the building society is committed to creating a top-quality programme for all of its staff. “There wasa great focus on line manager capability,” added a judge, “and the involvement of employees, both in leading the development of the strategy and in sharing their experiences is really impressive.”