REBA Awards Winner: The Pinnacle Award - Aviva

A key theme for the Awards this year has been joined-up thinking. Aviva entered and scored highly in several of our categories as well as winning the Social Wellbeing Award. However, all of Aviva’s entries showed a real commitment to wellbeing through its multi-faceted strategy covering physical, mental, financial and social wellbeing in depth. 

We were particularly impressed with the integration between  Aviva’s wellbeing programme and other areas of the business, including corporate social responsibility, diversity and inclusion and  its people function. Wellbeing progress is reported at board level and there is hands-on executive support for the colleague communities that underpin Aviva’s wellbeing strategy. Aviva has also involved unions and its wider employee consultative body, Your Forum, in its wellbeing plans. 

Aviva has also ensured that its colleagues as well as senior leaders are involved in defining its strategy. It has done this through its 375 strong Health Heroes scheme. Health Heroes ensure that employees at all of Aviva’s UK site are involved in activities that are relevant and accessible to them. 

The company is a strong advocate for work/life balance and has demonstrated this through an increased focus on carers as well as addressing emerging wellbeing challenges, such as isolation and loneliness for those based at home. 

As well as delivering a joined-up strategy, Aviva showed that it has a co ordinated approach to reporting on wellbeing progress. It combines data from a variety of different sources including staff surveys, Employee Assistance Programme reports and employee opinions on its intranet site to deliver a well-rounded analysis of how its strategy is performing. This has also enabled Aviva to demonstrate tangible results from its wellbeing programme such as reduced sickness absence, as well as planning future activity. 

REBA’s directors felt that Aviva demonstrated excellence not only in its four pillars of wellbeing (Be healthy, Be mindful, Be secure, Be awesome) but in the extent to which wellbeing is embedded into the culture of the organisation – it is truly part of its corporate DNA.