Wesleyan

Sector: Finance

Size of Organisation: 1,420 employees

Thrive Lead: Jess Jarvis

What they do: Wesleyan are a financial provider with its Head Office based in the iconic building in Colmore Circus Queensway. They employ over 1400 employees.

How Thrive at Work has impacted the organisation: They were looking for a way to ensure that they were focusing their effort to improve staff wellbeing on the right things. Thrive at Work provided the framework of good practice and validated it with an accreditation kite mark to enhance Wesleyan’s reputation and attract future talent.

Previously wellbeing had concentrated on promoting mental health awareness, but the framework also encouraged them to review policies and promote MSK health, which was very well received by staff. Thrive at Work also led Wesleyan to raise awareness of some lifestyle topics such as smoking awareness and cessation services, which hadn’t been included or supported before. It inspired them to bring all of its health and wellbeing resources into a single hub to help raise awareness among staff instead of sending out isolated communications.

Thrive at Work means that quantitative data is now more readily available to senior management regarding staff experience; this has led to more conversations around this topic, which in turn flows to departmental managers and influences the quality of support offered to staff. Overall, Wesleyan experience very little sickness absence or turnover attributed to the supportive environment that has led staff to feel supported and empowered to discuss mental health in the workplace and disclose the real reason for absences without the fear of stigma.

Many staff have approached HR to provide positive feedback regarding the health & wellbeing campaigns offered and how they have personally felt more supported. One such campaign related to menopause awareness; led those impacted to create a network to encourage open conversations around this topic. A webinar designed to address and discuss work-related burnout led to staff forming support groups to support those impacted.

Award Date: November 2022