Working Well Essex, commissioned by Essex County Council provide workplaces in Essex with health and wellbeing support and offer the Working Well Accreditation to recognise an organisation’s commitment to health and wellbeing.

Organisations have an opportunity to earn three different levels of accreditation, with each level requiring a specific number of actions to be met that promotes, educates and supports employee health and wellbeing.

Selina Douglas, Essex Executive Director of Partnerships at NELFT said:

“I am delighted that NELFT has been awarded the Essex Working Well Level 1 Accreditation. We have worked hard to offer a wide range of health and wellbeing initiatives to support our teams. We are always improving, and we ensure that feedback from staff surveys is actioned, so that we can provide a holistic wellbeing offering.”

To achieve our Level 1 Accreditation, we had to evidence the following 5 key actions;

1. Policies and procedures to promote employee health and wellbeing
2. Publicity and Communication
3. Staff Survey/Workplace Needs Assessment
4. Recruit and train Wellbeing Ambassadors and Committee
5. Events and Initiatives

Our evidence involved highlighting some of these key initiatives we have as part of our holistic wellbeing offering:

• Bi-weekly health and wellbeing newsletter with various themes from menopause and men’s health to bereavement and stress.
• Health and wellbeing ambassadors to promote and educate their team members about health and wellbeing initiatives. Our ambassadors also work with the Staff Health & Wellbeing Team to organise team wellbeing away days.
• 11 well established staff networks, supported by the Trust’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team.
• Initiatives such as Disability Passports and Carers Passports
• Recently updated Flexible Working Policy to promote a healthy work-life balance
• Wide range of wellbeing activities available each day, such as mindfulness, yoga, Zumba, bereavement and grief webinars.

We look forward to working towards Level 2 and Level 3 Accreditations and continuing to build upon our wellbeing offer for NELFT colleagues.