Episode 24 · 31 January 2023 · 50:39

Britain’s Healthiest Workplaces: Meeting the 2023 Award Winners

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Key findings: presenteeism, hybrid work, and younger employees
other#presenteeism #hybrid-work #young-employees
The origins and purpose of the awards
other#awards #purpose #origins
2022 winners across three categories
other#winners #categories #2022
What the judges look for and the role of ESG
other#judging-criteria #esg #wellbeing
Lessons from the winners: culture, leadership, and line managers
other#culture #leadership #line-managers
Worrying trends: worsening health and burnout
other#burnout #health-trends #wellbeing
The cornerstones of wellbeing
other#wellbeing #cornerstones #health
The business case for wellbeing
other#business-case #wellbeing #roi
Getting started: practical steps and final takeaways
other#practical-steps #takeaways #wellbeing

Show notes

Britain's Healthiest Workplaces: Meeting the 2023 Award Winners

This week on Truth, Lies & Work — Al and Leanne meet the people behind Britain's Healthiest Workplace Awards: Christian Van Stolk, the researcher leading the survey at RAND Europe; Jill Pritchard, Director of Vitality at Work; and Donna Burgess from OpenCredo, this year's winner in the small business category.

The survey — founded by Vitality and free for any business to take part in — gives employers deep insight into their people's lifestyle, physical and mental health, and the impact the pandemic has had on them. But as our guests reveal, the real value isn't just in the data. It's in what you do with it.

Join us as we unpack why wellbeing has to start at board level, what the winners did differently, and why authenticity beats any wellness perk you can buy.

Top 3 Takeaways

Wellbeing is a board-level issue. Every winner and every expert we spoke to said the same thing: if health and wellbeing isn't a priority at the top, it won't stick anywhere else. This can't be delegated to HR and forgotten.
Authenticity beats perks. As Jill put it — don't put a sticky plaster on a broken leg. Employees can tell the difference between a genuine commitment to their wellbeing and a box-ticking exercise. Care has to be real.
Measure behaviours, not just health outcomes. Christian's research looks at work behaviours — like sending emails at 6am — and connects them to health and wellbeing outcomes. What gets measured gets managed, and the survey is free.

What We Learned From the Winners

Donna Burgess — OpenCredo (Small Business Winner)

OpenCredo won the small business category, and Donna's advice is refreshingly simple: it comes down to teams and people. Whether you're a team of five or five thousand, the commonality is relationships. "We are all humans first" was her closing sentiment — and it's hard to argue with that.

The Research Behind the Awards

Christian Van Stolk from RAND Europe has been running this survey for over a decade. His insight? Very few organisations — and very few academics — were looking at the health and wellbeing of the workforce in a structured way. The survey fills that gap, and the longitudinal data is now revealing some worrying trends: the health of the UK workforce is worsening, and burnout is becoming a significant issue.

Jill Pritchard — Vitality at Work

Jill reminded us that this isn't just about being nice to people. There's a clear business case: more engaged workers, better retention, improved productivity. Wellness isn't a gesture — it's much more than that.

How to Get Involved

The Britain's Healthiest Workplace survey is free to take part in. It gives you:

Deep insight into your employees' lifestyle, physical and mental health
Recommendations to boost physical and mental wellbeing
A clear link to business outcomes like productivity and retention
A framework to write, execute, and measure an effective wellbeing strategy

Links to the survey, the winners' results, and the FT report are all in the show notes below.

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.

Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.

Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. What this award has done is it's also helped our parent company understand the importance of what we do from the people side of things.

Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture Welcome back to the Truth, Lies and Work podcast where we help you simplify the science of people. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.

Al ElliottMy name is Al and I'm a business owner.

Leanne ElliottAnd welcome back.

Al ElliottWelcome. And if you are new, then welcome to you. I hope that you've been going through our back catalogue because we've been looking at the numbers and we can tell you have. We've been snooping on you.

Leanne ElliottWe can see you. No, really. But no, thank you. Thank you for joining us. You're very welcome. And please do get in touch. truthliesandwork.com is our website. You can follow us on the socials, Truth, Lies, Work. Drop us an email, get— drop us a message. We do read them and we do respond. We love to connect with our listeners.

Al ElliottOkay, so what are we talking about today, Leah?

Leanne ElliottWell, today we are talking about Britain's Healthiest Workplace Survey and the awards. Last week we were talking about how to build a killer employer brand, and as we learnt, employer brand is the external representation of our internal culture. And of course, culture and wellbeing go hand in hand. So today we're going to talk about Britain's Healthiest Workplace Awards, the lessons you can apply within your culture to create an environment in which your people thrive. Don't worry too much if you're not from the UK. These insights will help any business of all shapes and sizes wherever they are in the world.

Al ElliottYeah. So we're gonna go, we've got 3 amazing guests, so we'll get straight into it and introduce those guests. The first one is Jill Pritchard, who's the Director of Vitality at Work at Vitality, and she's the leader behind the awards. So I started off being a pharmacist, but I very quickly realized that actually it wasn't the drugs pathway that I was precious about. So when I was offered a job to come and work for Vitality, to actually take the Vitality program and take it to large organizations as a wellbeing program, that really excited me. And I thought, actually, preventive care is the best care.

Leanne ElliottMy second guest is Donna Burgess. Donna is Head of Operations and People at Open Credo, who are one of the winners of this year's award.

Al ElliottSo I actually joined Open Credo as a portfolio people portfolio manager. My role now is, it's a hybrid role. The role I do now, it's half business operations and half people. So it's quite different from the types of work that I used to do. The commonality is all around teams and people. And finally, let's go and meet Christian Van Stolk, who's the Executive Vice President at RAND Europe and one of the researchers behind the survey. So I'm Chris Van Stolk. I have a lofty title. I'm Executive Vice President at RAND Europe, but technically I'm really a researcher. And I've spent my last decade and a half looking at health and wellbeing of, uh, employees in different workforces. So let's just talk quickly about what the difference between the survey and the awards are. So Britain's Healthiest Workplace Survey, that was established to help businesses of all sizes support their employees to be happier, healthier, and more productive. Now, it was founded by Vitality Insurance. We've just heard from Jill, and it's free to take part, although you have to have 20 or more employees, and we'll go into that in a second. This survey is gonna give you the deep insight into your employees' lifestyle, physical, and mental health, And the effects the pandemic has had on them. It's gonna give you recommendations to help boost their physical and mental wellbeing. It's gonna help improve business outcomes like productivity and retention, and it helps you write, execute, and measure an effective wellbeing strategy. So the difference between this and your sort of like other types of awards, like, uh, like the Oscars, for example, is that no one's nominated for this. It's just the people who score highest. The companies that score highest are the actual winners. So Leanne's gonna take us through what the survey results told us in 2022.

Leanne ElliottYes, I am. And I think it is really cool what you said, Al. These, these awards are given out based on how employees are thinking, feeling, and talking about their own organisation. So there really is a lot of authenticity and integrity. What it also means is that it gives us some really great insights into the state of work in 2022. Yes, this is UK-centric, but I'm sure when I start to give you some little snippets, you'll have seen these statistics in other parts of the world as well. I'm not going to go through them all, but we We will leave a link to the website and also to an article by the Financial Times that goes into much more detail. But just a few insights to share with you, which I think are really interesting. First of all, we know that businesses are losing thousands of hours each year. So, productivity has been dropping steadily since 2014, and it's estimated that businesses lose over a month each year per employee. That's quite shocking.

Al ElliottThat really is, isn't it?

Leanne ElliottYeah. So in 2022, employees lost about 20% of working hours. So if you've got full-time employees that are working 5 days a week, that's an entire day they might as well just not even be there. That's a case for a 4-day work week right there, isn't it?

Al ElliottWhich is, which is another podcast for another day.

Leanne ElliottYes, it is.

Al ElliottSo what about hybrid work?

Leanne ElliottWe've learned that hybrid workers are thriving, and this is a finding that was also reflected in the State of Workplace Burnout 2023 report that we talked about a couple of episodes ago. So the pandemic changed everything. Hybrid working, is becoming a new normal for many of us. What's interesting is that the survey found that hybrid employees have the lowest loss of productive days. They're also more active and have better diets than office employees. And it also looks as though hybrid workers have better mental health than non-hybrid workers. So to give you some indication, about 9% of hybrid workers suffer from depression, While only 1.4% feel that stress from their home life interferes with their work life.

Al ElliottWe've got some episodes coming up around about Gen Z, millennials, um, and all the differences in working. So how does it affect the younger people?

Leanne ElliottWell, what the survey found, again, similar to results we, we saw in the burnout report, younger employees are struggling to adapt to the workplace. Findings suggested that they're less likely to report a good work-life balance and more likely to burn out. And as you'll remember, that was a really surprising statistic we found in the 2023 State of Workplace Burnout report. They're also, uh, younger employees are more likely to suffer from depression and have financial concerns. And again, linking it back to productivity, we're finding that employees under the age of 35 lose 12.5 more productive days per year than their older colleagues.

Al ElliottWhich is one more a month, isn't it?

Leanne ElliottMm-hmm. Yeah.

Al ElliottIt's quite a lot. So finally, a lot of organisations seem to have put put some kind of support in place, but how are employees finding that?

Leanne ElliottI think this is what I found one of the most interesting insights from the survey. You're absolutely right, and I think particularly as well during the pandemic, we saw employers putting a lot more support and health interventions for their employees. What we found is that organisations actually offer about 45 health interventions on average. That can be both staying active, eating well, and supporting mental wellbeing. But what we also found is that only 6% 61% of employees know about the support available. So there's almost, you know, there's 40% of our employees that don't even know what these interventions are, that aren't even accessing the support that's available to them. And on the flip side, 85% of employees who do access these interventions say their health improves when they use them. So I think that's a really important insight in this, and I think Krishna will talk about this a bit more as well. It's not always about doing more, it's about doing better.

Al ElliottSo let's go and join Gill and Christian as they explain the basis behind the awards. Remember, Gill is from Vitality, which is the company that produces the awards, and then Christian is the researcher behind the actual survey. Britain's Healthiest Workplace, it started off in 2012, and it was there, I would say, more predominantly as an award ceremony. So we were going out to find out actually what could organisations do to really support the health of their people. Go find out, let's, let's announce who was— who is the healthiest workplace in the UK. And as part of determining that, we ask a very broad set of questions from the environment, the culture, the services they offer, right through then to the actual health of the people. How is that environment helping the health of the people? And then taking that to the next stage of, well, actually, how does that affect their performance? So are people productive? Are they engaged? And another initiative is Britain's Healthiest Workplace, which is an initiative that's, you know, is done with Vitality, the University of Cambridge, the Financial Times. We started that really in earnest in 2013, and we've been running that ever since together. And it has given us some fantastic insights into, you know, into health and wellbeing of workplaces and employees within those workplaces. So let's answer the question that everyone's asking, who actually won?

Leanne ElliottYeah, so November 2022 was when the winners were announced. And they have 3 different categories for 3 organisational sizes. First up is the small business, which is 20 to 249 employees. First place was Open Credo, where our guest Donna, um, is from. Second was Blue Motor Finance, and in third was Phoenix Natural Gas. We then have the medium business category, that's 250 to 999 employees. First place in that category was Novo Nordisk, who we're going to hear a bit more about from, from Jill. Second place was Programme Planning Professionals Limited, and third was the CLS Group. In the large business category, that's more than 1,000 employees, first place went to Nomura, second to Arkiva, and third to Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust, which brings me joy because I used to, I used to do some employee engagement and culture work with the NHS. That is cool.

Al ElliottSo we'll put these winners in the show notes so you can go and, uh, go and do some research on them if you, if you wanted to. Um, we are obviously going to hear from Donna from Open Credo, which was the winner of the small business category. But I think the question a lot of people, listeners, have got right now is, what actually is it going to do for me to, A, take the survey, and B, if I was nominated or winning? So let's hear from Gill. In order to collate all of these results to determine who is the winner, we actually found that actually the most beneficial part of this survey was not actually being awarded, but it was actually the great insight that you got from participating, because you start to see the relationships between having great leadership or having the right culture or having the right services that their people are aware of ultimately does improve the health of the people and ultimately does improve the productivity. So I would say now, whilst yes, it is a competition, I would say 90% of organizations that participate are actually doing it to get a true understanding of the health of their workforce.

Leanne ElliottSo clearly a business case there once again for prioritizing Wellbeing and healthy workplaces. Let's hear Donna. So as we said, Donna is Head of Operations and People at Open Credo, who is the winner in the small business category.

Al ElliottI think, um, it has made us realise, really realise, the impact of people-focused activities that can have on the workplace itself. Um, and also that a lot of these things, they sort of, they, they almost Not happening in the background, but they're not always in the forefront of people's mind that these things are being put in place, like people, you know, support and various benefits and those sorts of things. And I just think it's brought it much more to the forefront of the importance really of a wide spectrum of people-focused activities. And I'm not talking about just the social things and those, but there's celebrating people's achievements. We do that as well every month. And also, I think there's a focus, and also I think there's a focus on us as individuals, as we've individually answered the survey. Perhaps there's a focus of like, actually, I could do more here for myself as well. So, which is not necessarily what the company can do. So, um, the company can't help me sleep better, but that's something that I can do myself, you know. So it's helpful for those, those aspects as well.

Leanne ElliottDonna raised a really good point there, you know. As business leaders, we can't, we can't control every aspect of a person's Wellbeing or, or health, there are certain things that we can do and other things that we can help to, to support them. But I think what's great about what Donna said there is even just making this part of the conversation and raising awareness then helps you feel more, more accountable and more empowered as an individual to start to make some lifestyle changes as well.

Al ElliottI think it's really worthwhile because when you examine something, like what gets measured gets managed, when you examine something, it does make you ask questions. Talking of asking questions, let's hear from the researcher.

Leanne ElliottChristian.

Al ElliottAnd what I realized is that very few organizations at the time, very few academics are really looking at the human factor. So it's almost like the human factor was taken out of these systems. And we were talking about systems, processes, capacity in abstract terms, and not really thinking about how the human was really at the center of this. And also, sometimes we, I guess, we sort of reduced the human to being sort of this rational being, economic being, And ultimately what we know, Leanne, is that there's many dimensions to human behavior, and there's a very strong, you know, irrational side to it as well, to human behavior and so on. So really understanding really what's, how health and wellbeing of individuals plays into this, I think was really, really quite critical.

Leanne ElliottI had a really interesting conversation with Christian, and I think one of the things that I really enjoyed hearing about was Why? Why do we need to examine work behaviors and wellbeing? Here's Kristian.

Al ElliottThe idea was really to look at certain types of work behaviors and then look at what the health and wellbeing impacts of that work behavior would be. So for instance, you could say sending emails late in the evening is bad for health and wellbeing, or you get up really early and you start working, that is bad for your health and wellbeing, or being in excessive number of meetings during the day might be bad for your health and wellbeing. These were the hypotheses that we were testing. As it happens, in this research, what we showed is that there are really different categories of workers. First of all, that's important to think about. So, you know, even within an organization, there are a variety of different subcultures. And these workers typically like to work in slightly different ways. And that's interesting. And if you dig below that, there is no real uniform type of work behaviors that leads to optimal health and wellbeing outcomes. So what this means is really that there's a high degree of personalization that is required within a workforce. So having a blanket ban on emails after 7 or 8 in the evening might seem like a good idea to a chief executive, but ultimately, you probably are sort of impacting negatively the, you know, a certain group of workers within your organization.

Leanne ElliottThere's 2 things I took from that. I think the first of, you know, why should we measure these behaviors? Our assumptions can be wrong. You know, Christian here is a very experienced scientist and, and researcher. And as he said there, they had hypotheses that, that turned out not to be true.

Al ElliottAnd I think, and anecdotally, that does make sense because we all know people who, who send emails at 6 in the morning. And, you know, some of them, it just works better for them to get all the emails out the way. I mean, there's so many books on it saying that if you can do all your stuff, like Eat That Frog and all the other stuff where you do all the stuff in the morning, then And you leave the rest of the day for creativity. Yeah, by saying you can't send emails at 5 o'clock in the morning, that's, you know, that's not going to fit in with everyone's way of working.

Leanne ElliottYeah, and, you know, that's what, what Christian's found in, in his research, both through this survey and, um, into hybrid work, which I'm sure we'll talk about another episode. Um, there are typically kind of 4 clusters that, that he's identifying, and, and those 4 clusters of employees usually depend on whether they're an individual contributor or whether they're a line manager. It depends on their gender, their age, their years of tenure, and all of these things can, can feed into their preferences in terms of behaviours at work.

Al ElliottSo, we now know a little bit more about the actual behaviour study and the research. Let's find out what the judges are actually looking for. Here's Gill. So, we— it's all calculated quite scientifically, and so it's not— it's all data-driven decisions. And so initially we look at that environment, and so the metrics that we look in there is actually what are the comprehensive nature of the services that have been offered? Are their employees aware of the services? Are they using them? And most importantly, are they benefiting from them? So are you, are you offering the right things? But actually interventions can just be sticky plasters if you don't necessarily have the culture that allows people to utilize them. And feel, you know, it's okay for me to go for a walk at lunchtime. So it's, you know, the interventions are just sticky plasters unless you get that culture right. So we also look at that culture as how do people feel about that organization and their values? You know, is it a diverse, inclusive workforce? Are they being supported by their line managers? And so it's really trying to capture, is the workplace the right environment for us to thrive? So that's the first measure. The second measure then is purely a measure of health of those individuals. And we utilize a clinical algorithm that takes both in physical health metrics but also lifestyle behaviors to give you a health age. And we call it the Vitality Age, and it's the gap between someone's health age and their chronological age as we have as a determinant of health. So we look at this Vitality Age Gap overall for an organization to see how is the health of that organization. The final element then is, is actually what are the outputs? So what are as outcomes that an organization would be looking for if they've got a comprehensive wellbeing strategy, and that's where it comes to the productivity, engagement, satisfaction. The 4th measure we then look at is actually participation, because in order for it to be credible, you say you need a certain proportion of your population participating in the survey, and so you've got to get and reach a threshold to allow it to be statistically valid. But then if you go over and above that, the more that you get to That's so we give you more points to, to become overall Britain's Healthiest Workplace.

Leanne ElliottThis is awesome. So just to, to break down and recap what Gill said there in terms of what the judges are looking for. First of all, they are going to look at, um, the nature of services and interventions that are being offered. But the key thing here that Gill says, interviews can just be sticky plasters if you don't have the culture that allows people to utilise them. And I think that is massive. Otherwise, we are throwing money at interventions that people either aren't utilising or aren't meeting their needs. So I think that's a really great point from, from Gill there. And as part of that culture piece as well, they also look at diversity, inclusion, and as always, the line manager. The second measure then is, as Gill said, around health of those individuals. Um, so that's lots of questions about physical health, mental health, and lifestyle to get their vitality age. The 3rd element is outputs. What are the business outcomes an organisation should be looking for if they have a comprehensive wellbeing strategy? Positive wellbeing is good for business. It's as simple as that. And in terms of the threshold, what Gill's saying there, if we have 100 people in our organisation, but only 20 fill out the survey, that's not going to meet a threshold So we need to know that that data is scientifically valid. So you are going to have to get a minimum response rate in that survey in terms of percentage of your team.

Al ElliottSo we're now going to hear from Christian, the researcher behind it. He uses a term which I didn't know, and I'm not sure everyone will know, of ESG. What does that mean, Leanne?

Leanne ElliottESG is environmental, social, and governance. It's basically a framework of non-financial factors that helps us understand and assess the risks and opportunities within an organisation that aren't financially related. Really, at the heart of this is the idea of sustainable business, and I think that's where Kristian is quite right to talk about bringing health into, into part of that conversation.

Al ElliottSo let's hear from Kristian. There's hardly ever a winner that, that does not have health and wellbeing as a key organisational priority. Typically, there's quite significant engagement with the board around around health and wellbeing. They tend to report on their health and wellbeing, almost a little bit like an ESG aspect of it, but I would call it ESGH. You know, health is an important dimension of that as well. And I'm actually working with Business for Health to bring the H into the ESG debate as well. And I think that's really important. Line managers' capacity. They tend to invest quite a lot in their line managers in terms of giving them training and upskilling them in terms of managing health and wellbeing of staff. And they typically have a really well-structured and branded health and wellbeing program as well, whereby, you know, it's easy to access. All employees understand exactly what the employer organization is doing around this, that they know it's important. Okay, so now let's talk about how you actually apply. Here's Gill. Yeah, so the survey is free of charge for any organization. Over 20 employees. To be clear, the 20 employees is because we need anonymous data, and so that's from a GDPR perspective. And we encourage every sector, as I say, it's completely free to participate. And you— the— at the back of it, what we do is we, we analyze that data and give not just your points to go towards the competition, but incredibly comprehensive review to address how's your well-being strategy, how's it affecting your people, how's it affecting So it doesn't matter whether you're completely new to wellbeing and you want to understand the risk factors and your starting point, or the likes of Novo Nordisk and Nomura who've got a really well-established wellbeing strategy and want to understand what's working well and what's not working well.

Leanne ElliottThe survey is a really great resource, and as Gill said, it's free and it's going to give you some really great insights into how your, your business is currently managing it. its wellbeing, its wellbeing strategy. Gill also mentioned one of the other winners of the awards this year, Novo Nordisk. They won the medium-sized business category. So we asked Gill, why did Novo win?

Al ElliottYou look at Novo Nordisk and they were right up there. So their support that they give their employees is as high for the healthy behaviours as it is when they're unwell, which brings me right back to where we started, that actually it's that preventative care that can ultimately stop people then following on and needing curative care. And it allows your people just to remain engaged, remain productive, and they'll get the best out of them. You know, health isn't just in work, health is 24/7. But more importantly, because it's got that culture from the top, the line managers also know the importance of the well-being of their people, but also to signpost it really easy. So you get this culture that actually they've, they've done some really simple things. So for their line managers If you can't fit it on one page, you're offering way too much.

Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?

Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.

Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—

Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.

Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Al ElliottIt can. And Are We All Just Status Seeking Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. Just to remind ourselves, if you can't fit it on one page, you're offering too much. But as Christian's about to tell us, it's not a silver bullet. So typically, there are no silver bullets in this field. So I think it is really about giving line managers the capacities to manage their staff. It's also a really important thing to remember that about looking after the health and wellbeing of line managers. And I'll explain to you what I mean by that in a second. So it's really about giving myself and other managers the skills to actually do their job properly. And most line managers are really not trained to do their jobs. They're just promoted on the basis of being— having good technical skills like myself. So I think it is about understanding really what we want line managers to do. On the other hand, line managers are not really immune to poor health and wellbeing. You know, my health and wellbeing fluctuates like anybody else's. And when my health and wellbeing is suboptimal, As is the case for many line managers when they're under a lot of pressure. It also reduces their effectiveness in managing the health and wellbeing of their staff. There are lots of studies that show exactly that. So we also need to look after our line managers and not make them sort of— not overburden them with huge responsibility without giving them something in return. So ultimately what we're talking about, and this always comes down to the same thing, it's about a cultural shift within organizations, really.

Leanne ElliottChristian is, is emphasising the, the point there that, that wellbeing strategy, culture, and great line managers all go hand in hand and work together to create one of the, the healthiest workplaces. And a really important point there as well, the health and wellbeing of our management teams, of our leaders, is equally important. We have to invest in ourselves as much as we invest in our teams.

Al ElliottYeah, absolutely.

Leanne ElliottSo we've heard from the winners in the small and medium business categories. The winner in the large business category, that's more than 1,000 employees, was Nomura. So they have actually been part of Britain's Healthiest Workplace for the past 8 years, and they say the message to our employees is that this is a long-term relationship, and in any long-term relationship, you have to invest in the people, build them up, and prioritise personal wellbeing development. And I think that's just a really cool sentiment to have at the heart of your wellbeing strategy. As employer to employee, let's invest in this as a long-term relationship.

Al ElliottExactly. Really, really good stuff there. And it's all about this idea that it's down to relationships, adult-to-adult relationships, everyone being invested in the same thing in a long-term basis. Speaking of which, what else can we learn from the winners? We asked Gill what they did well. So they treat the well-being of their people with the highest priority as they treat profit. And there's some simple things that organizations can do that cost nothing that will help that. For example, have you got someone on your board that is responsible and accountable for the well-being of your people? Because unless you've got that board accountability, how are you expecting it then to flow down to be important to the lead— the senior leaders? How do you expect it then to flow down to to be important to the line managers, and then how do you expect it to flow down to the employees? So you've got to start at the top. And the organizations that we've done well— I know Nomura, as an example, has always done this— is that they report at board level once a month on the wellbeing of their staff. And it's just, it keeps it as a high priority and it keeps it front of mind. It's just such a simple thing, but it makes all of a difference.

Leanne ElliottIt is a simple thing, and it's a simple thing that you can put in place now, that you could have in, in place in your business at your next board meeting. You know, just having, having that person responsible and accountable for the well-being of your people. That's a really tough question to, to ask yourself honestly. As a business, do you put people before profit? It's a hard question to answer, and if you're not sure, then I'd say maybe get somebody on the board who, who could answer that question for 100%.

Al ElliottAnd we're going to hear more about why it's important to come from the top in a second. Before that, let's go back to Donna, one of the winners, and we're going to ask her, were there any surprises in the survey or the awards? Yeah, I think we weren't fully sure of the spectrum that was going to be covered. So that, that was quite revealing. So to us, and it was like, oh, how does this fit with health? So there was that, those sorts of moments for me. So it was quite, so it was quite broad. It was quite broad. So yeah, it was interesting in that respect.

Leanne ElliottAgain, I think that's a really cool thing about, about the, the survey and the awards. They do cover a large spectrum of what it means to create a healthy workplace. And as I mentioned at the top there, it's the survey that sits behind the awards, and the survey has really given us some valuable insights that we can all use to better understand our business and the and wellbeing of our employees. We asked Gill a little bit more about the survey and the trends that she observed in the data.

Al ElliottSo the survey data, I mean, there's a definite trend that the health of the UK workforce is worsening, and I think we predicted that. But actually, to get that stark data, particularly looking at mental health and obesity, there was— it was always a trend that it was worsening, but actually it's shifted up now. And the same with burnout and fatigue, you know, over a quarter of our workforce are now reporting that, and that's, that's a concern. But it's also when we link then that to the productivity and the engagement of those people that are suffering, it's significantly worse. And that's what I want the survey data to be used, is actually there's this opportunity to say, you know what, there's a business case for wellbeing. Because actually, if we can really put effort in and invest in making our people healthier, we gain as a business. We get more productive people, we get more engaged people, and they're less likely to leave us.

Leanne ElliottI think this is a really worrying pattern we're seeing in the data that's coming out. Burnout is becoming a significant problem. We know from our burnout episodes, it was estimated up to half of the workforce are experiencing burnout. The Vitality Survey has suggested it's about a quarter, about 25%. Um, so I'm sure, you know, the, the number lies between those 2 points. If you are worried about burnout, um, do please go back and, and listen to, to the episodes that, that we did on, on that. There's some really great advice in there, both for your own health and wellbeing and for that of your team.

Al ElliottSo we also asked Christian, was there anything interesting coming out of the results that he saw? But I'll give you one example of a, a piece of work we did with a pharmaceutical company. They were interested in something called nocturia, which might not mean very much to you, But nocturia is something quite familiar to many of us because it's when we get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. And they wanted to understand how getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom impacted people's, you know, working lives. So my view on that was that, well, look, as you get older, obviously, you're more likely to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and so on. And my feeling is that you probably fall asleep relatively quickly afterwards, so the impact would be relatively minor. And by doing a study, and again, we use some of the Vitality data to do so, what we actually established is that it has quite a significant impact. So even very small things, and that comes back to the point I was making about our circadian rhythms, about our biorhythms, very small disruptions to that routine has quite a very significant impact and much more so than I thought it would. So let's get down to the money. How does concentrating on wellbeing actually help us as business owners? This is what Kristian had to say. It depends. I mean, you know, there are studies that show the link between health and wellbeing and, for instance, share prices. So you could see, I mean, that's kind of a very fundamental aspect if you're a publicly listed company, that, you know, that there is an association between the two. And so, for instance, there's some really good evidence on the link between staff engagement and rogue behavior. So let's say if you're a financial services firm and you're really worried about rogue behavior, which leads to compliance issues and maybe fines from the regulator. There's some really good work that shows that more engaged staff, and typically those are staff with better health and wellbeing, also show less rogue behavior. So that's why financial services companies might be interested in it. And that has a direct impact in terms of their fines on their bottom line. I mentioned the NHS, you know, around the links between health and wellbeing, quality of care, Hospital-acquired infections, mortality risks. I mean, I could keep going. Financial surplus in trusts, not that that exists any longer, but let's say that we were tracking that a few years ago. You know, deep-rooted organizational outcomes. So even to the point where, as you're working with, let's say, an automotive company that produces cars, where they could see material differences in terms of, you know, productivity on the assembly line, for instance. Yeah.

Leanne ElliottYeah, it's really interesting how we, how we think and feel really does impact our, our behaviour. And I think an interesting example that, that Christian gave there for me was the, the relationship between employee engagement and rogue behaviours.

Al ElliottMm.

Leanne ElliottI think that, you know, that makes sense if we think about what we know about employee engagement. We know that employees who are engaged typically feel more psychologically safe and have better relationships with their line managers. So, in terms of reporting errors. We also know in psychologically safe teams, more errors are reported. That's not to say they make more errors, they report more errors. There's more transparency around what's actually going on in the business. So therefore, you know, creating an environment where these, these rogue behaviors are gonna be far reduced, I think just, just makes sense.

Al ElliottYeah, absolutely. And I think you, like, we talk about the Nick Leeson, who's— God, that must be like 25 years ago. Nick Leeson, I can't remember which company, but he was the— they did a, um, a film or a movie around him. And basically he was the one, the rogue trader, um, who lost thousands, millions. I don't know how much he lost. It was an awful lot of money, um, just because he made a mistake and then tried to cover it up and then couldn't go and tell people he'd made the mistake. So he kept trying to trade out of his losses. Um, so yeah, it does make a lot of sense. And if you're not a financial company, if you're a creative agency, um, then just the idea of someone turning up at work feeling healthy, feeling energized, fully engage in the work they're gonna do, that's gonna make such a difference to the quality of work you create and also the productivity.

Leanne ElliottAnd the happiness of your customers.

Al ElliottOh yeah, definitely, definitely. So we asked all 3 guests what they thought the cornerstones of wellbeing were. Should we start with Jill?

Leanne ElliottYes.

Al ElliottAuthenticity is, and what I mean by that is actually, I do actually care. So I'm not putting a sticky plaster on. I'm not saying that I'm gonna recruit a wellbeing manager because that's the right thing to do. I actually truly understand the importance and the value that will bring not only to my workforce, but actually to me as a business owner. I truly understand that there is a, there's a relationship there and that actually there's this shared value concept.

Leanne ElliottThis isn't fluff, people.

Al ElliottThere are a number of trends to be aware of in a sense, but I think the trends that stick out the most is worsening mental health over a long period of time. Now, now you might highlight the pandemic period and you say, well, look, of course, the pandemic period arrived, and that, that, that put a lot of pressure on individuals. And maybe the cost of living crisis will do the same as, as, as we speak. Uh, but the reality is that our— the mental health of our workforce has been getting worse, and we're using the same exact measurements year on year.

Leanne ElliottThe other great thing about, about the survey is it, it's a longitudinal study. This has been going for 10+ years now. Um, so yeah, it might be easier as a, as a business owner or even a You know, a political leader to blame the pandemic for the worsening state of physical and mental health in our workplaces. But as Christian says there, the longitudinal data shows us that mental health in our workforce has been getting worse for more than a decade.

Al ElliottSo finally, let's hear from Donna. The commonality is all around teams and people. So whether you— if you're a project manager, you're still working with, you know, a team of people working towards a goal. In a company, it's a similar thing. We have, you know, business goals. And all of the people are contributing to that. So on a day-to-day basis, the work, the day-to-day work is different, but the essence of people and moving forward and reaching goals is the same.

Leanne ElliottSo to recap there, the cornerstones: Gill promotes authenticity, leadership's really understanding there is a value to wellbeing. Christian's point there, mental health in the workplace is getting worse. If we don't Now, we could be in real trouble in a couple of years' time. And Donna is all about people. I think it's clear to see why Donna and Open Credo absolutely smashed it this year and quite deservedly won the small business category.

Al ElliottDefinitely, definitely. And so let's move on to the business case for wellbeing. So this is our final push to you to say this. As Leanne said, this isn't fluff. This isn't, oh, it's nice to have. This isn't, oh, it's for big companies. Companies, there is an actual business case for wellbeing, as Christian explains. Well, the initial impact was really around building a business case for health and wellbeing in workplaces. So try to get information together to show that the health and wellbeing of employees is linked to a variety of different business outcomes. So if you improve the health and wellbeing of employees, you also improve those business outcomes. But actually, over time, what we found is that the initiative itself has become an intervention as well. So those organizations that are participating within it get a lot out of it and start and start on an improvement journey themselves. They're benchmarking themselves against each other, and that in and by itself leads to improvement in those workplaces. So I think it's fair to say that from a researcher point of view, initially I thought this would be interesting in terms of collecting data and starting to make that business case. But ultimately, intervention itself, the initiative such as the surveys that we do and the reports that we give to the participants in the in the competition, that in and by itself was driving improvement as well.

Leanne ElliottYeah, and we see that in other areas of research as well, with employee engagement, with wellbeing, any kind of, I guess, employee voice initiative, we see a boost in morale, which in turn tends to give us a little uptick in employee engagement and wellbeing. Just showing that we care is often a really good place to start.

Al ElliottI think Jill from Vitality sums it up perfectly. From an employer, I benefit because I've got a more engaged workforce. They produce better outcomes, they're more productive.

Leanne ElliottSummed it up perfectly, I think, there, Jill. Wellness isn't just a gesture, it's much more than that. So we asked Donna, what do you think wellbeing is?

Al ElliottI remember— I think that it is remembering that we are all humans first. The most, you know, we have to remember our humanness. I think that's the most important thing, because you can have all the bells and whistles, you can have all of these You can have the ping pong tables, all those sorts of things, but they're very— they can be very superficial if you haven't got the fundamental understanding of our humanness and our connectiveness and our community and the fact that we actually— humans need each other as well. So, and the importance of collaboration and those sorts of things. So I think from that springs a whole bunch of other things. So, um, and that isn't to the detriment of, you know, forgetting that we have to deliver to clients, but they are also people. So it's people delivering to people. So for me, that's my personal, personal philosophy is around remembering the humanness of us all first and foremost. So just like redesigning your logo doesn't automatically give you a new brand, putting a ping pong table in the break room doesn't automatically give you wellness and wellbeing.

Leanne ElliottVery nice. Very well said. A really great sentiment from Donna there. And again, I think just that authenticity shines through. So let's say that you are convinced, you understand the business case for having a healthy workplace, you're excited about this data and Britain's Healthiest Workplace Awards. Where do we start? Let's hear from Kristian.

Al ElliottUltimately, my approach has always been is to try to outline the improvement journeys, try to do the benchmarking, and try to make organizations understand how they could improve in this space. And there are organizations in the lifecycle of Britain's Healthiest Workplace that have improved greatly as well, you know, in terms of how they do it. So all of this is possible. It's just about making it an organizational priority, I guess, to some extent. And then, you know, that would be where I think the key aspect of all of this comes in. The key message of all of this comes in is that if you make it an organizational priority, in all likelihood, your business outcomes and your organizational outcomes will improve as well.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

Al ElliottSo that's, that's the logic that I see everywhere where I've worked.

Leanne ElliottA great step one from Christian there. Commit to health and wellbeing being a priority at board level. What's next? We asked Donna.

Al ElliottUm, you have to start with understanding the current landscape. There's, there, in my opinion, there's no, there's no point rolling out a whole bunch of initiatives if you don't understand what's currently going on. When I joined Open Credo, I did one-to-one interviews with every single person in the company. I asked them about their experiences, the things they liked, they didn't like, and that helped me surface some patterns.

Leanne ElliottAgain, patterns.

Al ElliottAbout what was going on in the organisation, what was going on for some individuals, what was going on a bit more collectively. I think the most important thing is to understand the landscape. I personally don't think it's helpful If you're a new person going into an organisation, particularly, the whole new broom, you just sweep away everything that exists. I think it's really, really important to understand what exists first before applying any changes.

Leanne ElliottIf you are a regular listener, I think you'll, you'll be starting to see some people and culture themes coming up here. You know, Donna made a really great point there. Before we can plot out where we want to get to, we need to start by understanding exactly where we are, what's working, where can we improve. And we do that by asking employees, by using employee voice.

Al ElliottAs Kristian reminds us, this isn't just for the massive companies. And also, don't think that because you're a small employer, you cannot match what large employers are doing. To some extent, that's true, but you don't need 60 interventions, you know, you know, you know, to make a material difference in this.

Leanne ElliottAnd, you know, going back to the insights we we saw before, you know, typically only 60% of your employees are aware of the interventions that are in place already. So adding more and more isn't really going to do much to improve the health and wellbeing of your teams. You're better investing your time in, in raising awareness and making sure that your people understand the support that is already in place. And as a small business, that is a really great opportunity for you.

Al ElliottSo we talked before about how the importance of board-level buy-in— this has to come from the top. This can't just be, as we said before, sticking a ping pong table in the break room. This is really, really important that everyone, from the top to the bottom, believes that this is going to make a big difference. Here's Donna. Yeah, absolutely. The directors, the company directors are open to a lot of the people-focused ideas that come their way. So I'm part of the leadership team, so I have, I have that access as well. So, and I'm part on the board as well, so I can take these things to that audience. As well. Um, and our parent company— this, what this award has done is it's also helped our parent company understand the importance of what we do within our organisation from the people side of things.

Leanne ElliottAs I mentioned before, the first thing you can do, a really easy thing you can do, is make sure that you have somebody on your board, on your senior leadership team, who represents wellbeing.

Al ElliottSo Christian explains, you actually also need to be realistic. So I think as an employer, you need to be realistic in terms of what you can achieve in terms of that space. So I think in terms of the health and wellbeing of employees, and of course the mental health factor there, is really in terms of, you know, I would say arresting that decline and maybe reversing some of that, you know, year on year. And that's, you know, can mean a multitude of interventions, of course, that you want to use. But also, I think to some extent requires a cultural shift. We spoke about personalization in the workplace and flexible working and these kind of aspects of it. I think that's quite fundamental to it, I think, in terms of not forcing individuals who prefer to work in a certain way to work in another way.

Leanne ElliottIf you listened to last week's episode on employer brand, we shared a statistic with you that a lot of businesses don't feel that they have the resources to build out a really great employer brand. What Christian is saying there is mirroring the same sentiment conclusion that we came to. You know, employer brand is actually about culture, as wellbeing is as much about culture. You don't have to have all these fancy interventions that are the same as large organisations. Focusing on the culture within your business and the culture shift required to nurture the health and wellbeing of your employees could be huge.

Al ElliottSo this culture shift, it means coming— we've learned that it needs to come from the top. We need to all be in it together. So just going and investing in engagement survey isn't enough, or worse, just creating your own on SurveyMonkey and hoping that it's going to fix things. It's not enough just to have an engagement survey, as Christian explains. What I would say is that most organizations nowadays do an engagement survey, you know, staff engagement survey. I would look at that engagement survey quite carefully. It's often an off-the-shelf product that they, that they buy off somebody. I would look at that very carefully. And I would, I would You know, add a number of, you know, health and wellbeing questions within that survey. And that really probably gives you a little bit of a baseline of what you're doing, what's happening already in your workplace. And then you can sort of track that over time. So clearly collecting data is quite important. So we haven't paid Christian to say this, but essentially our own engagement and wellbeing survey, the RX7, is exactly what he's just described there. It's not just a sort of employer net promoter score. It is, it looks deep into the health and wellbeing of all of your employees and then tracks it over a period of time so you can see how well you're doing and how you're improving.

Leanne ElliottYes, and as well, you know, in a similar way to the Vitality survey, it's also about linking health and wellbeing with the thoughts and feelings your employees have about your business and how they translate into commercial outcomes. So whether you're using the British Healthiest Workplace Survey or the RX-7 or something else. Just make sure you're getting the insights you need to make impactful differences within your teams.

Al ElliottSo hopefully at this point you've heard from the winners, you've heard why it's good to run the survey, you've heard from the researcher behind it, you've heard from Jill from Vitality, um, who, who has the health insurance company.

Leanne ElliottUm, so you've, you've got this business case for doing a survey, but also you understand the fundamentals behind the survey and why it's actually going to Yeah, Britain's Healthiest Workplace Survey, um, and the awards, as I've said before, and I think we've all, all learned together now, there is a lot of authenticity and integrity behind these awards. And the data is not only selecting our winners, it is also giving us some really crucial insights into the state of the workplace. Vitality is an awesome organisation that has been working on this programme for over 10 years. So, So let's hear a little bit more from Jill and what she does at Vitality.

Al ElliottYeah, sure. So people will have heard of Vitality as an insurance company. It started 30 years ago back in, in South Africa. That's where it started. And actually, just a few guys got together and went, do you know what, let's disrupt the insurance world. So rather than calculating premiums based upon risk, they said, what if we could change that risk profile? Actually, that's better for us as an insurer because actually we'll have to pay out less if people are ill. They'll get better quicker, and then actually that's good for society. So it's that shared value concept that I spoke about, but actually rather than employer, it's about insurer. So make members healthier; it's better for the insurer. It's better for society. And over the last thirty years, Vitality have created this program based on. behavioral psychology and behavioral change to help our members live healthier lives. And this has taken 30 years and it's grown, but essentially it's a digital incentive-based wellbeing program which helps people understand their health, helps them improve their health, and then rewards them for doing so.

Leanne ElliottA really innovative company that genuinely care about the health and wellness of us, our teams, and of course our businesses. We will leave all the links in the show notes, including links to our guests today, so you can connect with them through LinkedIn and other socials. We'll also leave links to Britain's Healthiest Workplace Survey and Awards. So, if you want to take part, you'll have all the information you need to do that. And anything else we need to include there, Al? Oh, I also said I would include the, um, link to the full insights report, uh, should you want to dive into that.

Al ElliottYes. And so, if you look at the show notes, you'll see the link to that particular episode. Or if you haven't got the show notes for whatever reason, just go to truthliesandwork.com and you'll see the— go to episodes and you'll see it up there on the latest episode. Don't forget, we'll be continuing this discussion on LinkedIn and we'll leave a link to that LinkedIn post in the show notes.

Leanne ElliottWe will. Congratulations to all the winners of Britain's Healthiest Workplace Awards. You are awesome. We are inspired by you. Keep doing great work.

Al ElliottAnd thank you to Jill, Donna and Christian for taking the time out and talking to us and giving us their great insights. So we'll see you next week.

Leanne ElliottWe will see you soon.

Al ElliottBye-bye.