This content is part of the Wellbeing Zone
The wellbeing subgroup was launched in August 2013 to build on the paper “Why wellbeing matters: Sustaining Employee Engagement & Wellbeing”. Chaired by Wendy Cartwright, former HRD for the Olympic Delivery Authority, the group sought to build upon the great work already taking place and provide a “wellbeing, nailing the evidence” whitepaper. Please access the whitepaper here.
The evidence in this whitepaper report has been drawn from three distinct perspectives: academic research, research by consultancies and organisational case studies. There are small case study vignettes in the main body of the report, but more detailed case studies for each of these are available on this website. One of these case studies were from Marks & Spencers, M&S was the winner of BITC’s Workwell 2013 Award. The vignette can be found below as well as in the white paper.
Case study: Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer (M&S) employs 85,000 employees in 53 countries. M&S believes that wellbeing is a critical component of engagement, which in turn drives business success, so their wellbeing programme aims to build a committed and healthy workforce that is involved with their communities.
To maximise participation M&S introduced components to the programme suggested by employees for example a calendar of initiatives such as the annual weight loss challenge and BIKE 24 charity challenge and a triage physiotherapy beating NHS 3 month waiting lists.
Turnover rates have improved since the launch down to a low of 0.50% in February 2013. Sickness absence fell 7% in one month. M&S has seen over 13,000 employees use its wellbeing website ‘planahealth.com’. Over 10, 5000 employees have now undertaken a wellbeing pledge to take steps, such as drinking more water, to improve their health; additionally 4 metric tonnes of weight were lost during the weight loss challenge while increasing staff engagement.
M&S wellbeing has also extended globally providing localised solutions to employee needs such as a Greek EAP programme and Wellbeing website for employees across India.
M&S was the winner of BITC’s Workwell 2013 Award.
