Improving Employee Health and Wellbeing at the University of Chester

1. Improving Employee Health and Wellbeing at the University of Chester Karen Cregan, Assistant Director of HRM Services

2. Challenges • To develop a holistic approach to health and wellbeing across the organisation. • To develop a Healthy University programme where interventions create organisational citizenship. • To reduce absences within the workplace • To integrate with other University strategies so that health and wellbeing interventions can contribute to overall employee and student performance • Maintain engagement of staff and students through challenging times

3. Business Case • Increased pressure (inside and outside work) • Negative impact on mental and physical health of individuals (increased presenteeism and absenteeism) • Improvement in Staff Survey results – moving from good employer to employer of choice • Reduced performance – low performing departments, frustrations with communications and change management • Corporate Social responsibility – The right thing to do!

4. What do we want to achieve? • Healthy University • Workplace Wellbeing Charter • IIP Health and Wellbeing

5. What are we doing?

7. Research • We explored the association between physical health and nutrition with other individual outcome measures, including Quality of Working Life, Engagement, Sense of Purpose, Perceived Productivity. • Providing measurements of engagement and performance

9. Gender

10. Summary Lifestyle • 70% of staff are happy and satisfied in working at the University of Chester • Those needing help mentally are provided opportunities for support Nutrition • We eat a little less than the general UK population • What we eat is generally healthy Psychological wellbeing • Asset - Higher engagement of staff than the mean average Fitness • 50% of staff are over-weight to obese (UK average is 59%) • Our cholesterol and BP is much better than the average UK individual • 60% of staff are fit enough to be healthy

11. Achievements • A steady reduction in both short and long term sickness absence which has reduced the average number of sick days per person per annum from 8.3 days in 2007 to 6.3 days in 2012. • There was a 33% reduction in sickness absence as a result of musculoskeletal conditions between 2007 and 2011. • There was a 52.4% reduction of mental health related absences between 2007 and 2011 • 82% of staff said they were aware of the Health4all brand. • The results of the Survey have shown that when benchmarked against the other 212 public sector organisations supported by Capita in 2011/12, that the University is an ‘Employer of Choice’. • The Health4all team has played a pivotal role in the implementation of University-wide projects such as business continuity planning, staff health and safety training and sickness absence monitoring to support communication interventions such as the Swine Flu pandemic.

12. Staff survey -Areas of Strength