Health and wellbeing

Wellbeing plans and conversations

The Trust has a dedicated workforce wellbeing strategy and steering group. ‘Our vision is for all employees to have a sense of fulfilment and belonging at work, and for them to experience our culture as inclusive, compassionate, and safe.’ We focus on both prevention, and early intervention to support our staff and their wellbeing.

All our employees are encouraged to complete their own ‘My wellbeing at work’ plan. This personal document helps us to think about the things we do to stay healthy and well, what things help, and where we might need some support, either now or in the future. It also gives information about the support that is available. This is included in our Trust induction to encourage new starters to have this from the start of their career with us. We recommend that this is reviewed regularly to help them to stay well, achieve wellbeing goals, and to recognise when they might need some help.

All our managers offer their staff the opportunity to have a wellbeing conversation at least once a year, however, these can occur as required to support the employee with their wellbeing at work. This is not a mandatory conversation, but we strongly encourage these as a supportive measure, to enable us to bring our whole selves to work. The conversation is led by the employee, and they do not have to disclose any information they do not wish to. Benefits of these conversations have included staff feeling more supported and happier, access to carers passports, flexible working arrangements, reasonable adjustments, and sharing of information about services that can support health conditions or training.

Health and wellbeing champions

We encourage all teams to have at least one dedicated health and wellbeing champion and we now have a network of more than 300 people across the organisation who have taken up this role.

Health and wellbeing champions share information and aim to ensure that health and wellbeing stay central to the day-to-day working environment. They arrange wellbeing or social activities and events that the team is interested in and have a good knowledge of the wellbeing offers and can signpost staff to support where needed.

We offer training and resources to our champions to be able to do this successfully.

Health and wellbeing resources

We have a section of our intranet dedicated to health and wellbeing, sharing information and resources on all areas of wellbeing, from emotional and physical health to social and financial wellbeing. We run Trust-wide events in addition to our health and wellbeing champion events such as a weekly drop-in virtual meditation, our RunDHC community, and our annual Winter Wellbeing Roadshow to name just a few.

Health and wellbeing training

Our Learning and Development hub offers lots of courses around wellbeing. We are particularly proud of our new, trauma-informed mental health training session ‘Our Mental Health’ which is open to all staff in the Trust. All our leadership development programmes include wellbeing tools and training.

Support for staff

We have a dedicated employee assistance programme that offers free confidential advice and support on a range of emotional and practical issues. The freephone helpline is staffed by specially-trained advisors, who can be contacted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and we also have a TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) system to ensure that we support our employees if a serious or traumatic experience happens at work.

If you have any questions about our workforce wellbeing, email dhc.healthandwellbeing@nhs.net