From ‘posties’ tramping our streets through to sorting teams and back-office staff, Royal Mail needs to respond to a wide range of health and wellbeing needs. With a new OH provider coming on board and an expanded wellbeing ‘hub’ in place, it is very much looking to deliver. Nic Paton reports.
With some 130,000 employees spread across the country, from ‘posties’ delivering letters and parcels through our doors through to sorting teams and back-office staff, Royal Mail is by any measure a significant UK employer.
“Our people have been going above and beyond for as long as I can remember. One of the things we’re very conscious of is that, over the last few years, our people, like everyone else, have been through the pandemic – and our colleagues were right at the heart of that,” explains the service’s head of wellbeing, Fiona McAslan.
Keeping staff healthy and giving them the resources proactively to look after themselves is an ongoing priority for Royal Mail, whether this means musculoskeletal and physiotherapy support for delivery workers tramping the streets, mental health and wellbeing and financial wellbeing support, or helping people to stay connected with their teams.
Health and wellbeing
Personnel Today Awards 2023 shortlist: Health and Wellbeing Award – Larger Employers
One-size-fits-all may not be best for global health and wellbeing benefits
The company has, for example, recently transferred its occupational health services support to a new provider, Health Partners. This, Health Partners has said, will involve it delivering services and support online, onsite and via a network of clinics. “We look forward to supporting Royal Mail’s employees to remain well and support those employees who are unwell/absent from work to return to good health and work,” it said.
Separate to this, yet nevertheless complementing this more specialist support, is its new expanded wellbeing ‘hub’. The hub, which was launched over the summer, is an extension of an existing resource launched a year ago but, as McAslan explains, has been about bringing physical health, mental health, social wellbeing and financial wellbeing support together in one, easily accessible, place.
“We have a huge number of people, all across the UK as you would expect, and all with very differing needs,” she tells OHW+. “Our ambition for wellbeing is to move beyond the one-size-fits-all approach that we maybe would have had five years ago. That is not fit for purpose anymore; we need to have a wellbeing proposition that is personalised, that people find easy to access – because it was quite difficult for people to get access to support – and that is simple. But it is also about extending the support available.
The ambition is not just to support our colleagues, but to support the broader Royal Mail ‘family’ as well. The more we can do to support the family unit, the better.” – Fiona McAslan, head of wellbeing, Royal Mail
“The ambition, too, is not just to support our colleagues, but to support the broader Royal Mail ‘family’ as well. Because it is just really clear that, when family members have got things going on, it impacts the individual at work. So, the more we can do to support the family unit, the better. Which is where we are taking our proposition,” she adds.
The new wellbeing hub offers Royal Mail employees unlimited 24/7 access to an online GP (through the Help at Hand service), and is also available to partners and children. Staff can also access unlimited mental health consultations for colleagues and partners, up from eight per year previously.
There is lifestyle coaching, including access to nutrition and personal training support; online support for menopause symptoms, cancers and long Covid; and up to eight physiotherapy sessions a year, with sessions initially happening online and then, if need be, escalating to physical therapy support. Importantly, given the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the hub offers access to advice and guidance on managing money, day-to-day budgeting, debt or saving for the future.
Signposting to resources and support
However, McAslan emphasises that, while at one level this is about bringing services together into a single hub, it is not just an exercise in consolidation of services. “Rather than it just being a curation of wellbeing put into one place, we’ve put the user/colleague experience at the heart of it,” she explains.
“When somebody goes to the hub, they’re going there for a reason, because something is happening to them or they are interested in a subject area. So, when you go in, it is far more experiential, rather than ‘here’s just lots of information for you to trawl through’,” she adds.
Workers who come to the hub answer a series of questions and are then signposted to the recommended resource, with virtual and on-site support available. The site is also geared up for dealing with questions if, say, a team member has a concern about someone around them rather than just themselves.
The site can be accessed through the Royal Mail’s ‘people’ app, which employees should already be familiar with for managing any employment, HR or administrative issues.
“We’ve had huge engagement on to the hub already,” says McAslan. “People are finding it new and refreshing and the key is that it is simple to access and use. Before, our wellbeing offer was buried deep in the Royal Mail intranet, it wasn’t intuitive,” she adds.
“It is practical support that people can pick up easily, and it is about joining up physical, mental, financial and social health. That holistic approach is really important to us,” she adds, highlighting how the financial wellbeing support is all about recognising that financial wellbeing (or a lack of it) will often have a knock-on mental health impact and so on.
“So, we know we need to make sure that, when we are sharing information with colleagues, we are talking about that whole picture,” says McAslan.
Making occupational health ‘stick’
The key to making any occupational health or wellbeing support ‘stick’ or resonate is: ensuring people know it’s there, that they know how to access it, and that they trust and value it to be able to provide the support they need, McAslan advises. Ongoing communication is vital but also it is about making accessing what’s on offer easy, practical and intuitive.
“Keep it simple. I think there is a danger in the wellbeing space – and we definitely saw this during the pandemic – where people can just become overwhelmed with the volume of information out there. Everyone has got a view on wellbeing, you can Google it, and people just don’t know where to start,” she points out.
It is taking people through that journey, almost hand-holding people. Because people often just don’t know where to start” – Fiona McAslan
“So, my advice is simply to make it easy for people to start. A good example for us would be that, as part of our overall wellbeing support, we’ve introduced a ‘360 wellbeing score’, which is a personalised wellbeing report. It is really simple, just a few questions.
“People get a report at the end of it saying ‘here are the things you are doing really well in the wellbeing space, here are some things that you might want to pick up on’ and that unlocks for them one-to-one lifestyle coaching. It is kind of taking people through that journey, almost hand-holding people. Because people often just don’t know where to start,” McAslan says.
“We’ve still got further to go but we’re introduced, for example, a wellbeing index into our employee opinion survey. So, a suite of five questions that cover the four pillars of wellbeing – physical, mental, financial and social. That gives us a really deep insight into how people are feeling. We can then delve down into units and so on.”
She adds: “The other key part of it for me is to have an ambassador or champion network behind you. When we started out we had around 300 ambassadors across the group, which, for an organisation of our size just wasn’t enough. We’re now over 1,100.
“So there is a now a really core extended army on the ground who can help our relatively small central team to bring it to life. We are certainly seeing that now. We are working in partnership with our ambassadors and they are really helping us to land initiatives.”
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
