Flying the flag for staff wellbeing

Last year the Council received the ‘Maintaining Excellence’ accolade in the North East Better Health At Work Awards – one of the very highest levels of the scheme.

To achieve the award, the Council demonstrated wide-ranging achievements, such as training Health Advocates to help deliver health and wellbeing activities and running an extensive range of health campaigns for staff including preventing obesity, smoking cessation, dementia awareness, free fitness activity taster sessions and activities to promote good mental health.

It has also provided advice and support to a number of other Hartlepool employers to help them reach their own milestones in the awards.

Now the Council has submitted a further record of the range of work it has done since then, including activities to promote National Recovery Month for alcohol and drug awareness and a campaign to boost cancer awareness, a highlight of which was a staff raffle and tombola which raised £1,800 for the fight against breast cancer.

Among a range of other initiatives were a holistic treatment taster session as part of World Mental Health Day, a ‘Do Something Good For You’ initiative in which staff were invited to weight management and healthy eating advice sessions and an after-hours ‘Old School Sports Day’ which saw teams competing at fun sports on National Fitness Day.

Claire McLaren, the Council’s Assistant Director – Corporate Services, said: “We are aspiring to achieve Ambassador status – the very highest level of the awards - through being even more creative and innovative in our approach to employee wellbeing.

“The Council’s staff are its greatest asset and we are committed to helping them to enjoy healthy, happy and contented lives. We very much hope that what we are doing will encourage and inspire even more North-East employers to get involved in this really important scheme.”