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Big Tick 2007

Workwell Campaign

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Wellness and Engagement, All big ticks

GlaxoSmithKline - Building Health & Resilience

Unum Healthy Workplaces Award 2007 supported by the Department of Health, Big Tick Winner 2007

GSK run both a team and individual resilience programme. The team resilience programme is a participatory, proactive quality-improvement process utilising assessment tools to identify sources of workplace stress. It looks at issues that can cause pressure and affect performance such as work demands, team relationships, management practices, career and development concerns and work culture. Individual team members get a confidential personal profile and a tailored action plan is developed by the whole team. The personal resilience training programme allows individuals to act to build attitudes and capabilities that will enable them to make choices that will positively impact their energy levels, emotional and mental wellbeing in a sustainable way.

Building Health & Resilience

GlaxoSmithKline is a leading research-based pharmaceutical company with a turnover of £21.7 billion in 2005, making prescription medicines, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and consumer healthcare products. They have operations in 119 countries, employ 100,000 people globally with 19,000 based in the UK across 21 locations.

GSK’s mission is to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer. This mission statement reflects the equal emphasis the company places on the impact they have on their employees and those people and places touched by their products.

They have recognised that if they are to make a significant impact on employee well-being they need to go beyond policies and listen to employees, identify what is causing pressure and what changes may be desired.

To support the resilience of their employees GSK have a range of associated services to enhance employee well-being including;

on-site health and fitness centres
flexible working arrangements
family support services

Their health and well-being programmes enable employees and their families to benefit from better health and enhanced quality of life, while the business gains from increased employee engagement and performance.

Healthcare benefits focus on prevention and access to innovative and proven treatments, such as;

musculoskeletal and ergonomic improvement programmes
smoking cessation support
walking programmes
weight management programmes
blood pressure machines
health promotion
sleep road-shows

All employees are offered the opportunity to complete a confidential lifestyle and work life balance Health Risk Appraisal to assess their current health risks and the risk of future ill health. GSK receives aggregate data on the HRA results which enables them to target specific areas of need.

Impact

Measuring the impact of resilience on productivity can be achieved through assessing the performance, commitment and engagement of employees. The Corporate Leadership Council (2004) suggested that highly committed employees try 57% harder, perform 20% better and are 87% less likely to leave than employees with low levels of commitment. Analysis of team resilience (2006) found that; 50% of employees were committed or highly committed, 75% never or only occasionally considered leaving, And staff satisfaction shows an increase by 21% from 2001 to 2005.

From 2001 to 2005 GSK recorded a 60% global reduction in work related mental ill-health, a 66% reduction if new reported cases and a 29% fall in days lost due to work-related mental ill-health. In the UK (2005 to 2006) there was a 12% reduction in days lost, and a 24% reduction in reported cases, due to mental ill-health.