#WellbeingMatters: We are here to lighten the load and offer additional resource where we can
Our focus for January is #WellbeingMatters. To introduce this topic, Ian Andrews, Technical Director, addresses how we can help our customers throughout the upcoming year.
"The pressures bearing on the NHS as a whole at present are unprecedented. Both through the pandemic and through the current crisis it’s clear that, when it comes to our staff, #WellbeingMatters. As the saying goes, if you are providing support or care, you need to “put your own oxygen mask on first.” Without engaging with the needs of our teams both internally and out among our customers, facing these challenges becomes an order of magnitude harder.
"We are hosted as an organisation by Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT), a mental health trust, and through them, NOE CPC is a Mindful Employer signatory – a national initiative supporting employers to take a positive approach toward mental health at work. Part of my role as a trust governor, and as co-chair of the LYPFT Rainbow Alliance, is to ensure NOE CPC has access to, and knowledge of, the extensive support programmes that we put in place to support staff wellbeing. These include practical support such as programmes around financial planning and cost-of-living, physiotherapy, chaplaincy, shared support spaces for minority staff to come together such as our Workforce Race Equality Network, the Rainbow Alliance and DaWN, our disability and health conditions network. All of these networks and the support structures in place around them provide key support for our colleagues when the pressure is on.
"Through Mindful Employer, and at board level our host trust has committed to continue working towards effectively supporting the mental wellbeing of our workforce. In collaboration with DaWN and our other staff networks, we actively focus on:
- Engaging with our people to increase awareness of mental health.
- Educating to build confidence and reduce stigma.
- Embedding a solid approach to prevent bullying and discrimination around mental health and developing our support offer to ensure staff can access appropriate support when needed.
"#WellbeingMatters in the services we provide to our customers too – whether that is through providing a framework for Employee Benefits for Health, Wealth and Wellbeing, which provides a wide variety of services, benefits and schemes that customers can offer to their employees, or through the delivery of programmes to ensure staff on lower wages have affordable options to consider on the CPC Drive framework if they are looking for hybrid or EV cars. Offering our staff options and ways to save money or access resources through such schemes is a key benefit the NHS can offer to its workforce.
"In the current climate, the wellbeing and mental health of all NHS staff is a critical concern. This is a topic we at NOE CPC take very seriously. We remain committed to providing the best support we can – to our customers through both procurement vehicles like those above and through our efforts to engage positively and constructively with the issues of the day, and to our own staff through our networks and our host Trust programmes.
"The first stage of defeating any problem – and this is especially relevant to wellbeing - is recognising you need help, and then asking for it. This winter will test us all – so please keep in mind that we are here to lighten the load and offer additional resource where we can.
"Please get in touch with us to dicuss how we can help."