Following its launch in 2016, The National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work - led by Professor Sir Cary Cooper, Alliance MBS’ 50th Anniversary Professor of Organisational Psychology and Dr Paul Litchfield, the then Chief Medical Officer for BT - has increased its membership to 35 major global organisations including Shell, Rolls-Royce, NHS England, BP, Marks & Spencer, Barclays, Twitter, Microsoft, John Lewis Partnership, GSK, BUPA, HSE, CIPD, the Government and more.
The Forum is focused on improving workplace wellbeing in the UK and globally. It aims to inspire organisations and their leaders to challenge the thinking of what healthy, high performing employees can bring to an organisation and to the productivity of the nation. Representing a large proportion of UK workforce, the major organisations included in the Forum aim to make a positive impact by changing policy and practice surrounding health and wellbeing. The goal is to reinforce that indeed, “good health is good for business, good business is good for health.”
To support this, growth a Project Co-ordinator and Forum Support have been appointed. Project Co-ordinator Lina Siegl is a PhD candidate at Alliance MBS and has shown a passion for occupational health and wellbeing throughout her academic career.
Also supporting the Forum, Dr Ian Hesketh is a former police officer and wellbeing lead. His interests are in organisational psychology and the impact of workplace phenomena that impact on workforce wellbeing.
Together they will support the National Forum by collating, distilling and presenting research and exchanging knowledge with subject matter experts. This will inform discussions in support of forum subgroups and in the development of useful guidelines and toolkits.
Some of the important topics that have already been discussed at the quarterly meetings of the forum include:
- The role of line-managers in creating healthier workplaces and enhancing productivity
- The impact of work-related technology (i.e. work emails) on people’s lives
- The impact of a multi-generational workforce on health and wellbeing
- Compassion at work
- Long working hours culture and its impact on health and wellbeing
- Supporting SME’s to create ‘good work.’
Future topics include mindfulness, resilience, mental health first aid and sleep.
Lina and Ian will also be working on the development of a website, so that developed policies, guidelines for good practice and toolkits can be publicly shared.
If you are interested in getting involved with the Forum contact lina.siegl@manchester.ac.uk in the first instance.