Impact story: Workplace Wellbeing Award


Blue River Dairy sales and supply chain manager Gareth Lyness, left, and Macaulay Motors Dealer Principal Tim Rabbitte.

“The past few years has been tough on many businesses and in a post-Covid world we really took on-board some of the lessons we had learned from Covid. One of these lessons was the importance of looking after our employees, not only from a health and safety sense, but taking a much more holistic approach to their wellbeing.” - Macaulay Ford Dealer Principal Tim Rabbitte, winners of the 2023 Blue River Dairy Workplace Wellbeing Award. 

Since first being introduced by Healthy Families Invercargill in 2017 the Southland Business Chamber workplace wellbeing award has become a successful and sought after addition to its biennial celebration of local business achievement.

Healthy Families Invercargill has been working with the Chamber for nearly a decade, initially with the goal of encouraging greater recognition of the role of health and wellbeing in local workplaces.

Workplaces can play an important role in the overall wellbeing of the community by creating a health-promoting environment. In turn, they can benefit from a more engaged, productive workforce, with less sick days, absenteeism and staff turnover.

Insights from surveys across the business community and from the Southland Health and Safety Forum - a network of local health and safety professionals - pointed to an opportunity to lift the profile and importance of health and wellbeing in Southland workplaces.

Healthy Families Invercargill supported the Chamber to develop a workplace wellbeing award for their biennial Southland Business Excellence Awards.

This support included developing the scope of the awards, the nomination criteria, sponsorship, promotion, judging and additional marketing of the nominees and winner post-event.

Twelve nominations were received for the inaugural award in 2017, the most of any category. In total, 34 nominations have been received over the four most recent editions of the Excellence Awards.

As part of the category’s sustainability, inaugural winners Blue River Dairy were encouraged to become the naming sponsor for the category, and they have now sponsored the past two editions of the awards. Healthy Families Invercargill has been able to step almost entirely away from the operational aspect of the category.

During judging for the 2023 Awards, Blue River Dairy general manager Robert Boekhout emphasised the company’s commitment to the award and their intent to encourage other businesses to value workplace wellbeing. Robert presents workplace wellbeing at the Chamber’s Leadership Academy.

Changes noted over the past four Awards include:

  • Award applicants in the first year talked about short term wellness initiatives, while nominations in recent years have focused more on embedded wellbeing processes.

  • A survey to understand if awareness and promotion of the award prompted or influenced action indicated changes around leadership, better internal communications, culture and social connectedness.

Healthy Families Invercargill’s relationship with the Chamber continues. This has included surveying the Chamber’s membership to identify gaps in understanding regarding workplace wellbeing, and following this up with information and stories showcasing good practise.

Case study:

Macaulay Motors, 2023 Blue River Dairy Workplace Wellbeing Award winners at the Southland Business Chamber Business Excellence Awards.

Tim Rabbitt, Macaulay Motors Dealer Principal

Why did we apply?

The past few years has been tough on many businesses and in a post-Covid world we really took on-board some of the lessons we had learned from Covid. One of these lessons was the importance of looking after our employees, not only from a health and safety sense, but taking a much more holistic approach to their wellbeing. It took us a bit of time to work through what that might look like and how we could best support employees. Although we have only really had a major focus on wellbeing for the last 12 months, when we looked back, we realised just how far we have come in that time and thought it was worth applying based on that. We are so proud of the difference we have made during this time and all the work the whole team have done to implement new processes and initiatives. 

What did it mean to win?

Putting ourselves forward for these types of awards is not something we have done before, it was amazing to just become finalists in the three areas of Health and Safety, Employer of the Year and Wellbeing. So, to win was more than we imagined. It was particularly special to us because this has been such a huge focus for us over the past year. Winning the wellbeing award not only recognises the work we have done, but it also offers us an external evaluation telling us we are heading in the right direction. 

Impact of the application process

The application process was quite in-depth and helped us realise how much we have changed in the past 12 months. It also gave us the opportunity to review our new systems and processes in detail to evaluate their efficacy and identify ways we can continue to build on them so we can take employee welfare even further.


Article added: Wednesday 18 October 2023

 

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