Hauraki District Council (HDC) has recently gained the WorkWell Gold Standard of Accreditation for their Ki Waiora workplace wellbeing programme. HDC are the first Council to achieve this milestone in the Waikato region.
HDC embarked on their WorkWell journey in July 2018, achieving Bronze accreditation in November 2019, Silver accreditation in September 2021, and now Gold accreditation in July 2024.
Throughout their Ki Waiora journey, HDC’s wellbeing mission has been to create a welcoming, valued and supportive environment. They have achieved this by:
· ensuring their policies and procedures reflect wellbeing
· improving their physical working environment to better support wellbeing
· enabling staff to improve their own health & wellbeing
When considering how well HDC has achieved its wellbeing mission, according to staff the significant changes they have noticed during the implementation of WorkWell include:
· Organisational shift to talk about more ‘’non-talked’’ issues
· The Executive Leadership Team has buy-in showing management really cares about staff
· Inclusiveness and cultural change
· Silos are broken down in the organisation through departments coming together
· Having a structure enables continuous flow of intent in action, instead of what happened before with ad hoc initiatives
· Mental health is now talked about as part of normal conversation
· More support for kaimahi to access counselling services
· Supporting wellbeing at work by enabling access
· Kaimahi involvement in decision-making
· There is better awareness of kaimahi issues and pathways to raise issues
· Finding support is easier; and we can have those conversations that lead to de-stigmatisation
· There is now a feeling of support and being listened to
· It has created positivity.
Karen Muir is HDC’s long standing WorkWell Leader. Karen believes having the support of their CE Langley Cavers was the most important first step. This enabled them to create a dedicated wellbeing committee with staff representation from all levels of council. Listening to staff and receiving feedback is important too. Fresh ideas and new initiatives coming directly from staff enabled HDC to plan and support staff wellbeing. Interestingly, many of these initiatives were at no or low cost.
Chief Executive Langley Cavers shared that “with the support of WorkWell, we have been able to make staff wellbeing front and centre in everything that we do which is a key element in our Health and Safety vision and values”.
Some of the most effective things that have come from the programme have included the implementation of a flexible working policy, Good Yarn workshops, partnering with My Everyday Wellbeing, a dedicated wellbeing page on their intranet and celebrating the many national awareness campaigns.
The biggest challenge has been refining all the ideas into the action plan. There is so much that can be done in the wellbeing space, but to make the initiatives manageable and meaningful needed a good plan and people happy to take on some responsibility.
To overcome this, HDC used the resources and templates provided by WorkWell for guidance enabling them to have a proven structure to base the plan on. HDC also acknowledge the support of their WorkWell advisor, Louise West, who was so helpful and offered support and guidance, especially to the Ki Waiora Lead.
Congratulations Hauraki District Council on creating a workplace culture where staff wellbeing is core to all that you do!
