Helping Wales Work Well: Healthy Working Wales offers free support to every employer

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Economic pressures, recruitment challenges, and rising sickness absence are putting pressure on businesses across Wales. The organisations that thrive will be the ones that put workplace health and wellbeing at the top of their priorities. Healthy Working Wales is built to help them do exactly that.

The team is led by Public Health Consultant Oliver Williams and works nationally to support employers in improving the wellbeing of their workforce.

Delivered by Public Health Wales and funded by Welsh Government, Healthy Working Wales is a fully funded programme designed to help employers create healthier, happier, more productive workplaces.

“It’s for all employers in Wales to access no matter what their business size, whether that’s small businesses of five, six people or your big organisations, both public and private sector,” he explains.

The impact of healthier working environments is significant. Wales loses millions of working hours every year due to sickness absence, something Williams believes employers can change by investing in staff wellbeing.

“Every hour or day somebody isn’t in work is lost productivity to a business…These are key places to actually boost our health and wellbeing.”

Healthy Working Wales offers employers a practical set of tools to make that change. These include free campaign resources aligned to key themes such as mental health, smoking, physical activity, and menopause in the workplace.

“If employers want even more input…they can access our workplace advisor support service, which will give them free one-to-one sessions with our expert workplace advisors.”

The evidence speaks for itself. Investing in wellbeing is not only the right thing to do for staff, it improves a business’s bottom line.

“We know from the evidence that if employees are healthy and they’ve got good well-being and they’re happy, productivity is higher,” he says. “The data will tell us that for every £1 an employer can spend on mental health and wellbeing at work, they’ll get around £4.70 back in increased productivity.”

One of the newest starting points is the programme’s employer survey tool, a short online survey that generates a personalised report of advice. This helps employers identify what they are already doing well and where improvements can be made.

“I think the easiest thing to do would just be to get onto our website and start having a little scroll…We have a starter pack on there for employers,” he adds. “Everything’s free to access, there’s no charges for any of our services.”

Healthy Working Wales aims to enable employers to create workplaces where supporting wellbeing becomes standard practice, rather than an added extra. Williams sees a future where work becomes part of the solution to improving national health rather than a cause of declining wellbeing.

“We spend about a third of our lives in the workplace, on average,” he says. That makes employers key partners in building a healthier Wales.

For businesses keen to reduce sickness absence, retain great people and strengthen their organisation, Williams has a clear invitation:

“Get logged on and signed up to Healthy Working Wales.”

Find out more here:

English: https://healthyworking.wales/

Welsh: https://iacharwaith.cymru/

Helping Wales Work Well: Healthy Working Wales offers free support to every employer