When Royal Mail planned the relaunch of its wellbeing programme, it faced a unique set of challenges, not least communicating benefit changes that required a workplace email when many employees don’t have one.
Fiona McAslan, the organisation’s head of health and wellbeing, says a multi-faceted approach involving wellbeing ambassadors and a provider that was prepared to offer an email workaround helped to deliver the roll out.
How long have you been in your current role?
I joined the company in October 2022, after 18 years with NatWest where I led their wellbeing strategy for around eight years. At Royal Mail there is so much that we can do to help our employees. This is a unique organisation, and we have an incredible opportunity to support our people.
How big is your team?
I have a central team of three, and I am supported by a phenomenal wellbeing ambassador population of around 1,200 colleagues, who come from across the UK. These are colleagues who can be in any role, at any level, and they’re there to promote and signpost our wellbeing proposition as well as being a colleague feedback channel for us in the wellbeing space.
What benefits are currently offered to your employees?
We’ve just relaunched our wellbeing programme – Your Wellbeing. It’s positioned in quite a different way from our previous offering, less about ‘telling’ people what to do and more about working in partnership.
We’re rolling out Unum’s Help@hand app, which gives everyone access to 24/7 remote GP appointments, physiotherapy, unlimited mental health consultations and lifestyle coaching, including nutrition and personal training support. This has landed particularly well, not least of all because it’s available to partners and children too.
How often do you review your benefits offering and why?
Our wellbeing offering is reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure it’s fit for purpose. The wellbeing landscape isn’t standing still, and we need to ensure we have the right support in place for our colleagues.
What are your current HR/benefits challenges?
One of our main wellbeing challenges is musculoskeletal issues — joint pains and injuries that are part and parcel of the job, with colleagues being on their feet, lifting heavy bags and so on. We are also working hard to support colleagues with their mental health, including offering unlimited mental health consultations.
How is your organisation supporting employees with the cost-of-living crisis?
All managers have access to the Wellbeing Hub providing support across four pillars of wellbeing – physical health, mental health, financial wellbeing, and social wellbeing.
Managers have access to 1:1 coaching through our employee assistance programme. This enables them to fully support team members who are impacted by any business and social challenges.
We provide a suite of family friendly policies that support leaders with guidance when supporting colleagues. We offer flexible working as part of our ‘working arrangements procedure’. which enables all colleagues including line managers to request permanent and/or temporary contractual changes to their working patterns. These arrangements can include job sharing, part-time working, term time working (TTW) and changing hours of work.
We also offer hybrid working, which is built on trust and recognition of the fact that both home and office working environments can deliver different opportunities for productivity, creativity and wellbeing. It reinforces our commitment to support a positive work-life balance, reduce the amount of time and money spent on travel and encourages colleagues to use time in the office for more high-value interactions and collaborative working.
How do you ensure employees know about the available benefits?
A ‘one size fits all’ approach to health and wellbeing isn’t fit for purpose anymore— typically you need to find ways to reach everyone and break down a range of barriers. So our overall strategy is multi-faceted and that’s really reflected in the way that we’re rolling out the Help@hand app.
There’s nothing that speaks as loud as personal experience, so we’re investing in our wellbeing ambassadors to spread the word – and we’ve grown our network from 300 to over 1,000 ambassadors in seven months. We’ve set up team meetings to tell people more about what the app can do for them, allowing time to go through the registration process so people walk away all set to go. That breaks down the barrier that ‘it’s too complicated to get into’. We embrace awareness days, so we can relate real-world issues to the support available. Being relatable is so important, you need to talk to the right people in the right language and not lecture them.
One of the first challenges we faced was quite a simple one — how do we get people to sign up to a benefit that requires a workplace email when they don’t have one? That’s where Unum was so accommodating, giving us a simple PIN, which colleagues could use instead. Once they’re logged in, they can update the settings to use their private email address. It sounds a small thing, but it gives access to so many more people.
Which benefit(s) have the biggest take-up and why do you think that is?
By far the most successful benefit we offer is Unum’s Help@hand app. This is partly because it gives colleagues quick access to online GP, physiotherapy, and mental health support at a time when many are struggling to access through the NHS. Given the physical nature of the work in Royal Mail, and the changing shift patterns, that our colleagues work, that 24/7 access is particularly valuable. It gives everyone the same accessibility and user experience; whatever they’re doing at whatever time they need it.
If you had an unlimited budget, what employee benefit(s) would you like to introduce for employees?
For me it’s all about colleagues ‘knowing their numbers’. A simple health check for everyone so they can proactively make choices about how to keep fit and well going forward.
