With 60% of the average person’s waking hours spent in work, our workplaces are one of the most important places where we can take action to improve our wellbeing. Livewell Southwest’s Wellbeing at Work team is passionate about helping you to support your staff and ensure that they are a healthy, happy workforce, and one of the ways we do this is through our Wellbeing Champions.
Forming an essential part of our Wellbeing at Work programme, a Wellbeing Champion is someone who can make a difference to people’s health in the workplace by inspiring them to make positive healthy lifestyle changes, creating ‘good days at work’ to promote mental health and wellbeing, and helping others to feel valued and supported.
But who supports the Wellbeing Champions? That would be where Charley Roberts, Health Improvement Practitioner, Wellbeing Champion Lead and Shawnie Lea, Health Improvement Advisor, comes in.
As Wellbeing Champion Lead, Charley’s role includes being a main point of contact for all Wellbeing Champions, providing training for Wellbeing Champions within workplaces and communities. Both ladies, providing support, networking opportunities, and ideas to inspire champions to create a positive and more motivated workplace and better communities.
“Once someone has completed their Wellbeing Champion training, I give them six weeks to get back into normal life and see how their new role compliments the one they already hold at work. Once that six weeks is up I make contact to see how things have been playing out for them. Once completed, you will also receive a starter pack to help get you started and motivated to support your colleagues in the workplace.
We take a look at the action plans they created during their training and I help them to implement their ideas as well as linking them up with other Wellbeing Champions so that it feels like a team effort. Shawnie and I then stay on board, making ourselves available whenever needed, to help them where they’re struggling, answer questions, and act as a sounding board for new ideas”
“A good Wellbeing Champion isn’t necessarily a fitness freak or a healthy eater, what we’re looking for is someone with a general interest in physical health, mental health and a persons wellbeing who is passionate about making a difference for their team.
We now have lots of organisations across Plymouth signed up to our Wellbeing at Work programme, with over 300 Wellbeing Champions throughout Plymouth! Not only are we a point of contact, we also encourage our champions to get in touch with each other via our Facebook Group – Plymouth Wellbeing Champions”
If you have an interest in health and mental wellbeing and you are interested in becoming a Wellbeing Champion, book onto our 90 minute training session here. If you would like to find out more about Wellbeing Champions, or any of Wellbeing at Work, please email us on [email protected]
