Trailblazer in Workplace Wellbeing
Finalists announced for SHP’s Trailblazer in Workplace Wellbeing Award
The SHP Awards judging panel has selected five finalists for SHP’s Trailblazer in Workplace Wellbeing.
SHP’s Trailblazer Awards recognise health & safety professionals going above and beyond to make a positive difference – either within their own organisation or more widely in the community.
Trailblazers is brought to you as part of the wider SHP Awards which, for 2021, is in collaboration with Shirley Parsons, global HSEQ talent experts.
The Trailblazer in Workplace Wellbeing Award recognises individuals who did the most to contribute to people thriving at work, prioritising employees’ wellbeing and mental health.
The winners will be announced in mid-December.
The finalists are:
Ben Miller, Manager, Milkwood Care
Ben is a Registered Mental Health Nurse and Manager of a Nursing Home. He believes wellbeing is paramount to ensuring that outstanding standards of care are provided to the people he cares for.
As well as being a nurse, Ben is a Mental Health First Aider, and undertook a course to gain Diploma’s in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Life Coaching, so that he can better help the people he works with.
He has also arranged for a Wellbeing Chaplain to be an independent part of the team, so staff feel they have someone they can go and speak freely to whenever they wish.
Milkwood Care has recently won the Foundation Award at the ‘Gloucestershire Healthy Workplaces Awards’ for the work that has gone into improving staff health and wellbeing.
Ben currently mentors four people across the country, helping them build better services and provide better standards of care for their teams.
Kat Parsons, HSEQ Operations Manager, ISS Ltd.
Kat strives to raise awareness regarding the Menopauses amongst employees. She believes that the key to health and safety knowledge sharing comes from drawing on your own experience, in a tone that suits each audience.
She took the subject to the ISS UK HSEQ SLT and was asked to present at a wellbeing safety event. Due to the content of her presentation, and the amount of questions and input from the SLT, she was asked to lead a dedicated session to discuss the topic further. This led Kat to create a Microsoft Sway presentation which she delivered as an awareness piece to ISS Business Services and Banking Sector as a starting point.
The feedback led to the next steps of the creation of a Micro-learning module on the internal ISS My Learning System, a working group Kat is leading to assist HR in the creation of a Menopause Policy for ISS. She has also started work on a Podcast which can be used as a TBT or 10@10 topic which all employees in ISS can listen too.
Lisa Artis, Deputy CEO, The Sleep Charity
Lisa has shown determination around establishing national awareness about the importance of sleep for workplace wellbeing. She is a member of the British Sleep Society and sits on several steering groups around sleep. She has a keen interest around adult sleep, workplace wellbeing and the link between sleep and mental health.
Lisa has developed an advisory board for The Sleep Charity and recruited Dr Karen McDonnell from ROSPA and Simon Blake CEO of Mental Health First Aid England, amongst others.
She has helped the wider health and safety profession by drawing attention to the impact of sleep deprivation at a national level. The relationships she has developed with ROSPA allow the message to be shared widely. She was also instrumental in developing relationships with outside organisations such as Network Live to develop seminars that could be shared with their staff teams.
Lisa is currently working on developing membership for corporate organisations to support their staff to access support when experiencing sleep issues to support their wellbeing, health and safety.
Peter Rees, EMEA EHS Manager, Quaker Houghton
Peter has championed mental health/wellbeing internally, increased European Leadership engagement, and provided management training for Resilience, Wellbeing and ‘Discover Your Strengths’ workshops.
Additionally, Peter has raised awareness of the need for good nutrition, diet, and exercise through innovative methods such as Eat The Rainbow, implementation of a network of Country Wellbeing Champions across 22 countries, development of internal benchmarking Diagnostic Tools, and implementing targeted intervention strategies and COVID related ones such as Espresso Your Weekend (remote Coffee Mornings).
Lisa and Alana Macfarlane, CEO and Co-Founders, The Gut Stuff
Since it’s inception in 2017, the Gut Stuff Founders have become thought leaders in gut health, by building an army of scientists, academics, gut amateurs and fanatics and providing advice that is accessible, yet credible.
Twins are a great constant for medical research and Alana and Lisa became the “chief guinea pigs” for Prof Tim Spector and the Twin Research department at Kings College, where they discovered that despite having 100% the same DNA their guts have only 30/40% the same microbiota. They made it their mission to bring the exciting information they were learning, to the masses. With education still at its core they’ve built up a successful workplace wellness business, that pledges to educate schools and universities for free for every corporate business they work with.
Alana and Lisa have made free resources available to everyone, helping to raise awareness amongst health insurance companies, mental health campaigners and health and safety experts.
They have worked with employers such as VISA, Tesco, Aegon and many more. For every talk they conduct in the workplace, they offer another FOC within a charity, community or education so everyone can benefit from their knowledge.
Click here to view the finalists in the Trailblazer in Health & Safety category.
Finalists announced for SHP’s Trailblazer in Workplace Wellbeing Award
The SHP Awards judging panel has selected five finalists for SHP’s Trailblazer in Workplace Wellbeing for 2021.
Safety & Health Practitioner
SHP - Health and Safety News, Legislation, PPE, CPD and Resources Related Topics
Anticipate London to host SHP Awards presentation
National mental health strategy needed to tackle workplace wellbeing issue, urge UK safety bodies
Samantha Cartwright on wellbeing and making a positive difference