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A letter from Dame Carol Black to Organisations who have signed the Mindful Employer Charter

Public Health Responsibility Deal

22 May 2012

Dear colleague

I am aware that you have been working with Richard Frost on the excellent initiative ‘Mindful Employer’. As an organisation that has shown this commitment to the health and wellbeing of your staff, I would like to invite you to sign up to the Public Health Responsibility Deal.

Organisations that sign up to the Responsibility Deal commit themselves to take action to improve the health and wellbeing of their employees and thereby support the prevention and public health agenda. This action is expressed as a series of pledges covering health at work, food, alcohol and physical activity.

I am fortunate enough to chair the Health at Work network within the Responsibility Deal, with the support of Earl Howe, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Quality.

I have enclosed a list of the health at work pledges and a flyer which explains how the Responsibility Deal can add to the excellent work your organisation is already doing in this area. We are also launching a pledge on workplace adjustments for those with a mental health condition on 26 June. I would encourage you to sign up to this pledge given your commitment to this area.

If you would like further information, myself or one of our team, Helen Garnham, or Graeme Henderson would be very happy to talk with you further about this.

Kind regards,

Dame Carol Black

Expert Adviser on Health and Work

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publichealth/Publichealthresponsibilitydeal/BecomingaResponsibilityDealpartner/index.htm

http://responsibilitydeal.dh.gov

Health at Work pledges

Core Commitment

We will actively support our workforce to lead healthier lives Collective Pledges

• H1. To embed the principles of the chronic conditions guides (developed through the Responsibility Deal’s health at work network) within HR procedures to ensure that those with chronic conditions at work are managed in the best way possible with reasonable flexibilities and workplace adjustments
• H2. To use only occupational health services which meet the new occupational health standards and which aim to be accredited by 2012/13
• H3. To include a section on the health and wellbeing of employees within annual reports and/or website. This should include staff sickness absence rate.
• H4. To implement some basic measures for encouraging healthier staff restaurants/ vending outlets/buffets for staff, including: Ensuring the availability of healthier foods and beverages in all available channels to employees Working with caterers to reformulate recipes to provide meals which are lower in fat, salt, and energy and which do not contain artificial trans fats Provision of responsibly sized portions of foods Provision and promotion of the consumption of fruit and vegetables through availability and price promotion Provision of calories and/or Guideline Daily Amounts on menus per portion as a minimum (further nutrients optional) Ensure that water is visible and freely available.
• H5. We will encourage staff to stop smoking, by facilitating onsite stop smoking support services or by encouraging them to attend local stop smoking services during working time without loss of pay. We will also take action to reduce other risks to respiratory health arising in the workplace.
• H6. We will offer staff health checks, e.g. the NHS Lifecheck, with appropriate follow up and audit. We will also encourage eligible employees to participate in the NHS Health Check for vascular disease, and other NHS screening programmes (for example for breast or bowel cancer).

Novartis MSL Summit 2012, Stresa, Italy

Professor Derek Mowbray and Gary Hogman, pictured, delivered a short Strengthening Resilience Session to the attendees of the Novartis MSL Summit that took place on the shores of Lake Maggiore in Italy, May 2012.

The Institute of Healthcare Management
Revised Code of Conduct Launch and Companionship awards

The evening of January 25th 2012 saw the gathering of Senior Health and Care managers at Chandos House for the launch of the revised Code of Conduct.

The importance of this event was marked by a presentation by Dame Carol Black, (Expert advisor on Health and Work, Department of Health; Chairman, Nuffield Trust) promoting the revision of the Code which underpins the behaviours expected of managers (including clinical) in the health and care sectors.

Dame Carol spoke about the concerns regarding the health and well being of working age people, and "the costs and consequences when they are neglected". She believed that the new IHM code addressed these concerns. She also spoke about the importance of supporting the code with programmes, such as the Accredited Manager to provide a robust and explicit way of demonstrating a manager's individual competence and fitness for purpose. The Code has its roots "in the educational and professional development activities of the Institute".

(From left to right: Derek Mowbray, Dr. Jenny Simpson President of the IHM and Dame Carol Black)

However, the biggest challenge, as Dame Carol (and many other in the audience) highlighted is to "operationalise" the Code, to give it, "practical expression to its professional values".

This gave Derek Mowbray a specific link into his presentation about, "The Application of the Code to the Workplace". Derek emphasised the importance of the workforce in any organisation and the "direct relationship between psychological wellbeing and performance of individuals and organisations" and "if you feel psychologically well you will perform better". He specifically emphasised the importance of "psychological presenteeism" and the impact that this can have on: "Concentration, Health and Safety, Patient Safety, Quality, Errors and Judgement". The Code is explicit about the behaviours that promote wellbeing and performance in self and others and therefore will, "facilitate a culture of commitment, trust and engagement that produces wellbeing and performance in the workforce".

Thus the Purpose of the Code is "To build and sustain workplaces with a positive work culture assured by a high quality of management in health and social care"

Stop Stress Before It Starts

30 November 2011

Preventing stress

There is a growing realisation in many sectors that simply managing stress is no longer an acceptable approach to reducing the impact of stress on performance. It is more effective to stop stress from occurring in the first place.

There are only two ways of preventing stress:

• Creating healthy organisations and changing managers’ behaviour, based on the principles of psychological wellbeing and performance
• Strengthening psychological immunity against adverse events at work, including promoting healthy lifestyles, known as ‘personal resilience’.

The full article, by Professor Derek Mowbray, about how NHS managers need to move away from managing stress towards preventing it happening in the first place appeared in the Winter Issue of Healthcare Manager and can be view on Page 21 of the online version.

L&D teams can help people to increase their happiness at work

From HR Review

A post from the HSE Stress Forum on Happiness

John Ruskin 1871

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed:

• They must be fit for it
• They must not do too much of it, and
• They must have a sense of success in it