It’s International Women’s Day. As part of our celebration, we have hand-picked three Wellbeing Champions within the programme who are doing some amazing work within their workplaces for ‘Inclusion’.
We recently caught up with Sam Goss, Senior HRBP and Wellbeing Champion at Foundever. Sam has been a Wellbeing Champion for six years! She has used her role to create and ensure an inclusive culture throughout everything that they do within Foundever, putting it at the forefront of their business.
We asked Sam what inclusion means to her at Foundever…
“Well, firstly, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the amazing Wellbeing Champions, Engagement Leads and the support from the Site Leadership Teams in Foundever. I say this because I think inclusion always starts with the employee’s voice. We as wellbeing champions within our workplace all have different ranges of interests, skills, and backgrounds but one thing that unites us is that we all want to improve the health and wellbeing of our colleagues. A wide range of backgrounds, skills, and interests within our workforce also helps us innovate and determine what we do as wellbeing initiatives and activities in the workplace. Champions create what we do, and it can be a wide range of things depending on their passions from raising awareness and educating, to building up morale and connections but mostly fostering an atmosphere to empower others.”.
We asked Sam when creating initiatives and activities, how is this done to ensure inclusion throughout the workplace…
“Before we have any initiatives or activities within our workplace we go through various planning, and bi-weekly meetings and our wellbeing champion team work closely with our engagement leads and line managers to ensure that they communicate with their teams to keep them informed. We also collate feedback and review what we’ve done and what people liked about it, and didn’t like, shout out our successes across all communication channels as well as an annual survey to see how effective our year has been.”.
Sam further goes on to explain the different initiatives and activities that she and the rest of the wellbeing champion team have done…
“From planning, we’ve done many things that have been important for the whole workforce! We’ve done simple things like food cultural day, where individuals can come in with their favourite dish, introduce themselves to others, talk about their food and learn about other dishes – everyone loves food, so this was simple but extremely effective! We had conversations about the ingredients, what they loved about it, about their experiences, culture and generations and it was really fun to learn other recipes. Our team that is hybrid working was also involved, they submitted their recipes in. This was so good that led to ‘Cheese Board Tuesday’, which everyone loves!”.
“We’ve also taken part in more educational initiatives, of a sensitive nature, to raise awareness and educate our team. Recently we did ‘Self-harm Awareness Day’. It is such a misunderstood topic so we wanted to shine a light on it to show that it can impact all individuals, ages, genders, and backgrounds and to raise awareness of the importance of compassion to help us build a supportive network within our business. We also shared other support options and signposted around the whole building to ensure that everyone was informed – and if it helps at least one person, we’ve done our job.”.
Sam goes on to share various other ways support is offered from Wellbeing Champions and even third-party organisations coming in to support finances…
“We feel it is so important to create an inclusive culture and it doesn’t need to be something big, a simple conversation recognising someone’s efforts, achievements and skills can help people shine in those moments. As Wellbeing Champions, we are always showing appreciation and recognising our team members. It brings such a positive vibe to the room and helps everyone feel connected. We also show inclusivity through practical means such as financial support with HSBC. We noticed there were lots of changes to people’s financial situation, so we created drop-ins for support to keep our employees informed and to build their confidence in their financial wellbeing. This took off as well, the HSBC team were really busy, and everyone appreciated the support.”.
We asked Sam what other ways inclusion has been created in the workplace…
“We’ve focused on mental health since COVID-19 and have put in place more training, particularly line management training – we’ve had some great attendance and feedback from this. It is now mandatory, and this has built up inclusivity for those who support or may experience mental health, which has further led to conversations about suicide, which has provided more awareness. We also work closely with our engagement leads, these are different roles across the company and bring people together in a more fun way such as book clubs and craft clubs. This goes hand in hand with our wellbeing champions and it covers everything for our team to get involved. We as wellbeing champions care about our employees and want the best for them, so we must show it in all that we do.”.
Thank you very much, Sam, for sharing the incredible work that you and the Wellbeing Champion team are doing at Foundever! It is truly amazing to see the positive effects it has had on the workplace, creating a positive and connected culture that supports everyone in a variety of ways.
