Following the appointment of a new Head of HR, the Money Advice Trust conducted a review off all activity in relation to employee wellbeing. Aware that Advisers were taking calls from an increasingly vulnerable client group, the Money Advice Trust introduced an Employee Wellbeing Strategy.
In consultation with Sara Rawstron from Resilience and Brilliance, the Money Advice Trust embarked on a programme of training for managers and staff. Managers, including the top team, were trained on their legal and practical responsibilities around managing pressure in the workplace, how to conduct individual and team stress risk assessments and how to build resilience for themselves and their teams.
Risk Assessment and Training
Telephone Advisors and other members of staff were invited to attend personal resilience training courses and encouraged to put strategies into place to help them to better manage the pressures within their workloads and with some of their more vulnerable clients. They were also given the opportunity to take part in team stress risk assessments conducted by their managers to put forward their ideas of how they might improve the conditions of work at the Trust.
Following this, managers engaged their teams in discussusions about the pressure points and listened to their ideas to manage them better. The ideas were formed in to local and organisational action plans and these were put in place.
Reduction in Absence at The Money Advice Trust
Almost a year on, wellbeing in the workplace has improved with this training and other initiatives implemented under the Wellbeing strategy. It has led to short term absence being reduced by 66% and a reduction in absence overall by 25%. Receiving this training has also created a much more open culture with staff who suffer from mental health conditions being able to be proactive and complete Wellbeing Action Plans and also building resilience for all contact centre staff when handling calls from vulnerable clients.