Staff wellbeing at the heart of WCG
"Employees are WCG's greatest assest"
As an employer who has previously received national recognition for its work in supporting the wellbeing of its staff, employee welfare has always been at the heart of Warwickshire College Group's People Plan.
Covid-19 has been a challenging time for us all. In response to this, we have adapted and introduced a wide range of supportive measures. All WCG employees have access to the College’s Mental Health First Aiders. These trained members of staff are based both on-site and virtually and are available to provide advice, guidance and support during the working day. For those that require more in-depth assistance, we also have an on-site specialist Mental Health team available upon referral. In addition to this, all colleagues have access to our Employee Assistance Programme which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The pandemic has provided us with the opportunity to holistically review our wellbeing initiatives. During the nationwide lockdowns, the HR team undertook regular reviews of company-wide absence trends to ascertain how we could best target our support to staff. As a result of this, in the summer of 2020, WCG switched Occupational Health provider, enabling us to offer referred staff counselling via this service. In December 2020, the College introduced the ‘mymindpal’ app which provides staff with simple tools and techniques tailored to their Mental Fitness needs. Moreover, in February 2021, the College teamed up with ‘Able Futures’ to provide staff with confidential and individual professional support on a range of issues for a period of up to nine months.
Employees are WCG’s greatest asset and we will continue to champion employee wellbeing.
