‘True excellence’

Our tremendous work in the field of mental health has been recognised externally with two award wins at the ‘This can happen’ Awards.

Royal Mail Group won the ‘Best Mental Health in the Workplace Strategy (Large Company)’ award as well as the Grand Prix Award, which is given to the ‘most outstanding award entry’ from all 11 categories.  

Dr Shaun Davis, global director compliance & sustainability, said: ‘Mental health is a subject that has the potential to touch all of us to a greater or lesser extent, and so having a clear strategy that we can commit to and support colleagues with is just one of the ways we can show how much we value our people.

‘I am incredibly proud of the work we have done and being recognised externally gives us the impetus and motivation to keep doing the great work we have done to date. This achievement, which I accept on behalf of the company, is a testament to all the work we do, right across the business.’

The judges were impressed with the visual imagery used in our mental health campaigns as well as the way we engaged with colleagues in our five-year mental health strategy. The ‘Because Healthy Minds Matter’ campaign has combined group-wide programmes and local activity to support healthy minds with clear objectives:

• Increasing awareness of mental health.
• Decreasing the stigma.
• Signposting to tools and support.
• Ensure colleagues know where to go in a crisis.

The award entry described the work we have done in support of promoting better mental health over the past few years and included:

• The design of a video, z-cards, and workplace posters.
• The upskilling of HR support teams to increase the opportunities to signpost to support.
• Working with our charity partner, Action for Children, to raise £2 million in aid of their youth mental health initiative, the Blues Programme.
• Our ‘Because Healthy Minds Matter’ e-learning course, which was developed in-house and is available to all colleagues.
• The development of a ‘First Class Mental Health’ toolkit, which is available on our intranet as part of our ‘Feeling First Class’ health and wellbeing programme; offering support across a number of health topics, including employee assistance, fitness, health, lifestyle and finance.
• The introduction of Mental Health First Aid training.
• Thanks to the launch of our new ‘Health and Wellbeing Ambassador’ online learning portal, we have increased our community of ‘volunteer’ Health and Wellbeing ambassadors to 430 across the business.
• Our ‘Everyday People’ film produced by Royal Mail in collaboration with Action for Children, Mind, and Mental Health UK, to highlight the everyday occurrence of mental health issues among people of all age groups.

The ‘This can happen’ Awards were launched to celebrate and recognise companies and individuals who have shown excellence in their approach towards positive mental health for their employees. The Awards are open to all workplaces and individuals who champion mental health and are open for submissions from all types of workplaces - large or small, not-for-profit, every type of industry and from any country.

Support is available

First Class Support is free and confidential for colleagues and includes direct access to counselling services. Call 0800 6888 777, visit www.rmgfirstclasssupport.co.uk or download the ‘Lifeworks’ app. New users of the website/app can ‘sign up’ using a unique invitation code, which is RMG- and then your payroll number, e.g. RMG-12345678.