Prioritizing Employee Wellness

Tracey Leghorn, Chief Human Resources and H&S Officer, SUEZ UK

With a career which commenced in leisure, retail and media, Tracey’s professional HR experience spans 20+ years and encompasses roles through to Executive HR Director in organizations of up to 60,000 UK employees within global, national, regional and multi-site businesses. Today, she resides as Chief Business Services Officer (CBO) on the Board of SUEZ Recycling and Recovery UK Ltd, where her portfolio covers Business Transformation, IT, Project Management, Health & Safety, HR and Facilities. 

What are some of the best employee wellness practices that can be adopted by organizations to achieve the best possible outcome?

Employee wellness practices demand ample amount of time and resources which need to be provided by the organization. Despite the support and resources, wellness initiatives and strategies often thrive when it is created by the employees themselves. An example would be the Wellness Charter made by our people at SUEZ, a waste management and environmental services organization in the UK. We engaged with about 50 people from across our business and SUEZ Works Council and spent some quality time with them, which resulted in the creation of this Wellness Charter. Created in the autumn of 2019, Wellness Charter consists of eight domains of well-being, which has inclusion and diversity at its centre, as our people felt that it form a part of the overall holistic well-being. The other domains of wellbeing include mental, social, financial, job role, and work environment. The program and the initiatives have been extremely beneficial to our employees. It also helped build momentum in the business through delivering on the ideas generated by our own people.

How has COVID and remote work culture affected the employee wellness? How can organizations tackle the issues that came from it?

COVID-19 has accelerated many organizations to create agendas around physical and mental wellbeing of its employees. At SUEZ, we come up with proactive wellbeing measures focused on mental health and resilience. From my experience, individuals can cope up with a crisis but it can develop a trigger which impacts their mental health later in life. Hence, we give emphasis to mental health awareness and resilience training that can be of great help to our employees.

With hybrid working, employees may feel isolated and unsupported, if they are working from home. To solve this crisis, we have tried connecting and engaging with those who work from their homes during lockdown. It’s equally important to upskill your managers to acquire those skills needed to effectively manage, support and lead the remote workers.

While companies have adjusted to the new ways of working, what are some of the future trends and consulting services to look out for? What kind of solutions would you recommend to your peers?

Although the agenda around wellness is the matter of topic, I would like to mention the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda of SUEZ in the sustainable development and social value space. I believe, employees and businesses thrive when individuals come to work, for reasons that extend beyond themselves and when they’re provided with an enriched employee experience, that not only support their careers, through wellness, inclusion, and continuous learning but also where their efforts contribute to a greater societal or environmental good at both the sort of micro and macro level. To achieve this target, we have an approach called the triple bottom line which is around people, planet, and profit. Our belief is that if we provide a positive employee experience for our people, they will reciprocate the favour to the customers and the planet in general, which in turn, will generate the profit that makes us a financially viable organization that can thrive and grow and then provide more jobs. At SUEZ, we are getting into the second year of this approach and the evidence demonstrates that prioritizing people, followed by planet, and then profit makes the business more profitable.

What’s the best wellness practice that can be adopted by young up and coming entrepreneurs and established companies? Do you have any advice for them?

For any wellbeing and wellness agenda, I believe, it’s crucial to start small. Instead of trying to fix everything in one go, focus on one or two particular things, start small, and grow and evolve from there.

Employee Wellness

Financial

Retail

Project Management