Susanne Morgan is the Health & Wellbeing Coordinator, and Karina Buchanan MCIPD is the Human Resources Business Manager at the college, tasked with building workplace wellbeing strategy and working with us at SuperWellness to support their colleagues through preventative health and wellbeing training.
Forth Valley is one of the top performing colleges in Scotland with 3 state-of-the-art campuses with over 600 members of staff. We’ve had the pleasure of interviewing both Susie and Karina about their experiences working with SuperWellness, the challenges they face in promoting wellbeing within the education sector, and how they successfully made their business case to start working with SuperWellness.
0:00:26
Introduction
Hi there, I’m Karina and I’m HR Business Manager here at Forth Valley College and a big part of my role is leading on health and wellbeing. My name is Susanne and I’m the Health and Wellbeing Coordinator here at the college and my role is to make sure that we have the right support available to all staff for health and wellbeing.
0:00:44
Tell us about Forth Valley College and your key wellbeing challenges?
So, Forth Valley College is one of the leading colleges within Scotland. We have over 600 members of staff who work across three different campuses. So we have Falkirk, Alloa and Stirling. And for the past couple of years, the health and wellbeing team have been really focusing on providing a proactive approach to health and wellbeing.
01:10
What were you looking for in a workplace wellbeing provider and what led you to decide to partner with SuperWellness?
Yes, so actually following COVID, all colleges in Scotland were given money from the Scottish Funding Council to help support staff and students with their health and wellbeing. So, I was recommended for two days a week to really focus on health and wellbeing and I didn’t really know where to start so I needed a base if you like to start so I did some research and came across SuperWellness and this was a fantastic platform and a great resource which meant I was able to get a whole calendar of events and access to webinars at my fingertips and all your resources were there to help me just to promote to the whole college straight away, so that was super.
0:02:02
How did you make the business case to invest into workplace wellbeing?
First of all, I had to produce some data, so I had to first get data and prove that we needed to invest in health and wellbeing. And the way that we did that was we started something called the Wellbeing Project, and from this we were able to produce snapshot reports for all of our staff so that we could find out how they were doing with regards to their health, wellbeing and resilience levels. And this gave us really rich data that we could collate for the whole of the college so we could find out how the college as a whole was doing with regards to health, wellbeing and resilience. And this then provided evidence as to what areas we had to target with health and wellbeing and therefore we were allocated more budget, and I was able to source Susie to come on board and join the team.
0:03:05
Could you tell us about the progress you’ve made in workplace wellbeing whilst working with SuperWellness?
The progress we have made has been fantastic. From being more recognisable within the college, to having a constant flow of support and resources available for staff to access and access at all times as well has been incredible. And yeah, it’s just really helped us move forward with our health and wellbeing approach and the support available to staff.
0:03:35
How have you developed colleague engagement with wellbeing at the college?
So, to develop the engagement, consistency really has been key for us. We have a weekly e-newsletter that goes out to all staff, so we’ve always made sure that we’ve had all health and wellbeing resources and information available and promoted. And also, we have a Teams community as well, so that as soon as we have the information available or the resources, we can put up immediately and so staff have a constant flow of access to all this support.
0:04:07
How do you go about planning for your year ahead of wellbeing programming?
So, every year we create a health and wellbeing outcomes framework which basically details everything that we’re going to do for health and wellbeing for the full year and we make use of the super wellness calendars and webinars and programming all the information into the Health and Wellbeing Outcomes Framework. We also ask the staff as well what they want to see in the coming year, and we include their suggestions as well, so everyone gets included in what we offer.
0:04:41
Could you tell us about the training and toolkits you have utilised from SuperWellness?
So, for the training that we’ve used would be specifically for our team called Mental Health Ambassadors. The SuperChamps portal has provided our mental health ambassadors with a varied number of resources and information that they can access at any time but also go back a good period to access these resources as well. The toolkits that come out every month have been fantastic for us because it’s ready-made materials there for us to circulate around our staff and highlight wellbeing days that we have coming up too. I think what you need to do is get evidence and data to make a business case for health and wellbeing and as I said before the way we did that was through the wellbeing project getting data information and using that as evidence as to what we need to do going forward.
0:05:41
What advice would share with others in similar roles in the education sector for improving wellbeing in the workplace?
So, I think that’s the key thing, we need to be able to prove a return on investment as well and that’s why we then re-ran the wellbeing project again the following year so we could do a direct comparison with the previous year’s results so we could actually evidence an impact in what we were doing and part of that is obviously the resources from SuperWellness which helped with that data gathering.
The other thing to mention as well is obviously about the continual promotion of resources and really being out there and in people’s faces. On SharePoint we have the biggest tile on the main page of Forth Valley College called Health and Wellbeing, just to really assure staff that health and wellbeing is really important to us, and they can’t miss it.
0:06:28
What feedback have you received from your team and colleagues since starting with SuperWellness?
The feedback we’ve had has been great. I’ve had some fantastic feedback as recent as this morning, where we ran our Thriving in a Hybrid World webinar with Jess. I think staff are just really starting to see the benefit from these one-hour webinars and just the amount of information and resources that you can gain from them, even having all the resources and send some afterwards so they can keep going back and referencing all the information that they’ve just learned. And with our SuperChamps as well, then being able to access the more in-depth webinars has been great as well.
And some of the topics, especially the Neurodiversity one was really interesting. Having the access to access those resources as well for the SuperChamps just provides them with a wealth of knowledge.
How do you feel SuperWellness has benefited employee wellbeing at Forth Valley College?
Yes, so SuperWellness was a springboard for us. We were able to promote instantly which meant we were supporting our staff immediately which is important especially after Covid because that is really when we signed up to SuperWellness and that’s really helped us immensely. You have so many topics and things that you cover with your resources, and everything is so helpful to all of us no matter where they are within their point in life. So, yeah, it’s been amazing.
0:08:07
What would you say to anyone considering working with SuperWellness?
I would say definitely do it. The return on investment, I don’t think you can disagree with, to be honest. The amount of resources that are available is enormous and there is absolutely no way I could have pulled all of the information together myself without having to reinvent the wheel. So, if you take into account how much time and effort that would have taken, it’s a no-brainer for me.
0:08:37
How has your experience been working with the SuperWellness team?
Working with Super Wellness has been great. Hayley has been fantastic in just making sure that we’re constantly kept up to date with everything that’s up and coming at SuperWellness, and just making sure that we’re constantly kept up to date with everything that’s up and coming at Super Wellness.
Obviously working with Jess as well for our two most recent webinars, they have just gone down so, so well with our staff and been really, really well received. And just the amount of knowledge that Jess can put out in one hour is incredible. And also working with Ellie as well to help our SuperChamps really utilise the SuperChamps portal as well and get the most out of that, so taking the time to support us to be able to give those resources out has been fantastic.
09:24
What wellbeing topics are you looking forward to the most in 2024?
I think we’re seeing more and more children and see diagnosis as well and with that more and more adults are receiving it and I think it’s starting to answer quite a lot of questions for adults who have spent quite a lot of their work and life questioning why they feel certain ways why they might find something more difficult and just having that knowledge and those resources available to our staff can really help support anyone who is neurodiverse.
The next one would be the support for managing your finances and working through your finances. Everybody is experiencing the cost-of-living crisis and the effects that can have. We’re all quite aware that financial difficulties can have a negative effect on your mental health. So again, being able to help guide our staff and support them through the current climate, we couldn’t ask for any more other than to have all this support available to them.
And the final one is empowerment. So that’s been one of our key focuses when we first started this, was helping staff to become, and supporting staff to become more resilient. I think running these types of workshops will help our staff gain more empowerment to really push forward in their own goals and what they want to achieve and also just help them build their resilience when faced with difficult topics and conversations.
About the Author
As the Creative Manager for SuperChamps, Ellie is committed to expanding and enhancing the SuperChamps programme while also crafting captivating social and marketing content to promote the message of SuperWellness.
During her free time, Ellie engages in various roles as a Personal Trainer, Dance Teacher, and Massage Therapist, demonstrating her passion and dedication to supporting clients in achieving optimal health and wellbeing.
