Rachel Writes: A healthy workforce culture is critical to our success
This month’s edition highlights the importance of workplace wellbeing and my absolute commitment to developing an emotionally and physically healthy workforce culture, so everyone feels safe, supported and valued in what they do.
As a people and values-based organisation, this is critical to our success. We have been on a journey over the last few years with re-imagining our mission, vision and values, and establishing core principles that are common to us all. We have reached a place in which Compass is thriving. So it feels now is the right time to turn our attentions to our own wellbeing to ensure it is considered in all that we do and to start those everyday conversations.
In my mind, staff wellbeing is best aligned to the Compass value of ‘valuing every individual’; with a focus on those all important human characteristics that matter most such as being kind to ourselves and each other, by actively listening, and being empathic and non judgemental. It isn’t about being the health and wellbeing expert which we are for our beneficiaries but working together to adopt practical and simple everyday low cost/no cost initiatives within Compass that improve our workplace wellbeing.
– Rachel Bundock, Compass CEO
SMT to develop wellbeing action plan – scroll down to learn more in the SMT report.
Real time results for families as our staff deliver Triple P courses in Barnsley
Read all about it! How our workers in Barnsley created that inter-generational change we strive for, delivering a new dimension to our offer.
Thompson tells of tears and triumphs as we give Positive Parenting tips in school sessions in Barnsley.
Let’s GO! Lincolnshire staff give up their Saturday to attend Pride event.
Workers wanted to reach out to young people who may be attending the Cleethorpes and Grimsby Pride event. Little, unspoken interactions made it all worthwhile.
NEL’s Sam Walters on his LGBTQIA+ specialist theme role
Business Development team achieve CPD accreditation for Senior Mental Health Lead training.
Business Development Assistant Director Rose Kearns said: “We’re very proud that we have achieved this.”
Grateful for the help and support you’ve received from a colleague? Tell us about it…
Just Say Thanks…
Thanks to Sonia and the team at Tower Hamlets
We would like to extend a special ‘Huge thanks’ to Sonia, the Registered manager and the Tower Hamlets team for the sterling efforts before and during the recent CQC visit at Tower Hamlets.
The team demonstrated a coordinated and professional approach to how we deliver holistic and individualistic care to the young people in the borough. Our initial feedback from the inspectors has been very positive and they were very pleased with feedback from the young persons present and partner agencies we work with including the GPs. – Jordan Soondar, Clinical Governance Lead /Designated Safeguarding Officer- Compass and Richard Thomas, Operations Manager – Specialist Services
Grateful: Lotty, Rachael and Zoe
We would like to say a huge thank you to the team in North Yorkshire who have worked so incredibly hard to quickly work through the list of people waiting for screening. You have all gone above and beyond, and then some, to find time in already stacked diaries to fit in additional screening calls. It is your hard work, determination (and for some competitiveness!!) that meant we had contacted everyone so quickly. An extra big thank you to our fabulous Admin Team Caroline and Rob who managed to keep everything under control! Every time we threw a change of direction your way you came back with a new list/spreadsheet meaning no-one was missed and everyone was offered a call in a safe, fair and timely way! Thank you all so so much! Your just brilliant! – Zoe, Rachael and Lotty at Compass Phoenix
Hard work on autism project
I would personally like to say thanks to Leanne Turner, Muriel Charrot and Harry Dixon for their incredibly hard work in the Autism In Schools Project. This has been a new project for Compass Go to be involved in, and they have absolutely smashed it! Meeting targets across the board and making a change for children and young people in the local area. Leanne Cook, Compass GO!
Barnsley team so dedicated
To all in Barnsley MHST, Thank you so much for all your hard work over the past school year. You have all been so passionate and dedicated to get the team established in schools and the feedback we have had from the schools, young people and families has been amazing.
We feel immensely proud every day to work in this team and I’m so excited for our next year. – Vick Hanley, Service Manager and Team leaders Michelle Eyre and Louise Doughty.
Nat’s calm under pressure
I would like to say the biggest thank you to Natalie Wilkes (SCPHN school nurse) for being such an incredibly supportive colleague and friend. She is always calm under pressure and it seems as though she really does have all the answers!! Nat is a wonderful role model for everyone and I only hope that I can be just as good a SCPHN as she is. Thank you for being you Nat! Jenni xx – Jennifer Cave, School Nurse, C4H.
Welcome back Alice
A very warm welcome back from maternity leave to Alice, although we were BUZZ when you left and Phoenix when you returned you are finding your feet beautifully. It can be a tricky transition making that return, going from baby brain to BUZZ US – but you are smashing it. Remember, we are all here for anything you need. Love Pip. – Pip Nix, Training & Consultation, Compass Phoenix
Amazing admin
The whole MHST in Lancashire would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to our amazing admin team. Helen Massey, Jill Smith and Stuart Swarbrick. We wouldn’t be able to offer the service we do to our children, young people and families without them. “The roots to our trees”. – Lisa Baldwin, Supervising Practitioner, West and South Lancashire MHSTs.
SMT Report: Senior Management Team focuses on workplace wellbeing
SMT discussed the importance of creating an emotional healthy culture within Compass that has parity with physical health and safety, so we all feel safe supported and valued and know how to access help as and when we need it.
As health and wellbeing experts providing a range of public health services, we deal with a wide range of complexity of needs on a day to day basis and recognise the importance of tackling stigma, seeking help early and achieving a good work life balance. And we routinely advocate and adopt self help and preventative approaches that incorporate initiatives such as 5 ways to wellbeing within our interventions.
We recognise the need to better understand the emotional health and wellbeing issues that are important to us all and develop a structure where we can regularly review our internal wellbeing priorities across the workforce and take forward practical everyday initiatives that will have the biggest positive impact.
Prompted by Covid and our work within Positive Effect, we have started to think about what we already have in place, what has worked, and what hasn’t. We are at the start of this journey and want to do this together with staff, recognising that we may sometimes get things wrong, or some things may not work and therefore engaging in ongoing dialogue about this subject alongside being solution focused is key.
In the coming weeks and months, we will be carrying out a number of pieces of work that will inform an organisational wellbeing action plan. These include:
- An organisational emotional health and wellbeing policy
- An audit
- Wellbeing survey
- Focus groups
Over the next year we also plan to roll out wellbeing training for all staff, line managers, senior managers and for peer wellbeing champions who we would like to recruit across services and departments.
You’ve got mail? A new outlook on emails
As part of our focus on health and wellbeing we are encouraging staff to reconsider how they use email, writes Mark Roberts, finance Director
We are encouraging staff to work as close as possible to their contracted hours and not to be looking at e-mails, except in emergencies, once they have finished for the day. We do understand that one of the biggest challenges in achieving this is the sheer volume of e-mails that individuals receive.
Bad habits
E-mail is a useful tool but we can very easily slip into bad habits around including in our e-mails people who have no need to be included.
These habits are easy to fall into and in some cases are unconscious. We can only tackle this problem if we all make the effort to be more considerate with our use of e-mail. Simple issues we can address
- Use of reply all: Before using it consider whether everybody really needs to see your response. The most obvious example is when somebody asks a group for a date they are available for a meeting. The answer only needs to go to the organiser but by habit we press reply all and our colleagues do so and suddenly everybody in the group receives multiple e-mails.
- Copying in others: An e-mail should be sent for a purpose or a combination of purposes
- Seeking permission
- Seeking advice or support
- For information
Ensure that everybody you have in your circulation list is on there for one of those purposes. For information is the most problematic reason. People only really need to know information if it is useful to them in making decisions about how they conduct their everyday work
- Ping-pong E-mails: We sometime carry out a conversation made up of a series of short e-mails in rapid succession. Consider whether e-mail really the most sensible medium. Pick up the phone or even better if possible, going to see the person in the flesh
- Daisy chain e-mails: We sometimes enter into a discussion about an issue in e-mail over potentially a long period with various contributors. It can make understanding all the points very difficult. Consider if e-mail really is the most sensible medium; consider a meeting
- Sending e-mails to those sending an out of office: Ensure that before sending an e-mail to somebody sending an out of office e-mail that the e-mail will still be relevant when the person returns
When we do send an e-mail, or receive them, there are things we can do to help ourselves and the recipients of e-mails
- Be clear of the purpose of the e-mail in its title with regards to first recipient
- If you include in the To box a number of people, ensure in the text of the e-mail it is clear why they have been included and what you expect of them
- Use outlook tools
- Marking mails to show importance
- Ensuring out of office is on and covers a specific period
- Set up rules for managing your inbox
- Shared inboxes
- We sometimes receive e-mails form organisations trying to sell us something we don’t want but don’t get around to unsubscribing and end up continuously receiving these e-mails. Make time to unsubscribe
Charity Worker Discount
As prices rise in the shops, this may help…
Charity Workers and volunteer discounts and vouchers available for shopping, travel, motoring, gym memberships, mobile phones, and utilities…
Those are eligible are charity staff, volunteers and office based staff to register all you need is your name, postcode and the charity you work for.
Click the image to learn more,
Don’t forget, you have a free confidential helpline.
Just click the image to access it…
OUR FREE and confidential EAP service 24 hour confidential helpline is available for advice on matters
such as financial wellbeing, consumer advice, family & relationship advice and confidential counselling sessions.
Access it via the App or Wellbeing Portal to My Healthy Advantage with the following login credentials:
Employer code: MHA180081.
Access the Wellbeing Portal
Username: Wellbeing
Password: HomeLineCard20
Refer a Friend Scheme
DO YOU KNOW someone who would like to work for Compass?
Would you like to earn some extra money by referring them?
We are running a six month trial for ‘Refer a Friend’ scheme whereby if you successfully refer a
friend, family member or known contact to Compass for a vacant role at either Job/salary grade
B1 & B2 or Clinician Scale A, B or C you can earn yourself a referral award!
You can find further information in the Refer a Friend Scheme Policy in the Policy Central drive.
Tell us all about the events you mark in your service
If you mark any events and religious festivals in your services, please remember to share it with
Compass Points.
We know that services have already established events they mark which may not be on our calendar.
We’re really interested in hearing about all you do and aim to include your events in the overall calendar so it builds over time.
Tell us your news
The Deadline for stories and pictures for the next issue is
Midday on Monday, 22nd August. Please send submissions marked
Compass Points in subject line to cliff.edwards@compass-uk.org