At Lloyd’s of London, we have a deep commitment to promoting the health and wellbeing of our employees. We know that a healthy, fit and committed workforce is better able to achieve their own objectives and help us to meet our business goals.
We partner with our health benefit providers to offer best-practice programmes. Together, we create a high-quality, accessible and valued suite of benefits, actively promoting health awareness and wellbeing via education, information and an engaging programme of events. We also provide fair, consistent and supportive approaches to employee illness and absence from work.
We carry out regular reviews so we are able to respond to the changing needs of our workforce, giving them the support they need, when they need it.
We recently updated our policies following an accreditation process with the London Healthy Workplace Charter. The charter helps employers implement wellbeing programmes across a wide range of areas, including mental health, smoking, alcohol and substance misuse, physical activity and healthy eating. Our programmes were recognised with an excellence rating, the highest possible, but the process was also useful in auditing our existing provision of initiatives and providing recommendations for areas of improvement. As a result, we now encourage greater dialogue with our employees to ensure our programmes best suit their needs.
We have introduced a health and wellbeing blog, which has led to an increase in the number of ideas coming through from employees. Currently, we are working with employees to arrange lunchtime singing sessions during our 2016 health and wellbeing week, as well as introducing meditation sessions in both our London and Chatham offices during May.
In addition to the health and wellbeing benefits we make available, we offer a number of initiatives to help employees find a healthy lifestyle that works for them. There is an annual calendar of events, with at least one health and wellbeing promotion every six weeks.
Initiatives that have taken place so far in 2016 include: a four-week weight challenge, which saw 140 employees from seven offices around the globe take part; a postural health workshop for employees in our London office; a Nutrition for Energy and Resilience webinar, provided by Optum, our employee assistance programme (EAP) provider; support for No Smoking Day, which is a regular feature on our events calendar; and a Top Tips for Optimal Health workshop, which was based on feedback from those employees who took part in a weight loss challenge about what additional support they would find useful.
In addition, we ran our third annual health and wellbeing week on 6-10 June, to raise awareness within the Lloyd’s community about the importance of looking after health and wellbeing and how Lloyd’s can support this. Events included tai chi, mindfulness, massage, health checks, alcohol awareness, financial wellbeing, mental health and resilience.
Our work with the charter has raised the profile of health and wellbeing across Lloyd’s and is now a vital part of continuing to attract and retain the best talent, while helping to maintain a healthy and happy workforce.
Amy Anstey is talent recognition advisor at Lloyd’s of London