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Case Study
How Community Housing engaged their whole workforce in a wellbeing event
Community Housing in Kidderminster provides homes and services to support the local community, including care and support, housing management, maintenance and repairs, and shared ownership.
Their name is very much intentional – everything is built around community. This ethos extends not only to their customers, but to their colleagues too, as their wellbeing strategy is structured around the idea of communities within the business. Some of these communities include:
- Women Doing Well – women’s health group.
- CH Men Mater – all things men’s health.
- CHPride – celebrating and supporting LGBT+ colleagues and families.
Their approach to wellbeing isn’t completely siloed, though, as their annual Great Community Takeaway event showcases.
In spring each year, the Community Housing team spends two days engaging in a variety of wellbeing and health promotion activities, helping colleagues look after their health at both work and at home.
Key Outcomes
- 240+ colleagues engaged over two days.
- 8 interactive wellbeing activities.
- 4.6 / 5 rating from colleagues who attended.
Challenge - Engaging a wide range of colleagues in different roles
Community Housing has two main sites in Kidderminster, in relatively close proximity, including a repairs and maintenance service and customer service team. In addition, they have multiple Sheltered Housing Schemes that have colleagues delivering a Care and Support services to tenants.
The main challenge with offering an equitable wellbeing intervention in this scenario, is that not all colleagues will be available to attend. This is partially due to geography (ensuring the works site is staffed), but also because maintenance and support colleagues still need to be visiting customers – if they’re taking time away from their main work, it needs to be planned and structured.
Solution - Employee Health Screening
As part of their annual ‘Great Takeaway’ event, Community Housing wanted to engage colleagues across a range of health and wellbeing topics. So, we provided a Corporate Health Fair consisting of several zones for the event, including:
- Colleague health checks – body composition and blood pressure testing
- Lifestyle review – how to improve/maintain health check results
- Sleep hygiene – tips and advice for improving sleep quality
- Nutrition and alcohol awarness – discussing the benefits of a healthy diet
- Physical activity – a quick and fun strength building activity
Additionally, Community Housing also hosted some of their own activities, including:
- Chill out area – for colleagues to take a breather
- Yoga taster – introducing some basic yoga activities
- Food trailer – treating colleagues to a healthy meal or snack
The key aspect of the whole event, however, was down to the planning. People Partner Karen Lowry-Hall planned the event to allow all colleagues to attend, booking groups of colleagues into time slots, accounting for shift changes, so that everybody got to experience all of the activities over a set period of time booked out of their day.
Community Housing also has a group of dedicated Wellbeing Champions, who helped to guide colleagues quickly between the zones, meaning our practitioners could get straight into activities.
Additionally, because the event ran over two consecutive days (with the same activities each day) everyone had the opportunity to attend with minimal disruption to business activities.
Result - An engaging event enjoyed across the board
As a result of excellent planning and smooth execution, over 240 Community Housing colleagues were able to attend the event and engage in every activity.
Feedback was collected anonymously directly after the event, where the event was rated 4.6 out of 5. Additionally, the zones provided specifically by New Leaf Health also received a 4.6 out of 5 rating, indicating positive sentiment all around.
One colleague even said:
“Absolutely amazing! The best works event I have attended in my career. Community Housing does an excellent job in staff engagement.“
Anonymous Attendee, Great Takeaway Event, Community Housing
Given our close proximity, a couple of staff from the New Leaf office visited Community Housing on the day of the event where we managed to interview some attendees, as well as organiser Karen, and we even managed to capture some video of the event in action – check it out below, and be sure to keep an eye out for the works staff in the yoga session!
Community Housing and New Leaf Health have a long-standing relationship, allowing these events to build in terms of scope and activity year-on-year.
There are a few key takeaways for any organisation looking to plan an event of this scope, which New Leaf Health and Community Housing execute so well:
- Planning: don’t be afraid to organise attendees to maximise engagement and to promote equal-access.
- Variety: It’s the spice of life, as they say. Give colleagues the opportunity to experience various activities and they’ll be sure to love at least one aspect.
- Fun: Wellbeing shouldn’t be stuffy or serious. Take a look at the video above to see just how many smiling faces there are throughout – and that was only in the space of a couple of hours!
- Engagement: Ensuring the activities are accessible and equitable means that engaging requires almost zero effort for attendees, meaning they’re more likely to take something meaningful away from the event.
Thanks to Community Housing for having us – we’re already looking forward to next year’s event!
Book a Health Fair for your Empoyees
Introduce your colleagues to a wide range of health and wellbeing interventions.
Community Housing
Housing Association
Industry
Housing
Company Size
500 – 1000 Employees
Headquarters
Kidderminster
Book a Health Fair for your Empoyees
Introduce your colleagues to a wide range of health and wellbeing interventions.