Building business on staff wellbeing
St George is a member of the Berkeley Group, one of London’s leading mixed-use property developers and a FTSE 100 company. It is responsible mainly for the construction of high-quality complexes along London’s riverfront, identifying brownfield sites that are suitable for sustainable development.
They are renowned for their progressive approach to building homes which offer vibrant places to live, work and play. They create new communities where people can enjoy a great quality of life with on-site facilities such as fitness suites, landscaped grounds, concierge service, shops, cafés and restaurants.
They pride themselves on making a difference and for maintaining high standards in all that they do. This applies to not only what they do but how they do it and they are committed to engendering a safe and healthy working environment for all contractors who work on their developments. So much so, they publicly state they aim to achieve and maintain the highest standards of health and safety performance.
To help them meet these high standards, St George turned to Park Health & Safety in 2014 for support on delivering a comprehensive health and wellbeing programme for all workers on their sites. The team at Park was already known to St George having established a formidable reputation for leading the way in health and wellbeing and specifically for having delivered the first-ever Olympic build (London 2012) without a fatality. There are usually a number of ongoing projects stretching across the London boroughs in the St George portfolio and, although not large by industry standards, each one employs anywhere up to 350 people.
As part of the planning process in how the Park team would deliver meaningful wellbeing programmes to the construction workers, a strategy was devised and its principles agreed as a way forward. The ongoing aim of the strategy is to provide meaningful wellbeing care for each of those workers, on each site, bringing the care directly to them. To deliver this comprehensive programme, a fully-trained nurse visits each development at least once per month, offering a range of peripatetic health services.
This includes:
- A health MOT.
- Advice and guidance on lung health and stopping smoking.
- Nutrition and weight-management.
- Women’s health.
- Metabolic measurements, blood pressure and cholesterol.
In addition, each month Park undertakes to deliver a campaign where it provides a wealth of information including posters, fliers and presentations on specific subjects. These are supplemented with more formalised toolbox talks at each location to provide a more detailed presentation on health-related topics.
“We want to educate individuals on the importance of being healthy and looking after themselves with accessible and meaningful information which they can then relay back to their families and friends,” said Keith
“However, of equal importance is being able to track tangible results where we have worked with an individual to improve their own health measures (BMI, heart rate, cholesterol etc.) so they can see at first-hand the benefits they can enjoy from adopting a healthier lifestyle.
“A top priority is mental wellbeing and a worker may visit the nurse with a simple headache but it can provide an opportunity to talk about other concerns they may have regarding their health.
“Having someone impartial to talk to, without the need to take time off work or to make an advance appointment, can have a tremendous impact on an individual’s state of mind.
“We certainly applaud the team at St George for having the foresight and empathy to bring Park Health, with its wealth of experience in this field, on site to support employees,” added Keith.
Each month, a report is prepared for the senior management at St George on the ongoing engagement at each site for the preceding month. This includes the number of people seen, an overview of the health status, observing data protection and anonymity of the contractors and any prevalent themes arising in the workplaces. This allows the team to keep track of the general health of the workforce and also to address any specific issues as they occur.
However, the real worth is in using the data to plan for the following year and to prepare a full calendar of activities to support wellbeing messaging. Since 2019, this has proven invaluable, as it has been possible to track the rise in the number of concerns workers have flagged around “social” issues. This has included problems with traditional and online gambling, sleeping and the use of social media platforms.
In addition, it has also highlighted the sharp rise in numbers of people facing challenges at home from taking on responsibility for caring for relatives with illnesses including Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s and dementia, and Chronic Obstructive Pulminary Disease (COPD) and the impact these can have on both their home and work life.
“Armed with this information, we can regularly refresh the wellbeing messaging and calendar of activities that we take out to the sites so it remains relevant and of real use to our colleagues in the field,” said Keith.
“In addition, we maintain a close relationship with the leadership team at St George so they are always aware of issues facing their workforce and our practical approach to helping them.”