Schools, authorities and other organisations participating in the Well-Being Programme have experienced a wide range of tangible benefits:
- Improved communication and enhanced efficiency
- A healthier, happier and more stable working environment
- Enhanced professional relationships
- Reduced staff absence and greater staff retention, leading to lower costs
- A step-by-step way of meeting your legal duties as an employer, and
- Improved pupil performance in schools.
Reduced staff absence
“The number of days lost through sickness absence in the teaching force fell by 19% between 2005 and 2006, which is equivalent in cash terms to a saving of over £500,000. This reduction in staff absence is the fruit of the hard work of heads and school staff in meeting the challenges of workforce reform, supported by the excellent work of the Well-Being Programme.”
Local authority councillor, North West England
Meeting employer’s duty of care
Taking part in the Well-Being Programme will help you demonstrate that you are meeting your duty of care to your employees under Health and Safety legislation.
“HSE’s approach to state-maintained and secondary-school education has been to work in partnership with Worklife Support, who have a well-established and well-respected proactive organisational approach to tackling work-related stress in schools: the Well-Being Programme. HSE encourages organisations to implement the Management Standards approach but considers the Worklife Support product to be ‘broadly equivalent’. Encouraging the uptake of the Well-Being Programme is a realistic way of getting education and Children’s Services directorates to manage work-related stress at the individual school level.”
Health and Safety Executive, May 2007
Improved pupil performance
In the first UK study of its kind, Birkbeck College, University of London (in partnership with Worklife Support) has found that teacher wellbeing is linked to pupil performance: schools whose teachers, on average, reported higher levels of feeling valued, greater job satisfaction and lower levels of work overload were also those schools where SATs/GCSE performance was higher.
“The major implication of these findings is that if we want to improve school performance, we also need to start paying attention to teacher wellbeing. How teachers feel on an everyday basis is likely to affect their performance and so, in turn, the performance of the pupils they teach.”
Professor Rob Briner & Dr Chris Dewberry
Birkbeck College
