Sirona Care and Health in Bath has been recognised for its efforts to become a healthy place to work, with a national award being presented to the social enterprise.
Sirona has been awarded the Workplace Wellbeing Charter Award, a nationally developed award endorsed by Public Health England for businesses who can show they are healthy workplaces.
Cllr Simon Allen, Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Cabinet Member for Wellbeing and Chair of the BANES Health & Wellbeing Board, said: “The workplace is an important setting to take action to reduce the burden of illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases which now account for 60 per cent of deaths worldwide.
“Our lifestyle choices: healthy eating, regular exercise, moderate drinking, not smoking and maintaining good mental wellbeing will all reduce our chances of developing a long term illness. We all have a responsibility to act.
“Employers can help in a number of ways, for example by ensuring catering suppliers supply healthier food options or by promoting local support services available such as weight management support.
“Just as important is the need to look at other often hidden workplace influences on health, for example the culture of the organisation, management style and how health and wellbeing is discussed within teams.
“As an employer Sirona has taken its duty of care for their staff the extra mile and I congratulate them for that.”
Sirona, which provides community health and adult social services in Bath and North East Somerset, passed all areas being assessed with health and safety being marked as excellent.
Simon Knighton, chair of Sirona, said: “This award is very important to us. We take the health of our staff seriously and know that to provide the highest quality of care for those that use our service we want to do as much as we can to make sure our staff are healthy and able to give their best.
“As a social enterprise we exist to serve our community. The better we can embed health and wellbeing into everything the company does, the greater the benefit for our staff and for the wider community.
“At the same time like any company we have to demonstrate cost effectiveness. We know that if people are fitter and healthier they take less time off and we are confident that the measures we are putting in place to improve the health of our workplace will boost our performance’
“However the report by the assessors also highlighted areas in which we can improve and we are committed to doing that.”
Liz Richards, HR Director, said: “We are very proud to have got this award but for us it’s just the start of ongoing efforts to be as healthy a workplace as we can be.”
Louise Lees, Sirona’s Healthy Workplace Coordinator, said: “Sirona had set the leadership and vision in place that embodies healthy workplace principles. For example the creation of a Sirona culture of listening and compassion and engaging staff to help us develop a shared meaning of what it means to work at Sirona.
“This already helps staff feel part of the organisation and helped to build good relationships between managers and staff and a sense of belonging.”