About the project
Improving performance through wellbeing and engagement is a two year national project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council
(HEFCE) in partnership with the Scottish Funding Council and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales to support institutions to enhance their performance through their people.
The project is led by the Universities of Leeds and Glasgow in partnership with the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Chester, Newcastle, Winchester and Queen Mary, London, and Grimsby Institute for Further and Higher Education.
The project aims to:
- Develop a higher education specific business case for employee wellbeing and engagement — showing what aspects make have the biggest impact on performance
- Support institutions to enhance their practice by developing a bank of practical case studies and resources
- Support learning and sharing across the sector by developing an employee wellbeing network, supported by regional meetings.
All about wellbeing
There are multiple definitions for wellbeing, the majority place heavy emphasis on individual health, whislt others encompass aspects such as social and financial wellbeing. Even within the sector it is clear that many interpretations exist, with institutions using a range of terms to describe this agenda from ‘Positive Work Environment’ to ‘Quality of Working Life’. Others do not think about it as a separate agenda and just integrate it into day-to-day practice.
For many, the term wellbeing is most commonly associated with ‘nice to have’ activities, or limited to alternative therapies, peripheral staff benefits or only traditional health related activities. Others view the term, as well as those such as engagement and resilience, with cynicism – concerned that it may be a guise for managerialism
The project's national consultation in Autumn 2010, aimed to tackle some of these perceptions, discuss common terms used, and understand what they mean for the sector. Three key areas were discussed, specifically focusing on the employee/employer relationship:
- What is wellbeing? Is it more than health?
- What does engagement mean in a University setting? How do you engage staff with the whole University?
- What does resilience mean?
Participants felt that there is a significant overlap between wellbeing, health, engagement and resilience. Notably the terms wellbeing and engagement were felt to be ways to describe the key principles of being a good employer rather than a new concept or ‘bolt-on’ activity. Although an important part of this, resilience was viewed as something more closely linked with survival in challenging times. Positioned in this way, it was much more akin to the Work Foundation’s concept of ‘Good Work’. A number of participants also highlighted that there are importantly two different aspects of wellbeing:
- Hedonic – a well known concept, specifically linked to happiness and contentment
- Eudaimonic – a less well know concept, linked to purposeful engagement, personal growth, challenge, autonomy and sense of achievement.
They felt that both play an important role but that the eudaimonic is particularly interesting to consider in the context of an academic environment.
Importantly, there should be an over-arching aim to create a balance between the needs of individuals and organisation as a whole. This should be mutually beneficial - making HEIs great places to work, higher performing organisations and better for our stakeholders.
The views of participants can be summarised as:
A holistic approach - creating a positive environment and culture of mutual trust and respect where:
- our people are supported and valued – and the importance of their individual health is recognised
- our people are encouraged to fulfil their potential and engaged in performing to the best of their abilities
- our people are part of a university community - proud to work for their institution, see how they are contributing and want to be part of creating a successful future.
This then contributes to a high achieving organisation, which is resilient in the face of challenge and change.
You can find out more about the findings of our wellbeing consultation here.
Making the business case for wellbeing
There is a growing body of evidence, primarily from outside the Higher Education sector — showing both the negative impact of low levels of employee wellbeing, engagement and health, and the significant business benefits which could be realised if these thing were improved.
For example, research suggests that:
- Disengaged workers cost the UK £44 billion a year in lost productivity (IPA, 2008).
- Presenteeism leads to an approximate cost of £600 per employee, per year.
- Initial calculations show that just a 10% increase in performance is worth approximately £598 million per year to the UK HE sector (calculations taken from Robertson Cooper Ltd).
- There could also be a large impact on sickness absence levels. For example, improvements in this area enabled Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education to reduce their absence levels from 3.60 days per person (3.6%), per year in 2004/5 to 2.74 days per person (1.18%), per year in 2007/8 and increase the number of staff with no sickness absence from 26% to 46%.
During the lifetime of the project, we will begin to develop a higher education specific business case for wellbeing and engagement – showing that it really can make a difference in our sector.
Two strands of the project will be cornerstones for building this evidence base: measured institutional interventions and a wellbeing and performance mapping exercise.
Our growing evidence base will be available to view in our resources section.
Interventions
Feedback from across the sector shows that, without clear evidence, institutions find it difficult to know what interventions and activities have the greatest impact on areas of performance such as student satisfaction or research output.
This part of the project is piloting a variety of interventions across a diverse group of institutions to show the impact of such initiatives.
To inform this part of the project and ensure that we develop a robust evaluation process, the team is working with Robertson Cooper Ltd.
The findings from this work will inform the resources and case studies in the resources section.
The interventions carried out will be:
This intervention focuses on stress management. It will involve a number of activities including planning and delivering briefings for managers and staff, implementing stress risk assessments, training programmes, provision of counselling, physical exercise programmes and healthy eating initiatives.
The key purpose of the intervention is to reduce the number of sickness absence days lost (year-on-year) due to stress and to improve overall staff satisfaction within the ‘workload, pressure and stress’ category of the annual employee survey.
University Board response to Staff Engagement Survey
This intervention is being carried out in response to feedback from the 2009 staff engagement survey. Leadership visibility and communication were highlighted as priority areas for development therefore a ‘Board Development Programme’ has been developed including 360 degree feedback, training and coaching for individuals and the team as a whole. A second survey will be carried out in 2011 which will measure the impact this has had.
Embedding engagement and wellbeing in change management
Working with a group of 50 middle managers, this intervention includes training, development and coaching to allow them to cope with and lead change effectively. Evaluation will include measuring the reactions of key stakeholders and customers, and changes to behaviour in relation to coping with and leading change.
Introduction of new sickness absence procedure and support mechanism
This intervention will look at the introduction of new sickness absence procedures and support mechanism. Evaluation will focus on to what extent improvements are made in: management of sickness absence; equipping line managers to manage sickness absence appropriately and sensitively; helping staff to access support where needed; and improve recording of sickness absence.
Nutrition, Physical and Mental health
This intervention will investigate the impact of the University's existing Health For Work programme in terms of staff physical and mental health as well as the relationship between this and measures such as sickness absence, student satisfaction and staff survey data. Measurements will include physical measures of staff health as well as interviews.
Resilience Training for Managers
This intervention is focused on resilience training for managers. The training, is centred around the idea of “keeping pressure positive” which helps managers to balance challenge and support for the mutual benefit of organisational performance and employee well-being.
The training sessions will provide managers with a resilience report, which helps people to assess and develop their own resilience. This includes a section on strengths and risks of the individual’s personality related to four main resilience factors: confidence, purposefulness, adaptability and social support. It will also provide practical tips and techniques for building and maintaining personal resilience.
This intervention aims to improve staff awareness of how to manage stress and build capacity for peer support within the institution. The intervention will involve running a number of 'looking after each other' training sessions with teams with the aim of impoving team working and support within teams.
Exploring the links between leadership and performance
This intervention explores the impact of Heriot-Watt's Values and Leadership Programmes on the performance of the teams. Initiatives included within this wide ranging programme of work include the development of University Values and the embedding of these within the organisation, and an extensive leadership development programme.
Evaluating an Individual Approach to Executive Change Management Support.
This intervention will evaluate the impact and value of an individual, voluntary executive coaching programme on Senior Managers who are managing major structural change.
The intervention will evaluate levels of personal resilience in managers who are about to manage major structural change, offer a personalised programme of executive coaching to managers, and evaluate the impact of this programme from the perspective of the individual managers, and their colleagues.
Levels of personal resilience after coaching will also be compared with a non-intervention control group.
Team rebuilding following change
This intervention aims to evaluate the process of developing, engaging staff in, and the outcomes of delivering a programme of rebuilding following change. Through a five stage intervention plan, the programme will address the dip in performance that can occur following major change, with particular emphasis around how to create enthusiastic alignment with strategic goals.
The intervention sits alongside a formal change management process and will provide personal, and team based support to build individual and team resilience, all the while integrating the theories which support resilience building and sitting within a context of strategic alignment.
A formal programme of evaluation of the process and the outcomes will highlight any challenges that were overcome in developing and delivering an intervention to a diverse staff group, and will demonstrate changes in levels of personal and self rated team resilience.
Enhancing staff engagement in the wellbeing agenda
This intervention aims to create a more joined up approach and to develop and implement a programme of communications and activities that would raise employee awareness, encouraging ownership, engagement and sustainable improvements in the wellbeing of staff at Newcastle University.
Redefining the academic psychological contract
This intervention is to identify and understand the current academic contract, as perceived by staff. It will then be possible to explore, if it is broken, what factors have impacted on this, and which of these it would be possible for the institution to influence in the future.
Organisational communications and wellbeing
This intervention is being planned as a result of a staff engagement survey carried out in 2009. Feedback from this showed that staff would benefit from improved communications at an organisational level. Work will therefore be carried out with faculties reporting the highest level of discontentment, to explore this area further, and then carry out work to improve communications. Evaluation will include using short ‘pulse surveys’ to show the impact on perceptions and performance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is wellbeing and what does it cover?
Wellbeing has built on a number of other business and health concepts including organisational commitment, discretionary effort and staff engagement. For the purposes of this project, wellbeing is about creating the environment where staff are supported to perform to the best of their abilities. We believe that it is not, what some perceive to be a ‘fluffy add-on’ activity, it is actually a fundamental principle of good business, which benefits employees, institutions, and our students alike.
Our consultation programme is currently working to better understand key wellbeing terms and what they mean and include within a Higher Education context - if you would like to take part you can find further information on our events page.
Why is wellbeing important now?
Over the past two years, the situation organisations find themselves in has changed drastically. Across the sector, leaders have been recognising the urgent need for transformational change. Faced with the need to deliver more and differently, with potentially less resource, more than ever, institutions need to remember that ‘our people are our greatest asset’. This means adapting the way we work with our people — investing in engagement and wellbeing as a way to support staff and strengthen our institutions. This is not to say that staff wellbeing is only about survival. In fact, investing in these things now will give HEIs the distinctive edge which will allow them to thrive once recovery begins (Working for a Healthier Tomorrow, 2008).
My organisation has/I have done some interesting work related to staff wellbeing, how can I share this information with others?
One of the main aims of the project is to gather case study information which can be shared across the sector. We’d love to hear from you and share your experience with our network. Please use the simple template to provide some background information and a member of the project team will get in touch with you. This information will then be used on this website and will be used as part of our final report to HEFCE. For further information please contact us.
How is the project being managed?
The project is run on a day-to-day basis by the Project Team. The Executive Member Group is responsible for agreeing the direction of the project. The Steering Group is led by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, and is responsible for overseeing the delivery of the project including monitoring finances and risk.
For more information about how the project is managed please refer to the Governance section of this website.
How can I find out more about the results of the project?
The final report from the Phase one project is now available for download. You can also find more information about phase two of the project in the about the project section of this page. The final results of this project will be posted on this website when they are available. For more information on this strand of the project please contact us.
How does this project fit with the other HEFCE-funded ‘Developing Leadership and Governance for Healthy Universities’ project?
Whilst the Improving performance through wellbeing and engagement project focusses specifically on staff and all aspects of the employee experience which allow them to perform to the best of their abilities, the Healthy Universities Project takes a healthy settings approach encompassing, staff, students and the wider community.
Regular liaison meetings are held between the two projects and we work together to ensure that we draw on and signpost stakeholders to learning from this and other relevant projects.
Developing Leadership and Governance for Healthy Universities project statement:
Developing Leadership and Governance for Healthy Universities is a two year project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Leadership, Governance and Management Fund.
The project is led jointly by the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), working in partnership with Leeds Trinity University College, Nottingham Trent University, Teesside University, the University of the West of England, the Royal Society for Public Health and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. The aims of the project are to:
- strengthen, formalise and expand the National Network
- generate and disseminate web-based guidance tools and case studies that enable HEIs to develop as Healthy Universities
- support further national developments, building on the findings of the National Research and Development Project.
For further information please visit
www.healthyuniversities.ac.uk
I want to attend an event, how do I book?
Please follow the instructions on the events page. If you encounter problems in making a booking, please contact us.
Governance
This section gives details of how the project is managed.
The project is run on a day-to-day basis by the Project Team. The Executive Member Group is responsible for agreeing the direction of the project. The Steering Group is led by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, and is responsible for overseeing the delivery of the project including monitoring finances and risk.
Our expert groups provide invaluable advice to the project by ensuring that we are aware of new developments, work and resources and acting as critical friends commenting on the resources created by the project.
Please view the individual pages for more details of each of these groups.
Executive Member Group
This group is responsible for agreeing the direction of the project. These are also the institutions which will pilot the wellbeing and engagement interventions. The group is made up of:
- Gary Tideswell, Director of Wellbeing, Safety and Health, University of Leeds, Lead English Institution.
- Selina Woolcott, Director of Health, Safety & Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, Lead Scottish Institution.
- Terry Threadgold, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, or Jayne Dowden, HR Director, Cardiff University, Lead Welsh Institution.
Executive Group Terms of Reference
Steering group
Led by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, this group is responsible for overseeing the delivery of the project including monitoring finances and risk. The Steering Group is made up of representatives from the following associations:
- Association of University Administrators (AUA)
- Association of University Heads of Administration (AHUA)
- British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS)
- British Universities Finance Directors Group (BUFDG)
- The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
- Equality Challenge Unit (ECU)
- Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
- Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW)
- Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE)
- Organisational Development in Higher Education Group (ODHE)
- Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council (SFC)
- Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA)
- Universities Human Resources (UHR)
- University Safety and Health Association (USHA)
Steering Group Terms of Reference
Interventions Group
The Interventions Group monitors progress of the project interventions, creates opportunities for learning and sharing across institutions, and enables the gathering of information to inform project resources.
The group is made up of:
- Gary Tideswell, Director of Wellbeing, Safety and Health, University of Leeds (Lead English Institution)
- Selina Woolcott, Director of Health, Safety and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow (Lead Scottish Institution)
- Robert Eales, Deputy Director of HR, University of Cardiff (Lead Welsh Institution)
- Christian Carter, Organisational Development Manager (Staff Development), University of Bristol
- Howard Scott, Head of Health and Safety or Louise Hanks, HR Manager, Grimsby Institute for Further and Higher Education
- Sara Corcoran, Head of Organisational Development, Queen Mary, University of London (Chair)
- Janice Craggs, Occupational Health Practitioner, Newcastle University
- Karen Cregan, Assistant Director of HRM Services, University of Chester
- David Harrison, Assistant Director of HR, University of Birmingham
- Gordon Robertson, Training and Development Adviser, University of Aberdeen
- Julie Dickson, Head of Organisational Development, or Sharan Virdee, Equality and Diversity Adviser, Heriot Watt University
- Malcolm Willis, Director of Human Resources and Registry Services, University of Winchester
Interventions group terms of reference