CLIENT STORY: Unlocking peak performance: A 360° Wellbeing Audit of a business-critical team.
Pepper Advantage is an award-winning financial services company, providing tailored services to UK investor and banking clients, currently managing over £17billion of assets.
As a dynamic and fast-growing business committed to the wellbeing of their people, they’ve previously won multiple awards for their wellbeing initiatives. As part of their continued pursuit of excellence in this area, Pepper Advantage asked Psychology Works to conduct a Wellbeing Audit for one of their busiest teams.
THE CHALLENGE.
Within Pepper Advantage, the Project Management Office (PMO) team are a very successful high performing team, but the demands and pressures on this team from both internal and external forces were being recognised. Hence for this team, the brief was to conduct a Wellbeing Audit using our Better@Work model to conduct an independent assessment of what was working, potential blind spots and untapped opportunities
DESIGNING THE AUDIT.
Using the Better@Work model, we identified from the outset that there was an opportunity to go beyond the traditional survey approach and take a truly 360° perspective to assessing the wellbeing of the team. In fact, our approach to wellbeing brings together an understanding of the disciplines of business psychology, stress, performance, resilience, mental toughness, positive psychology, personal effectiveness, organisational culture and leadership development.
So, tapping into the full range of rich individual, team and organisational data available, Pepper was presented with a ‘menu’ of options to choose from as we co-created the wellbeing audit for this tea - one that would pull together a range of both qualitative and quantitative information.
As per the team’s request, they wanted no stone unturned, so with a tight window for completion, the final scope incorporated: a wellbeing survey, one-to-one interviews, team meetings observations, business data, wellbeing diaries, biodata and the use of personality questionnaires.
An additional and distinctive facet of the Wellbeing Audit for the team was the opportunity to receive personalised reports that provided simple but and actional ideas that could be implemented immediately. Embedded in the design ethos of the Psychology Works survey platform is the belief that employees should never perceive wellbeing as something imposed upon them. Hence, these individual reports not only served as a chance to deliver real-time, personalised feedback but created an opportunity for employees to truly engage in the overall experience.
THE SCIENCE BIT.
BETTER@WORK.
The Better@Work model is a simple but innovative framework for building better business performance through wellbeing. Effective for both diagnosis and solution generation, it provides a rigorous framework for assessing existing organisational wellbeing, as well as developing and evolving existing and new wellbeing initiatives.
With an emphasis on shared ownership and responsibility, it is effective at an individual, team and organisational level, supporting the creation of holistic end-to-end interventions, or integrate with existing wellbeing initiatives.
Using the frame work of Manage, Refuel, Recover and Lead, businesses are able to better understand their relative areas of strength, development and risk across each of the four areas, and where needed, provide the framework for focusing effort into one or two critical areas.
"Quite simply the Better Business model can be used as a diagnostic tool or and a framework for developing a more strategic and coherent wellbeing offering."
THE RESULT.
Engagement from the team was significant, which provided both breadth and depth when it came to analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data. As a result of the Audit we were able to highlight the very precarious balancing act of positive and negative forces being enacted against the team, leading to a clear set of recommendations for both the team and its leadership.
Sharing these results with the team as part of an expert facilitated session, the everyone had the opportunity to discuss, explore and interrogate the findings, as well as ultimately start the conversation about how they would collaboratively enact the recommendations made.
WHAT NEXT?
As a result of the Wellbeing Audit, change at an individual and team level has already been seen, including immediate greater transparency and communication, a reimagining of the structure of the team, greater self-awareness and behaviour change, and new contracting around boundaries and handing over of work – to address issues of presenteeism and leavism.
Feedback has been overwhelming positive from both the team and the wider organisation:
“a variety of avenues through which people could participate, which meant there was something for everyone; this menu-card approach meant it felt tailored. The process was well thought through and non-intrusive - this made a big difference in getting high quality insights on a very busy team”.
Find out more…
If you would like to know more about Wellbeing Audits and the services Psychology Works offer in the area of wellbeing, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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The encore.
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