Your Wellbeing

Wellbeing is a key focus for all WHMAT academies via their academy improvement plans and in our 5-year People strategy.  We are embedding a culture of collaboration, kindness and support and ensuring that wellbeing is everybody’s responsibility. 

These concepts are fleshed out in our wellbeing policy.

Wellbeing PolicyEvery year we encourage our employees to take place in our anonymous “Workplace and Wellbeing Survey”.  This enables us to understand how we are doing in terms of key workplace areas such as communication, line management and trust perception.  Once closed, the results are made available to Heads, core team directors and wellbeing champions so that the strengths and weaknesses can be analysed, and an action plan implemented to improve areas for development. We are also looking to embed ‘pulse’ feedback, so colleagues can share praise or raise concerns promptly and appropriately.

Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

Access our central EAP with Care First for 24/7 confidential telephone counselling or other wellbeing or practical guidance such as issues surrounding mental health and domestic violence.

Wellbeing Champions

WHMAT’s Core team and each academy have at least 2 dedicated wellbeing champions (1 support staff representative and 1 teaching representative) who focus on improving the wellbeing of their fellow colleagues & to help drive employee engagement.

The purpose of the champion role is to help implement and support wellbeing and staff engagement through raising awareness of wellbeing activities, promoting healthy lifestyles and positive mental health.

Many are accredited Mental Health First Aiders so that they can support colleagues with mental health issues and signpost to useful resources.  They also meet regularly at academy and core team level to consider staff feedback, to organise events and to help make WHMAT a great place to work. 

Wellbeing Portal

All employees have access to a suite of wellbeing guidance via our wellbeing portal on our internal communication portal “Sharepoint”.  We want all staff to help embed a culture of openness where colleagues can talk freely and openly about issues affecting their mental health.  To that end, managers are encouraged to hold regular wellbeing check-ins using our recommended pro-forma with staff and our wellness action plan pro-forma is available for all staff so that they can identify strategies to support their own wellbeing at work, and continue to bring their best selves to work.