Broader Outcomes and Wellbeing: It’s the little things

In this second in a series of ‘broader outcomes’ posts, FIRST Security’s GM Sales Jemima Briggs writes that although it’s difficult to define, ‘wellbeing’ is an area of employment that requires focus.

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In my?first post ?in this series, I talked about the ‘broader outcomes’ requirement, which is a key inclusion in the 4th?edition of the?Government Procurement Rules?published in June 2019 and took effect on 1 October 2019. In particular, I focused on the Government’s identification of the security industry as a ‘priority sector’.

To recap, broader outcomes are the secondary social, environmental, cultural or economic benefits that are generated by the way a good, service or works is produced or delivered, and which deliver long-term public value for New Zealand. When it comes to broader outcome, government agencies must?meet certain requirements ?where their procurement relates to the purchasing of security services, specifically:

… agencies need to ensure that suppliers demonstrate compliance with employment standards within their business and through the domestic supply chain delivering that service.

As a supplier of security services to many government agencies – and as an employer committed to responsible business practices – FIRST Security is committed to implementing broader outcomes.

It goes without saying that the safety of our team is our number one priority. The safeguarding of our employees from workplace hazards comes above everything for us - Workplace Health and Safety is paramount. That’s why we employ a full-time Health and Safety Manager and a Return to Work Manager. We also appointed a Chief Medical Officer during COVID to make sure our people were safe.

But physical health and safety is but one part of the ‘wellbeing’ equation, and at FIRST, we take a holistic approach to the wellbeing of our people.

Wellbeing: Checking in

Striving towards paying the Living Wage and providing a safe work environment are two areas I highlighted in my previous post where FIRST Security is beating the broader outcomes drum. In this post I’d like to expand on the latter and to focus on wellbeing.

It’s often said that wellbeing is difficult to define. The Government’s 2019?Wellbeing Budget ?defined wellbeing as when “people are able to lead fulfilling lives with purpose, balance and meaning to them”. The?Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand ?states that “Wellbeing means we have the tools, support and environment we need to be who we are and to build and sustain lives worth living.

At FIRST Security, wellbeing is an important part of our values: the wellbeing of our people, our customers and our community guide our decisions.

We know that when individuals suffer from poor wellbeing, they become susceptible to deteriorating health, absenteeism, stress, and burnout. It’s a big issue in the security sector, where often long and inconvenient hours combine with the unique work pressures of guarding and patrolling to subtract from employees’ overall sense of wellbeing.

We look to safeguard the wellbeing of our people by delivering wellbeing-focussed programmes, reinforcing wellbeing standards to our management team, and providing additional support for employees who need it.

A critical enabler to this is the idea of ‘checking in’ with our people in as many ways as possible, including regular welfare checks, supervisor interaction, and measuring wellbeing as part of our annual employee surveys, as well as providing formal and informal avenues for feedback. Additionally, our Return to Work Manager analyses trends within our data for injury and illness, looking for areas where proactive wellbeing management can have a positive impact.

It’s the little things

Wellbeing is a broad concept, and it can encompass so many things. Achieving wellbeing can be thought of as the result of getting a whole range of little things right.

And that’s essentially our approach to maximising the wellbeing of our people: working away at the little things. At FIRST, this means:

• Observing health days and months and using those to raise awareness. We reinforce messages from health professionals at toolbox talks, in employee communications, and through online training modules.
• Providing our employees and their whanau with a dedicated confidential 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) delivered by Drake Workwise.
• Organising free Influenza vaccinations to any of our staff who want a vaccination. This is heavily advertised and encouraged internally.
• Providing safe work places via robust work health and safety systems and practices and the right training and equipment for the job.
• Providing free fruit in our offices and branches.
• Delivering an internally designed and award-winning employee literacy and numeracy training programme.
• Employing a fulltime Return to Work Manager, who works directly with any employee needing support in recovering from an injury or illness.
• Running our own tailored programmes focussing on wellbeing, such as our Resilience Project wellbeing series.
• Sponsoring Mike King’s Key to Life, an initiative focussed on mental health, particularly for youth.

Getting employee wellbeing right isn’t a “nice to have” for FIRST Security, it is a “need to have”. If our people have the tools and support they need to be living fulfilling, purposeful, and balanced lives, then they are at their best.

In my next post, I look forward to continuing the broader outcomes conversation with a focus on FIRST’s sustainability journey.