Recently the Victorian Chamber spoke with Western Health Chief Executive Officer, Adjunct Professor Russell Harrison, about the healthcare provider’s operations looking after one of the fastest growing and most diverse regions of Australia.

In a follow-up, Prof. Harrison offers advice on how businesses can improve staff wellbeing outcomes, drawing from Western Health’s own approaches with its workforce.

#1: Flexibility is key and so is communication

We have to look at flexible working because while obviously we need staff in our hospitals to treat our patients, we also can have people work from home. So be as flexible as you can and continue to work with and communicate with staff around why you’re making some of those decisions.

I don’t think you can overcommunicate – that’s one of the lessons that we learned from the pandemic, along with using webinars, microsites and short videos. We found that way more effective at communicating with staff than trying to hold big townhall meetings. We were doing newsletters, quick videos, the top three points of the day just to sort of saturate staff, and they welcomed it rather than a once monthly big chat.

I think we learned a lot about how you can communicate with different groups. We put a lot of emphasis on wellbeing for those that were in, but also those that were at home and disconnected. You can’t forget about those people that work from home because they still are part of the organisation, but they’re at arm’s length. If you forget, they’ll float further away and become disconnected and potentially have all sorts of other issues.

We also spend a lot of time making sure that staff do have good places to work and are not putting themselves at risk in terms of injuries and other issues.

So I think flexibility, lots of communication and kind of an agility is needed because of COVID-19 to try and do things differently.

#2: Physical and mental health go hand in hand

We all spend a lot of time at work, whether that’s working from home or on site or on the road. I think a lot of employers could do more ourselves to promote better mental and physical health of our staff.

We’re doing a lot in that space to try and support good messaging, healthy eating, exercise and all the benefits that will bring. Sometimes we know better but don’t do better, let’s say. So I think there are a lot of things that people can do, even if it’s as simple as some exercise or trying and eating a bit healthier, don’t drink as much and don’t smoke.

Public health messaging has lots of benefits for the population. COVID vaccination was one of those that businesses got behind but we’re still seeing lots of patients that are very sick with the severe type of diseases that haven’t had the full vaccination course. Or it’s been waning because they had two doses long ago and haven’t had a third one or fourth one. So we’d also promote the fact that if you are eligible for a vaccine, it’s really worth having it.

#3: Pursue mental wellbeing initiatives

Times are still challenging for our staff. We’re still wearing all PPE in all of our clinical spaces and public facing areas. So there’s a lot of work to do to support our staff and I think it’s about how you gauge that wellbeing piece.

We’ve been trying to do some fun things. We’ve had comics come and do webinars on a Friday lunchtime – laughs that have gone down well. We’ve had hot coffee days and donut giveaways. We had Mr. Whippy trucks come to our sites day and night to give out ice creams.

Ultimately it’s about working with the staff and with the health and safety reps to try and continue to promote a positive workplace. We’ve got a lot of resources to support mental health, busting some of the myths around acting and asking for help.

4: Mental health support goes beyond the worker

We also opened up our remote employee assistance program to family members as well, because obviously a lot of people throughout COVID had challenges around home schooling, mortgage stress or job stress.

We found that supporting the mental health of our workforce also helped by supporting the family at home. Some of that was for all those stresses, and the fact that some of our families will be understandably terrified that their loved one was coming in to what they perceived to be a high-risk, dangerous COVID environment where they wouldn’t see them again.

So that that certainly was a real boon around supporting the mental health of the workers because they were getting support in a different way.