The third CLOCS Safety Forum, delivered in Feburay 2021 looked at Driver Health & Wellbeing and received great feedback. Thanks to Mates in Mind & O’Donovan for speaking. Below are some tips gathered from the Forum.
Mates in Mind have a poster for everyone to use and share.
Top tips:
- Utilise the info, support, and resources available from https://www.matesinmind.org/, Construction Industry Helpline and the Lighthouse Club.
- Make sure your company benefits cover health & wellbeing, like gyms, eye tests and medicals, mindfulness sessions.
- COVID-19 – make sure health checks, conversations and campaigns keep going.
- Assessments & checks: Vehicle First User / Pre-use check via an App to include question about driver wellbeing, e.g. how was your day? Also offer employees lifestyle assessments.
- Annual day for feedback.
- Board level involvement and responsibility, in addition to usual HR involvement.
- Mental health first aiders – one tool. Important to offer them support for their own mental health and way of escalating or passing a ‘case’ on when needed. Embed into wider programme and make sure it’s monitored.
- Important to factor all employees in any health & wellbeing initiatives.
- Coffee mornings & kiosks on sites – encourage more fun and chat.
- People do not always think they need help. Initiate things. Not everything has to be about work in a conversation. Also listen to staff feedback and act.
Further resources:
- Mates in Mind: https://www.matesinmind.org/. Mates in Mind is a registered UK charity raising awareness, addressing the stigma of poor mental health and promoting positive mental wellbeing across workplaces. We help to make sense of available options and support employers to address mental health within their workplace. Mates in Mind works across industries, focusing on construction, as well as related sectors including transport, logistics, manufacturing and others. Together we can be the change needed to improve workplace mental health find out more at support@matesinmind.org. Highly recommended by an attendee (and former driver) during the Forum.
- Recommendation from Eleanor Thomas at SCF: “One of our tier one contractors, Wilmott Dixon, have used https://fundamental-life.com/(mailto:connect@fundamental-life.com) which comprises Paul Apps and Dave Lee. This company / partnership might not be for everyone, but they connect and communicate brilliantly, and from the heart because they’ve been in those bad places, and I think it makes them very effective in what they do.”
- CCS Best Practice Hub – health section: https://ccsbestpractice.org.uk/search/?fwp_full_entries=mental-health
- Recommendation from Claire Scrimgeour at Multiplex: “Look up https://www.buildingmentalhealth.net/. Great mental health resources for all and completely free! They will also train mental health first aiders for free. funded by the CITB.”
- https://zerosuicidealliance.com/training
