Read below to find out how The Mind Hub supported UCB with their wellbeing strategy.
Introduction:
At The Mind Hub, we work with a number of different corporate businesses from a diverse range of industries, supporting them in developing meaningful well-being strategies. We then support all of the pillars of those strategies with inspirational workshops, webinars and training courses that are based on science and delivered with a warm, down-to-earth style.
We wanted to share a recent case study with one of our long-standing clients, UCB. It has been a pleasure to work with this forward-thinking company for a number of years and be a part of their ongoing commitment to employee wellbeing.
As a result of this, we have worked with them to deliver a range of services, including: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training, Line Manager Mental Health Awareness courses, workplace mindfulness courses and weekly mindfulness drop-in sessions, plus numerous wellbeing-related workshops and talks at offsite events.
About the business:
UCB is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of innovative medicines and solutions to transform the lives of people living with severe diseases of the immune system or of the central nervous system. In the UK, UCB is a top biopharmaceutical R&D investor, reinvesting around 25% of its revenue back into cutting-edge science. Its UK headquarters in Slough is home to one it the company’s three global research hubs. With approximately 8,600 people working in around 40 countries, UCB generated revenue of €5.8 billion in 2021.
Summary:
We initially reached out to Tricia to see if she could help us provide mindfulness workshops to our employees as part of our wellness programme and an opportunity to offer something different to our colleagues. This was pre-Covid, and initially, we offered a hybrid version of the workshops, combining both in-person and online sessions. During the pandemic, we moved these sessions completely online and increased the frequency of the sessions we offered, as we quickly realised we had to pull out all the stops to help support our colleagues in new and innovative ways.
As things have calmed down in a post-Covid world, we have a clear well-being strategy in place. We offer a mindfulness session on a Tuesday after work which helps our virtual colleagues in particular, to set boundaries and switch off at the end of the working day.
We also work with Tricia to deliver the Managers Mental Health First Aid training, which is a ‘light’ version of the full mental health first aider training course, first tested by our Talent team during Covid to assess its impact for us. So far, we have trained 15% of our managers across the organisation. Tricia is very knowledgeable, a calm facilitator and helps to make what can be a tough subject easier to understand.
Our challenges:
Although it was tough, Covid helped us to fast-track the focus on mental well-being in the workplace, and as a result, we made a mental well-being pledge to the organisation in April 2021. Our pledge means that we strive to create an open environment for our colleagues, encouraging them to talk about mental well-being. Results: The impact of our change in approach has been tricky to measure beyond the positive feedback that we have received from all of Tricia’s workshops. We do know, however, from course evaluation data, based on a scale of 1 -10 (with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest), average levels of confidence to have more conversations around mental well-being rose from 4.63 to 7.89. The results also showed that the likelihood of recommending the course scored 9.54 – which is fantastic to hear. As part of our ongoing commitment to the well-being of our colleagues and to continue to offer support beyond the workshops, we have also created our Wellbeing Advocate Network. We have nine advocates across the UK and Ireland business who have completed the full MHFA training and are supporting our colleagues as needed.
“We were delighted to have Tricia as our MHFA Instructor; she's a skilled facilitator and helped us grow and learn so much in a short space of time. Tricia managed to create such a great environment for reflection and sharing, despite the training being entirely online. I would highly recommend Tricia to any employer considering doing more to support mental well-being in the workplace.”
Michele White, Global HR & Culture Lead at UCB
What Happens Next?
We plan to continue to work with Tricia by offering a good well-being provision for our colleagues by rolling out the Mental Health Awareness for managers training and continuing with our weekly mindfulness sessions. We are also starting to explore with our global colleagues how we might roll out the mental health training further across the organisation.
Client Testimonial:
“We have worked with Tricia for a long time now, and we have a great working relationship. Tricia is very professional, incredibly knowledgeable and easy to work with. She has been a great help in recommending people to us over the last few years; whatever our well-being challenge if Tricia cannot help, she knows someone who can. It has been really exciting to see how her business has expanded over the last year or so to now be able to offer a wider range of well-being support. We look forward to continuing to work with her – highly recommended!” Rebecca Wood, UCB Head of Health, Safety, Environment & Wellbeing UK & Ireland
If you would like to find out more about how The Mind Hub could help build and support your well-being strategy, please get in touch for a discovery call.