National maintenance, compliance, and decarbonisation contractor Novus Property Solutions is celebrating a trio of milestones in its campaign to support and improve colleague wellbeing and health.
At the start of 2023, Novus launched its ‘People Strategy’, which set out the company’s mission to make Novus a truly great place to work — with a great deal of focus on taking direct action to support colleagues. Holding open and honest conversations was identified as a crucial step on this path — and now Novus is celebrating having conducted wellbeing focus groups with more than 300 colleagues.
What’s more, the company has also completed a dozen site visits as part of its #MakeItVisible tour in partnership with construction industry charity the Lighthouse Club, attended by more than 200 people. These sessions directly addressed the stigma around mental ill health, as part of Novus’ ‘Say It Out Loud’ campaign to encourage colleagues to speak up when they or those around them are struggling mentally.
These face-to-face activities sit alongside a suite of other everyday actions Novus has taken to support workplace wellbeing, including opening up ‘always on’ channels to allow people to contact the People team with any issues at any time, as well as doubling the number of mental health first aiders and launching its ‘You said, we’re doing’ initiative, which sees the company take action in response to colleague suggestions for how Novus can improve wellbeing for all.
Novus is now set to launch its fourth and final wellbeing awareness month of the year, this time all about personal and professional development. This ‘national development’ focus month follows the success of its campaigns around mental health, physical health and financial health, and will share knowledge and tips to help colleagues develop a host of skills from emotional resilience to career planning.
Commenting on the success of its wellbeing initiatives to date, People Director Matt Pitt said: “Earlier this year, we were proud to have won a Northern Housing Award for ‘Best Approach to Employee Wellbeing’ — but the fact that we have continued this momentum and developed a hands-on programme dedicated to supporting our colleagues makes me prouder still.
“We know all too well from our partnership with Lighthouse Club that wellbeing in the construction sector isn’t always a comfortable topic, especially when it comes to trickier topics like mental health and financial matters, and that’s why we wanted to not just open the door to conversations around this but to take action to provide support for our colleagues too.
“Encouraging over 300 people to talk to us about their wellbeing at work is a milestone we should all be celebrating, and I hope to take this initiative even further in the future too.”
