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Implementing a wellbeing culture: supporting NHS staff to stay well

Watch our webinar to learn more about how two NHS trusts have developed their staff wellbeing offers to improve experience.

19 June 2025

In this webinar Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust share their strategies for fostering a culture of staff wellbeing across the two organisations.

The webinar provided health and wellbeing leads, staff experience leads, and senior leaders with practical insights on how to create a culture of wellbeing and improve staff experience in NHS organisations.

Health and wellbeing scores in the NHS Staff Survey 2024 remained broadly stable compared to 2023, with persistent challenges such as burnout and presenteeism. 

The presentations highlighted that continued investment in staff wellbeing is essential to improving staff experience, supporting retention and making the NHS People Promise a reality.

Masood Aga, director of occupational health and wellbeing, and Lily Anstey deputy, chief people officer, at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, shared more on the holistic approach they have taken to improve staff experience.

Emma Winter, wellbeing and retention lead, and Kim Gilbey, associate director of people at Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, showcased the work their trust has done to maintain high health and wellbeing scores in the NHS Staff Survey. During the webinar, we had lots of questions which we Oxleas have kindly answered, we have put them into themes below.

Health and wellbeing champions

Our health and wellbeing champions are recruited on a trust-wide voluntary basis. Originally, we opened this offer up to colleagues who work in one of the following areas and volunteers from across the services who might be interested, including:
- mental health first aiders (MHFA’s)
- professional nurse advocates (PNA’s)
- bullying and harassment champions
- staff network colleagues (from our lived experience, Disability, BAMEx, LGBTQ+, men and women’s networks)
- building a fairer Oxleas (BAFO) steering group
- staff partnership and staff side colleagues
- staff assembly chairs and deputies
- members of the people directorate
- freedom to speak up guardians
- volunteers from across the services
- members of the occupational health team.
The retention and wellbeing lead conducts regular reviews to understand if any directorates are underrepresented. Moving forward, we will be targeting areas where we are seeing high turnover, absenteeism, signs of staff burnout and more challenging environments such as our forensics and offender healthcare settings.
Our training programme was initially through NHS England who ran regular e-learning development sessions. We now use local knowledge and expertise to ensure our wellbeing champions have the tools they need to carry out the role.
Our health and wellbeing champions are recruited on a voluntary basis, as an unpaid role. As it is a voluntary role, the approval and consent of the line manager must be provided. We have a terms of reference setting out the role and responsibilities.
As part of the terms of reference, we ask line managers to support our wellbeing strategy by releasing champions and providing some protected time to undertake:
- Admin tasks such as cascade messages, share wellbeing news via email, print and display wellbeing information in departments where suitable.
- Dedicated time to network such as deliver regular presentations/updates via team meetings, committee meetings and away days.
- Allow the individual time to attend bi-monthly MS Teams meetings with our trust retention and wellbeing lead (1 hour every 2 months).
- Release wellbeing champions during quarterly wellbeing weeks to support with cascading wellbeing information, tokens, undertaking wellbeing conversations and check ins.
- Provide protected time to undertake any relevant e-learning as part of the champions role.
We advertise the champions role via our internal channels such as newsletters, bulletins and by liaising with staff at in-person events. We plan to do case studies/videos of our wellbeing champions sharing why they enjoy the role with the aim to increase take-up.
Alongside our professional nurse advocates (PNAs), we are beginning to do some collaborative work to analyse the impact of our wellbeing offers and initiatives. Data is collected via MS forms and used to record interactions with staff, looking at the length of time spent supporting them, the themes of their concerns and any barriers faced. We will use this data to inform whether additional support is required and to enhance the workplace experience.
After we have held wellbeing events, we also use feedback forms to review what is working well and what we can improve.

Staff survey, reasonable adjustments and budget

Each directorate is made up of teams that form essential pieces of the organisation. We highlighted the need for each team to work effectively to make the overall directorate the best place to work, as outlined in our trust strategy.
To support this, we committed to implementing team-based interventions to foster a culture of kindness and compassion, to ensure every team can thrive. Ensuring we heard from as many people as possible meant that the results should be reflective of our staff members, and their feedback helps us to identify more targeted interventions.
We encouraged everyone to share what matters most. We aimed to turn as many teams into super green, 80 per cent and above.
- red: 0-39%
- amber: 40% – 60%
- green: 60 – 80 %
- super green – 80% and above
Each team had a name and the percentage of people within the team who completed the survey. Teams that achieved an 80 per cent completion rate were given a voucher towards a team activity or lunch. Each week, teams received an updated picture of how they were doing as a directorate, so they could track completion rates.
We also ran a weekly individual prize draw so individuals and bank staff could win a £50 voucher if they were selected at random.
Team groupings:
- The staff survey was managed by an external provider, Quality Health.
- We were only able to see how many people have completed, not who has completed, so confidentiality is preserved.
- The team group was generated through ESR and categorised into small, medium and large team sizes.
- We asked senior managers in directorates to group their teams together, to ensure we could capture the feedback from smaller teams (recognising that any responses of less than ten members of staff are not shared).
Staff Survey vouchers were funded as part of our trust funds, allocated for annual Staff Survey spend.
To set up a central budget for reasonable adjustments, we took a proposal to the board. This outlined the benefits of having a consistent approach across the trust (rather than being dependent on individual team budgets). This gaves us better oversight of the requests coming in and allows us to monitor the trends. We have a budget of £25,000, which is ringfenced to cover the first £1000 +VAT that Access to Work expects the trust to pay for reasonable adjustments that they have recommended.
We bid for charitable funds through NHS Charities, where we are required to provide regular evidence of our wellbeing activity. If wellbeing activity meets the agreement and criteria set out for the proposed wellbeing funds allocation, then instalments are released to the trust. When instalments are received, we retain a central wellbeing pot of funds for trust-wide wellbeing activity and campaign. We then take a proportion to distribute across our directorate staff assemblies. For fairness we distribute local directorate staff assemblies' funds by headcount.

Communication and engagement

We work collaboratively with our communications team to achieve our wellbeing objectives. Together we agreed an annual campaign calendar, so we can ensure we are planning activity in a timely manner.
The communications team support with publishing articles for internal newsletters, bulletins and team briefings, support with any design work, social media and podcasts. With Oxleas being so wide-spread, it is key that we use a wide variety of communication methods to ensure we are reaching colleagues in different settings. In some of our locations, such as prisons, where access to IT is limited, we also work with the communications teams to produce posters, flyers and leaflets so staff do not miss out on opportunities and initiatives.
- Leaders are invited to attend the senior staff event to discuss key issues and developments. Messages are then cascaded within the wider teams.
- A weekly e-bulletin One Oxleas updates staff on key developments.
- A fortnightly best place to work e-bulletin provides information about development opportunities, how staff can take their career forward and key dates for wellbeing activities.
- Regular Oxwide broadcasts showcase services and developments around the organisation and highlights key issues.
- Monthly team briefings provide updates from the executive team.
- Our intranet pages are updated and curated daily which is cascaded via our health and wellbeing champions through local emails and local meetings.
- Social media – we utilise our LinkedIn account to share our news and offers with colleagues and the wider NHS.
- Regular drop-in ‘listening’ sessions are held to ensure staff members have space to ask questions, share their concerns and develop a supportive network.
- Schwartz Rounds help colleagues have open and supportive conversations about the emotional impact of providing healthcare.
- Staff can raise concerns through our independent freedom to speak up guardians.
- Directors, including non-executive directors, regularly spend time with colleagues in our services, providing the opportunity to find out more about the issues that matter most to our frontline staff.
- Our head of staff partnership holds regular focus groups and feedback sessions for staff in their bases.

Health and wellbeing initiatives

Our Smashing It! suite of resources has been designed to support staff in building their career confidence, achieving their potential and successfully securing their dream role within Oxleas.
The topics covered in series one were:
- How to smash your job application 
- How to smash it at interview
- How to smash it after a setback
- Helping others to smash it
- Smash it as a leader
Our second series, currently taking place, includes the following subjects;
- public speaking – finding your voice
- authenticity at work – how to be yourself and succeed
- making the most of your career conversations
- thriving as a neurodivergent professional
- smashing your career in a digital world. 
We run quarterly wellbeing campaigns where we aim to break stigmas, open the conversation, celebrate and empower staff with knowledge and support.
Some of our healthy eating initiatives have been:
- ‘Let’s get ready for summer’ campaign – where we supported staff with eating and drinking fresh, delivered fresh fruit, drinks and sun lotions to teams, how to cope with Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and how to stay safe in the sun. We ran a smoothie recipe competition where staff entered a prize draw to win a portable smoothie maker.
- Healthy Eating and Hydration week - supporting staff with tracking their progress towards five a day, planning in a hydration station, moving more or trying something new. Our aim was to celebrate healthy, sustainable diets and lifestyle for our staff. We ran a 30 plants based challenge as plant-based diet has numerous health benefits, such as improved heart health, type 2 diabetes and weight management. We saw great engagement and ran a prize draw for herb growing kits and healthy cook books for those who completed the challenge.
Next, we are looking to support the British Nutrition Foundation awareness month for Snacktember, involving staff and sharing ideas for healthy and sustainable snacking.
We encourage all managers to hold regular wellbeing conversations with their staff . This can be supported by our health and wellbeing passport, health and wellbeing personal action plan template and health and wellbeing conversation crib sheet. Our HR business partner team support managers during formal sickness management, and all staff members have access to occupational health support and our employee assistance programme.
As part of the launch of our wellbeing strategy, one of our ambitions is to develop a wellbeing leadership programme. We will train a cohort to roll out a program focused on proactive and preventative wellbeing. Line managers will act as change agents, prioritising self-care and leading for wellbeing. We want to ensure leaders are equipped with the knowledge, skills and empathy to create psychological safety to ensure wellbeing is woven into everything we do. As a result, we hope to see strong healthy relationships and a wellbeing culture, which will result in improved productivity.
Many of our sites are in areas with accessible green spaces offering numerous benefits to the health of our staff and patients. Research shows that spending time in green spaces can significantly improve both physical and mental health, with benefits like improved mood, reduced stress and better sleep. 
We are actively involved in creating and improving green spaces for staff, patients, and the local community. We’ve received funding to develop a mosaic of wildlife habitats at the Memorial Hospital in Greenwich as part of our Oxleas in Bloom project, aiming for completion by February 2026. Additionally, we’ve transformed the Goldie Leigh site in Abbey Wood into a green, health-led neighbourhood.
Oxleas in Bloom:
This project, funded by the Greener Communities Fund, focuses on enhancing biodiversity and creating spaces for therapy and wellbeing activities at the Memorial Hospital. 
Goldie Leigh:
This site has seen the reopening of a woodland walk and the development of a children's trail, with plans for community spaces, allotments and a wellbeing center. 
Future plans:
We are working with partners and voluntary organisations to further develop these green spaces and make the most of available funding. We also manage other sites, including Bexleyheath Centre, Bracton Centre, Erith Centre, Green Parks House, Highpoint House, Market Street and Queen Mary's Hospital, each playing a role in providing various healthcare services. Some of our locations already have existing green spaces where we are looking for volunteers to revive the spaces at a low cost.
Our directorate staff assembly chairs report to the retention and wellbeing lead. They meet on a bi-monthly basis to share experiences, ideas and escalate any issues. The staff assembly chairs liaise with the lead regarding local wellbeing projects, who will then advise, approve or decline the requests. Our staff assemblies have local funds to listen and respond to the employee voice to enhance the staff experience, boost morale and staff engagement. Our staff assemblies cover the following criteria areas:
- Improving access to healthy food - regular fruit deliveries, healthy food pop ups
- Making the work place better - improving indoor/outdoor staff areas
- Increasing access to exercise - virtual/in person/equipment
- Strong connections: colleague work gatherings. 
For the last few years, we have sent out staff wellbeing boxes to staff home addresses. The wellbeing boxes are usually themed with our latest wellbeing campaign and include information on our wellbeing offers, resources, Oxleas merchandise and wellbeing tokens to enjoy. When items are selected, we aim to ensure they are gender neutral products, nut free, accommodate gluten/vegetarian diets and are recyclable. Contents are usually face packs, healthy snacks and tea and coffee.
Previous boxes have featured:
- Take five – encouraging colleagues to take five minutes for their wellbeing, thanking staff for their contributions to the workplace, informing them of the latest wellbeing offers and sometimes signposting to a survey.
- Launching our new strategy, bringing colleagues on board with our new strategy, engaging staff by running a family/friends art competition and providing wellbeing offers.
Criteria for boxes:
- All substantive staff recorded on our ESR payroll system as at the date agreed, irrespective of contracted hours will receive a box with the following exclusions;
- staff who have since left the trust (date onwards)
- the executive director team
- the non-executive director team.
We include:
- bank-only staff who have worked (a) worked 200 hours or more for Oxleas in the last six months (Date parameters) and (b) done a bank shift this financial year (i.e. since 1st April xx) will receive a box.
- volunteers - active volunteers identified by volunteering service volunteer leads.
- social workers on secondment to Oxleas or identified locally as working closely alongside our teams.
- estates and facilities external contractor staff boxes will be distributed to eligible staff (identified using the same criteria used for substantive staff).
- staff currently on parental leave or sick leave.
We keep the costs to a minimum.
Health and wellbeing hub - 1
Our ‘Your Wellbeing Matters’ programme is a recognised brand within Oxleas. It was launched following the COVID-19 pandemic as a cause of action to take a holistic approach to prioritising and fostering employee wellbeing as a core enabler for organisational performance.
The programme has been used as a platform to launch our wider Your Wellbeing Matte work, including some successful wellbeing campaigns and staff activities to increase staff engagement as we aim to recruit and retain a happy and healthy workforce.
We introduced a staff wellbeing hub, which is an interactive platform for colleagues to access a wealth of wellbeing support at any time for their wellbeing needs. This includes tools and resources to manage their mental wellbeing, EAP services, how to focus on physical health, financial offers and discounts.
- Our retention and wellbeing lead is the only substantive role we have, funded for 30 hours per week.
- Our 100 health and wellbeing champions are all volunteers, who take on this role on top of their day jobs.
- Our nine staff assembly chairs also take on this role on a voluntary basis, on top of their day jobs.