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Our Corporate Health Standard Achievements

The Gold Standard

Following two intensive days of assessment in September 2017, the UHB was successfully revalidated for the Gold Corporate Health Standard (CHS), the national quality mark for health and wellbeing.

The Assessors' feedback to us was outstanding, highlighting the positivity and enthusiasm of staff during their visit which resulted in them being ‘blown away’ by many of their findings.  They said the assessment was different to anything they had experienced before and that they recognised enormous improvements since our last full assessment in 2009.  On this basis they have asked if we would be a showcase organisation at Welsh Government events for employee engagement, and suggested that we should be sharing our practice widely.

The assessors highlighted a number of our key strengths, including:

  • Union involvement – they described full collaboration and partnership working to an extent they have never seen elsewhere.  They felt the unions had full ownership of the agenda and were engaged with the health board in every aspect of health and wellbeing.  Midwifery’s engagement with the RCN’s work on health and wellbeing was highlighted, as was the Unions’ lead on developing the work on menopause.
  • Passion, enthusiasm and buy-in – they recognised that the Health and Wellbeing Advisory Group set the vision and then Clinical Boards and corporate departments take ownership for innovative delivery locally, choosing what they do and how they do it.  They heard some fantastic stories of engagement and health and wellbeing initiatives from across several sites.  Staff even sought the assessors out to share stories and experiences over the two days.
  • Values and behaviours – the assessors heard union reps expressing the view that these are now the foundation for much of our wellbeing activity, and were really positive about the impact they’re having for staff.
  • Catering - singled out due to their recent huge developments.  The assessors were extremely impressed with the thought that has gone in to all aspects of catering provision.
  • Occupational Health - highlighted as having made substantial progress since the last assessment, including the assessors’ view that they are now fully integrated across health board activity.
  • UHL – the assessor who attended UHL was incredibly impressed with the extent to which the health and wellbeing of staff had been integrated into the design of Hafan y Coed, the HeARTh Gallery and The Orchard.

The assessors also noted a number of areas for development, including:

  • The need to be better at sharing our achievements within and beyond the UHB.  They are keen that many of the examples they heard about are shared with the Board, describing benefits to individuals, teams and the whole organisation.
  • More of the same, whilst making sure we target groups we may have failed to reach in the past such as estates staff, porters, catering staff and staff out in the community etc.  They want us to ensure those groups are empowered more and have access to opportunities.
  • Mental wellbeing – they were impressed with the extent of the preventative and reactive work we do, but they think we can do more.
  • Medical engagement – they want to see medical staff as engaged in the health and wellbeing agenda in the future as other staff.

Many projects contributing to the success of the Gold CHS are in part due to the generosity of donors, including staff lottery members, who contribute to the UHB’s own Cardiff & Vale Health Charity.  Our thanks to the chair of the Make It Better / Staff Lottery Panel, Mike Jones, and the Panel members; they have been instrumental in providing funding and also feedback at the design stage of many of our health and wellbeing projects.

The Health and Wellbeing Steering Group will now draw up an action plan to address all the areas for improvement, and to ensure the continuation of our areas of strength. 

The Gold Award was originally awarded in 2009 and recognised the UHB's strong commitment to the health and wellbeing of its employees, good practice and working on targets for key preventable ill-health issues and the Health Challenge Wales priorities.

The Platinum Standard

The UHB also holds the Platinum Standard. This is different in nature and focuses mainly on our corporate social responsibility activity.