Who we are…
Sartorius is a biopharmaceutical company, helping to ensure that new scientific discoveries can be translated more quickly into effective patient care across the UK and Ireland.
Where we were…the challenge.
“As an organisation it’s important to us to provide our employees with support and clear pathways to access the services that they need.
Having a wellbeing and mental health initiative had been on the HR agenda for some time – and prompted by the impact of Covid – it became a priority.
But when we started to look at building the initiative – the first challenge we faced was knowing where to start!
We had access to some great services through our benefit providers – but we didn’t know how best to effectively communicate this. As a team we had lots of ideas but needed support with pulling the initiative and offerings together.
We also needed to ensure that we were raising awareness and were able to support managers and colleagues to have potentially difficult conversations.”
What we did…and how?
“Working in collaboration with Blossom we developed and implemented a wellbeing and mental health initiative, which is now rolling out through all our UK sites.
We chose to work with Blossom because we knew Anita would support us throughout – from helping to design our programme, through to delivering the training, and helping us to implement the actions.
Working with Blossom enabled a structured, considered and consistent approach to the roll out of the initiative. There was a clear road map from engaging senior management through to rolling out training to all staff.
And a clear framework supported us to:
- Train all line managers and our HR team in Mental Health Awareness
- Give them the tools, knowledge and confidence to understand how to have sensitive and supportive conversations around mental health
- Continue to routinely monitor employee mental health and wellbeing and changes in attitude towards mental health & wellbeing”
The results
“Our new wellbeing and mental health policy has been incredibly well received with great feedback.
We’ve not only seen a greater uptake on accessing services – such as counselling – but also a reduction in the number of stress related absences.
Everyone is now given the opportunity to have wellbeing and mental health awareness training. We have several trained Mental Health First Aiders at all sites and lots of clear signage in our office spaces for everyone to easily see how to access the support available. All of this has helped us to start creating the safe, open environment we know we need.
As we continue to invest in the wellbeing and mental health of our employees, we continue to partner with Anita and Blossom.”
Marie Meekings, Sartorius
