This article was written by Team Chaffinch, a group of Civil servants based in London and the East and South East of England, from across government departments, who met through the Civil Service Local Junior Leadership Academy 2017.

Wellbeing is high on the agenda for the Senior Leaders in the UK civil service, as part of the wider strategy to create a Brilliant Civil Service, that supports and enables a great place to work.

As Jonathan Jones, the Civil Service Champion for Health and Wellbeing, has said:

“We are at our most productive and fully engaged at work when we are healthy, happy and feel able to be ourselves”

Our introduction to the world of wellbeing began when we all signed up for the CS Local Junior Leadership Academy in 2017, a year long development programme for Administrative Assistants to Executive Officers.

We all work in different departments of the UK administration, but none of us had met before until our paths crossed at this event and we were tasked with creating and managing a project to help create “A Brilliant Civil Service”. When we arrived on the first day, each group was given a name which was a breed of bird, hence why we are known as Team Chaffinch.

Whole selves go to work

It is our aim to support the Civil Service in its vision to be “A Brilliant Civil Service,” which was  launched in 2016.

When we started our project, we asked ourselves, “What makes a workplace a great place to work?” and we all agreed that it is when people can bring their whole selves to work. With that, we were committed to focussing our project on Health and Wellbeing.

Our aim was to help make wellbeing fun, easy and accessible to all civil servants and we worked together for 12 months researching, testing and creating a toolkit which works on a one-click basis (one click and you are taken through to a resource such as Civil Service Learning, TedTalks or PDF resource, which can also be accessed via PC, Smartphone and Smart tablet).

From that, the A-Z to better wellbeing toolkit was born.

We chose the format A-Z because it meant the toolkit wouldn’t be too bulky. It also meant we could cover 26 different topics.

Everyone can take 1% out of their day to focus on their wellbeing, and we know it makes a world of difference

Since then, we have been promoting the toolkit at wellbeing events, offering discovery sessions and through our blogs. Some examples include Do the Funky Chicken, which introduces Team Chaffinch and our toolkit, Funky Chicken goes to Norwich, where we presented our toolkit to colleagues at Her Majesty’s Prison in Norwich, Yoga, detoxing from social media, and the funky chicken, where we shared our story after winning Civil Service Awards 2018 Health and Wellbeing category and Six ways to improve your wellbeing — our most read blog that received over 52k unique views.

Just as an aside, one of the best bits of advice we have given as part of our toolkit is that 15 minutes of wellbeing is just 1% of your day, and it’s something we want to promote wider. Everyone can take 1% out of their day to focus on their wellbeing, and we know it makes a world of difference.

Tackling the big three

We know there is a whole host of guidance out there on wellbeing sitting on people’s Intranets, but we also know that many people feel as though they are time-poor.

Therefore, we wanted to create a toolkit that was easy-to-read and offers fun and easy wellbeing activities that can be incorporated into the working day. We also knew that the toolkit could not offer all of the answers, so wanted to incorporate a one-click approach to further signposting and reading. This means that in one, easy click the reader can find out more about a particular subject.

We have learnt that wellbeing is not just about the physical aspects of a person, nor just emotional, or mental or spiritual. Our wellbeing is affected by a lot of things, especially in an environment of constant societal and technological change. So we decided to cover different topics that can affect our wellbeing from A-Z.

We also tried to cover the three main reasons of sickness absence in the UK; Mental Health, Musculoskeletal and Stress, to raise awareness. We understand that there are underlying causes of absenteeism and that is why we have added topics that may help our general wellbeing.

As we are not experts on the subject, we chose topics to which we could add a fun element. This fun element, along with the fact that the toolkit is a “one-stop-shop”, is our unique selling point.

We have featured activities that can be done individually or as a group. Colleagues have shared their success stories, the wellbeing initiative they are working on, their top tips on wellbeing and what works for them.

Do the Funky Chicken

We first trialled our draft toolkit during our 12 months at the academy. We have worked with Wellbeing Champions, HR business partners and colleagues from different government departments for feedback.

We finalised our toolkit and launched it in July 2018, through the Civil Service Local blog “Do the Funky Chicken” and the rest is history. We then followed this up with further blogs written by our team and we also shared the toolkit with our home departments.

We created a Twitter account to connect with like-minded people and promote our toolkit and often share daily tweets detailing more fun and easy activities that people can get involved with.

Our team also run Discovery Days to help educate managers and teams on how to use the toolkit. We have been running these all over the country, from Worthing to Norwich, to Leeds and all the way up to Scotland.

We have also collaborated with various stakeholders to host the toolkit on their interactive platforms to help reach as many people as we can, including Civil Service Employee Policy through CS Learning, HMRC through Corporate Finance, Engage for Success, The Charity for Civil Servants and Civil Service Sports Council.

Searching for champions

The toolkit is still generating interest within the Civil Service (and indeed beyond) which is a result in itself, and one which we are immensely proud of.

Our year at the academy officially ended in 2018 but we have worked beyond this with the support of our employers.

We have been lucky enough to win two awards – Civil Service Awards 2018 Health and Wellbeing Category and The Charity for Civil Servants Community Awards 2018 and recently we were runner up at Apolitical’s Workplace Award 2019 Mental Health in the workplace category.

We were very proud to represent the UK Civil service and we competed against eight other finalists from different government departments in different countries.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who have followed our journey, supported us and championed our toolkit

Personally, this project has provided us with an amazing opportunity to become leaders within the Civil Service and develop our leadership and project management skills. On top of this, many of us have gone on to achieve promotion since graduating from the academy.

Our Twitter account has grown to over 1600 followers and this continues to increase in size. We have received invites to present the toolkit in different parts of the UK, allowing us to continuously network, build positive relationships and collaborate with people who work in this area, along with colleagues like us, who would just like to make a difference.

We are looking at a “Train the trainer” scheme with CS Local, to find champions for our toolkit who would like to help us promote wellbeing in their area of work using the toolkit as a resource.

Next steps for the toolkit

Resources, time and funding are always a challenge, as demonstrated by us doing this on top of our day jobs. We would like to seek support to push the toolkit across the Civil Service and for other colleagues to use it.

If you’d like to join us please do get in touch or find us on Twitter.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have been incredibly supportive of this project and will be the first government department to take this toolkit on as part of their wider wellbeing strategy.

We are working with Engage for Success, The Charity for Civil Servants, Civil Service Sports Council, One Team Gov and HMRC to ensure that our toolkit can be as inclusive and as accessible as possible.

We have relaunched our revised toolkit in July 2019 in time for Civil Service Live. Using the feedback and suggestions we have received our revised toolkit which now includes;

  • Chairobics – which includes the popular Do the Funky Chicken activity

  • Digital wellbeing — how having an awareness of how being online can make us feel and looking after ourselves and others when online

  • Financial wellbeing – making informed choices about your finances in the present and in the future.

  • Relaxation through mindfulness – raising awareness of the benefits of mindfulness and featuring CS local academy group MYOB (Mind Your Own Business)

  • And eXpanding your horizons — finding fun and easy activities that work for you and by trying a variety of activities that you can turn to when you need to boost your wellbeing.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who have followed our journey, supported us and championed our toolkit. Collaboration is so important in creating “A Brilliant Civil Service” and we have enjoyed working with you all. — Gail, Ian, Iona, Koysar and Louella of Team Chaffinch

(Picture credit: Unsplash)