Organisational Development

Every organisation is different. Each has its own issues relating to wellbeing and associated functional activity. The following diagram presents some of the key work components and influencers of organisational and employees’ wellbeing.

Our Organisational Development Services, working in partnership with your own staff, cover:

Assessment & Consultancy
Insights & Understanding
Solutions Delivery

Assessment & Consultancy

We work with senior leaders and in-house specialists to:

Review your organisation’s current influence on employees’ wellbeing including your related support and initiatives
Evolve a commitment and culture of improving wellbeing for the organisation and all its employees
Provide strategic and tailored wellbeing solutions and support platforms
Provide training, analysis, mentoring and interim support to those responsible for your organisation’s Wellbeing functions
Guide and support the development and implementation of an organisational wellbeing strategy

Insights & Understanding

Survey your employees to understand their immediate and long term wellbeing needs.
Provide a platform and signposting for employees to seek wellbeing solutions
Provide training, tools and solutions to help individual and teams of employees effectively manage and strengthen their wellbeing
Provide valuable data on wellbeing issues across the organisation
Provide general wellbeing insights and training to heighten employees’ awareness and commitment to managing and strengthening their wellbeing, energy and performance capacity.

Solutions Delivery

For the Organisation:

On-going guidance and support in the implementation, assessment, review and development of Wellbeing initiatives and capability.

For Employees:

On-going training and support tailored to individuals and cohorts specific and situational needs:

Lifestyle planning
Exercise and nutrition
Addressing health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, pre & post natal, and menopause
Tailored solutions for mature workers returning to work
Mental health support including trauma support, stress, anxiety and depression
Mindfulness, meditation, yoga, Pilates
Financial and material wellbeing.

Under we share more detail for those interested in understanding our broad framework when supporting client organisations who might be at the early stages of developing wellbeing initiatives. The diagram immediately under gives a visual impression. The links for each step under the diagram give more details for how each stage of an initiative might evolve.

Orientation

Getting to know prospective clients is an activity we approach with great thoroughness. It is an essential early element in building mutual understanding and trust in client relationships. Which is fundamental in guiding and supporting organisations and their staff achieve strong improvements in the wellbeing and resilience.

It is also important that our work is scheduled to fit well to an organisation’s priorities and overall development goals.

To ensure effective orientation we will undertake our own research and conduct a short interview programme with nominated representative client staff.

Orientation Activity

FFL Own Research

Interviews with Representative Staff

Scope for Improvement / Business Case

The output from this early work is a broad assessment of readiness and benefits through time for the organisation and its staff in working with us. This will include an indicative business case for on-going wellbeing improvements, drawing on our own experience and relevant leading research.

The interviews will give us some guage as to how the organisation currently sees its overall wellbeing status, and upon what information and knowledge that view is based.

The initial “getting to know” work allows client leaders and us to discuss existing wellbeing activities, issues, needs and scope for improvements, including organisational performance. Whilst at the same time getting to know one another as initiative partners.

Benchmarking & Priorities Agreement

Once we’ve agreed the broad nature and timing of wellbeing improvement needs we will then work closely with clients to position the initiative internally. At this early stage obtaining clear benchmarks of current wellbeing status for both the organisation and its staff is essential. This further informs organisational needs and initiative design, whilst giving data against which to guide and assess progress towards agreed improvement goals.

Programme Confirmation and Positioning

In confirming with relevant client leaders the approach to the initiative we will agree in detail:

the sponsoring and participation involvements of client personnel during the benchmarking stage, and in principle, beyond;
the relevant client data and information available, including through our dedicated analytic tools;
detailed plans for this benchmarking phase;
initiative structures and core team, including client staff;
reporting and communication channels for the programme;
detailed communication plans for this benchmarking phase.

Wellbeing Status Questionnaire

We suggest offering all staff the opportunity to participate in helping to give detailed input to both the organisation as a wellbeing environment and on their own health and lifestyle.

The questionnaire design is finalised with representative client staff. The core questionnaire has been designed and independently reviewed by leading, internationally-recognised healthcare practitioners and organisational psychologists.

Summated results will add significantly to the picture our client, its staff and we have of the current wellbeing status and improvement opportunities available.

Reporting & Briefings – Summation of Questionnaire Responses

In line with the medical profession’s ethical standards which guide our practice, all personal information we receive from clients’ staff is confidential to the individual.

The summated results from the questionnaire will give detailed insights into staff’s views on the organisation, its potential for influence on their wellbeing and their current health and wellbeing status. Additionally issue “hotspots” in an organisation will be highlighted.

Improvement Potential and Priorities

The information we gather from our orientation work and questionnaire responses will inform the current state of an organisation’s wellbeing. In reporting these results to the programme’s sponsors and internal Wellbeing executives we discuss the nature, scale and timeframes of improvements that are available, together with associated business cases. In doing this we together shape a working session to consider Wellbeing improvement priorities within the context of client’s wider objectives and plans.

Working Session: Aligning Wellbeing Improvements with other Corporate priorities and corporate objectives.

The working session will consider those internal factors that affect the wellbeing environment, both positively and negatively. Workforce health data will be similarly discussed to define priorities for staff wellbeing improvements. The business case for improvement opportunities are fully discussed. Throughout the session we facilitate clear focus on the key issues relevant to evolving executive alignment on development priorities.

Improvement Programme – Planning

Having agreed the scale of improvement opportunities and the priorities, we work together with client staff in developing plans that will achieve the agreed wellbeing goals. Simultaneously we will share in appropriate incidences, our skills and expertise to support client staff’s development. Each programme is different, depending on the client’s capability, infrastructure, resources and tools available. As advisors and mentors we are highly adept at adopting roles within organisational development programmes that best add value to our clients’ initiatives.

Among the resources we can bring to support planning are:

Programme structure and roles’ design, including programme oversight
Team building and team members’ briefings and personal development
Planning frameworks and tools
Programme performance measurement design
Programme reporting and communication structures; communication plans and content contributions
Programme management frameworks
Programme coordination support – we prefer programme leads to be a client employee wherever possible, as this ensures deeper “buy-in” and knowledge development for client’s staff.

Typically the planning phase will end with review and agreement of the Programme oversight team, which we envisage including Programme leaders and lead organisational sponsors.

Implementation – Virtuous Circle of Improvements

Wellbeing Improvement for both Individuals and organisations has the potential of being an on-going virtuous circle. A developing understanding of human psychology and physiology support the facilitation of this potential.

The approach and structure of an improvement programme and its implementation are hugely important to success. Staff’s positive attitude towards the Programme is wholly indispensable. Their trust and engagement will be earned with an approach primarily focused on encouraging and supporting their wider wellbeing improvement. The specific details of this will be defined during the Planning activity. Early Implementation will involve communication of the Programme and its goals: ensuring that messaging is focused on the support of staff in enjoying the huge benefits that the capability to improve and influence their own wellbeing brings. Simultaneously acknowledging that the organisational environment has both positive and negative impacts on wellbeing and that staff are encouraged to suggest improvement changes.

Our Implementation support is tailored to a client’s programme needs, potentially supporting development of the organisational environment, the Wellbeing function and individual staff wellbeing.

Organisational Environment

Many factors within an organisation can have a significant influence on individual employees’ health. Alignment between personal and organisational values and goals, culture and key working relationships are among the most important human factors. Organisational alignment of Purpose, Strategic direction, Structure, Operating infrastructure and Culture will all have a degree of influence on many employees’ wellbeing, whether positive or negative. As will role designs, clarity and expectations, leadership and management styles, team structures and a person’s suitability for their role.

Our wellbeing questionnaire will indicate which of these multiple factors have particular importance for an organisation and its constituent parts, including teams. At the end of Programme Benchmarking and during planning we confirm whether there are priority developments within the organisation to support employees’ wellbeing.

Wellbeing Function Development and Support

Wellbeing has evolved as a discipline within many organisations in the last two decades. However there is still a shortage of highly experienced wellbeing executives. Consequently, the requirements of organisations’ Wellbeing functions vary widely. We will work in close partnership with executives with wellbeing responsibilities to evolve functional capability as required to serve organisational goals.

This support can vary from establishing a Wellbeing function and training and mentoring staff to providing tactical inputs as requested.

Continuous Improvement – Permanent Adoption & Self-Sufficiency

Our experience in both organisational leadership and wellbeing improvement of individuals is that a desire and commitment to continuous development of knowledge, capability and effective practice bring very positive rewards.

Our experience in supporting organisations to engage all staff in defining, designing and implementing improvements goes back to the 1980s. Wellbeing science has since the 1990s been increasingly defining the potential extent of human healthy life periods – healthspans. Our work with organisations in improving their staff’s wellbeing has drawn on explicit Wellbeing functional experience since the early 2000s.

We bring to all our activities – with organisations and their staff – the ethos, deep experience and professional commitment to continuous improvement and the strong rewards it facilitates.