About the Award

For too long, the North East has had a reputation for being of being an ‘unhealthy’ place to live and work; unfortunately borne out by our fairly shocking life expectancy rate and high long-term sickness and disability figures.

To help combat this, a partnership project unique to the North East was created and the Better Health at Work Award was established to take health and wellbeing into the workplace.

This partnership has now been taken forward by the Northern TUC, with the support and endorsement from Public Health England.

Workplace Health is an important and integral part of the regional public health strategy and is even more relevant in these challenging times, when companies need to use every tool available to ensure their productivity and competitiveness.

With more than 400 regional employers participating in the scheme so far, as well as the very favourable findings of at least two independent evaluations, both the need for and effectiveness of the Award for all concerned is clear.

Individuals benefit from increased access to health information and interventions where they wouldn't normally - in more than one instance, workplace activity generated by the Award has potentially saved lives - identifying dangerously high cholesterol levels and early stage cancers.

At the same time, employers benefit from improved morale, dramatically lower levels of absenteeism and increased productivity. There are few more apparent win-win situations.

You can download and view the Better Health at Work Award Employer Guide below, to read more on the award process, the structure of the award and find out about the role of health advocates.

Employer Guide

We participated to provide a further structure, focus and sustainable framework to our wellbeing programme.

The Award offers full support in terms of co-ordinator and resource information including best practice ideas and structured targets to aim for – it feels like we’re working together rather than in a silo!

- Northern Housing Consortium Limited, Sunderland

We wanted a structured approach to improving the health of employees tapping into the support available and taking the opportunity to benchmark with other organisations to help us improve the health and wellbeing of our people.

The award has been successful in helping us organise dedicated teams and resources as we work through the criteria. So far the campaigns have been very well received by our people and our new Wellbeing strategy has helped us to bring this all together in a framework all our staff understand.

- END. Clothing, Sunderland

As a top tier COMAH site our organisation prioritises the health and safety of our people. By equally investing in Health and Wellbeing we can further safeguard our workforce. BHAWA was the obvious choice for us to build on and strengthen our offering in line with our company values.

The framework has provided our business with the tools to understand the wellbeing needs of our rapidly expanding workforce. Through the support of our local coordinator, and collaborating with others, we have been able to develop a more robust health and wellbeing agenda and embed this into our culture.

- Sterling Pharmaceutical Solutions Limited , North Tyneside

At the time of enrolling on the BHAWA SUEZ did not have any health strategies in place. We started off on a blank canvas and were given the freedom by the plant manager to run our first campaigns. The wider business soon caught on and we now have an amazing wellness for all charter and Wellbeing and Inclusion Manager.

It gave us the starting point to a wider company movement and now wellness is a hot topic for the whole business. Enrolling every year onto a new level gives the site its focus and an end aim of achieving the award. The award recognises good work we do, and we also received the special recognition award in 2022.

- SUEZ TeesValley, Stockton

The award is a declaration of our commitment to building a healthy and happy workplace culture for every employee. Designing a positive and engaging health and wellbeing offer where health inequalities are reduced is so important to us and we know we will achieve this with the support of BHAWA.

The award process provides structure for Better Health at Work. It provides support, guidance and networking opportunities to learn and improve. The opportunity to collaborate and hear about others practice across the region is always inspiring, we always come away buzzing with ideas.

- Sunderland City Council, Maintaining Excellence level

A healthy workforce is a happy workforce. Grundfos puts its people first and we want to ensure all of our employees are healthy and well which is why the award is an ideal opportunity to drive this ambition and show the recognition for this drive to the workforce, our customers and the general public.

The award has provided a perfect driver for our health and wellbeing campaigns and ensures we are always kept on the right track and up to date with the latest strategies and wider community initiatives. The award website provides lots of extremely useful resource material to support our campaigns.

- Grundfos manufacturing, Sunderland