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Solomons Europe has begun the journey to attaining ISO 45003: Psychological Health and Safety at Work. In the below blog, our Strategic Director Kerry Doig outlines why this is crucial to our people and business the uncertain times we are living and working in.

Long before the arrival of World Mental Health Day on Monday, October 10, we had been reflecting on the huge changes and challenges every one of us has experienced over the last few years both at home and at work. There has been, without question, a profound shift in attitudes to mental wellbeing during these uncertain times, and no much more so in our own industry and professions.

We have seen this as a hugely positive step amidst great ongoing global uncertainly. And this heightened focus will hopefully continue to grow and develop to ensure more supportive and enabling cultures in all our workplaces, as we continue to thrive as individuals and as strive to flourish as responsible businesses in the future.

Earlier this year our People and Performance Team, Dawn Powell and Victoria Clements, worked hard to develop and pilot our first ever WRAW (Workplace Resilience and Wellbeing) programme. This was specifically designed to support our apprentice cohort as they learn, grow and develop their professional confidence.

These sessions covered aspects such as the building of supportive peer networks and mentors, as well as formulating a personal resilience and wellbeing toolkit underpinned by the WRAW 5 Pillars of Resilience. The process was specially designed to acknowledge and tackle, holistically, the challenges which lay ahead in learning and developing new skills at fast pace and to recognise the self-awareness and personal wellbeing strategies needed to achieve these goals in practice.

This work represented the first step in the wider development of wellbeing training and workshops across the Solomons business. Exploring the concept of how to cultivate personal and professional resilience in our teams naturally led to many conversations that have remained at the forefront of our minds when looking at how we can enhance people practices, along with our own Future Skills Academy programmes, both now and well into the future.

To keep this commitment front and centre of the business’ strategy and maintain momentum, we wanted to ensure we are able to both track and measure our effectiveness in this crucial area. That’s why we have made a commitment to work towards the attainment of ISO 45003: Psychological Health and Safety at Work over the next 12 months.

Taking the words on this accreditation from BSI: “ISO45003 is the first global standard giving practical guidance on managing psychological health in the workplace. It provides guidance on the management of psychological risk, as part of an occupational health and safety management system.

“Supporting mental health within your organisation has never been more important. As well as helping you to build a positive working environment, a framework for managing psychological health and safety can help improve your organizational resilience and enhance engagement, performance and productivity.”

So, as these investments often are, we see it as another win-win for our people and the business.

Whilst this is a relatively new business standard, we hope that by working through the process with external experts, we can challenge our current people practices and bring out our strong commitment to our people’s health, wellbeing and resilience.

Our goal is simple: to build a class-leading strategy that rigorously and continuously improves the people practices and processes at Solomons to benefit our fantastic team. We’re raring to go on this exciting journey.

External URL: https://www.solomonseurope.com/blog/