St. Joe's wins the Health & Wellness Award at Benefits Canada's 2016 Workplace Benefits Awards ceremony
Recently St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton was presented with the Workplace Benefits Award in the Health and Wellness Program category. The Workplace Benefits Award honours employers that are demonstrating leadership in the benefits and pension industry across Canada.
Specifically, the Health and Wellness Program category recognizes an organization that has developed an innovative and effective health or wellness program demonstrating improved health outcomes for employees.
Click here to watch a video that highlights all of this year's winners!
How did we achieve this award?
The success of the St. Joe’s Employee Wellness Program all goes back to our motto, “We best care for patients when we best care for ourselves.” Being well aware that working in the healthcare industry has its own set of demands and stresses, the Employee Wellness Program at St. Joe’s has developed a strategy to focus on mindfulness in an evidence-based framework. Mindfulness – simply slowing down to pay attention to the present moment – is the heart beat of our program, supported and recognized by senior leadership as an essential part of St. Joe’s culture.
How does innovation and effectiveness come into play? This framework takes into account our unique demographic profile with 60% of employees being shift workers as well as the application of mindfulness to five modifiable risk factors – tobacco smoking, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, alcohol, and mental health (Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, 2005). The return on investment demonstrates significant improvements in the health and well-being of our staff. As a result, there has been a growth of 485% with over 17,000 visits to the Wellness Centre likely contributing to a 14.7% decrease in long-term disability claims for musculoskeletal injuries from 2013 to 2014, and a decrease in average days lost by 31 days from 2012 to 2015.
Key ingredients that make an award winning Employee Wellness Program: engaged people, strong evidence, and vision.
Engaged people.People need to trust that you are looking out for their well-being and health. At the same time, you also have to know your people really well. This is why we have formal surveys like the Engagement Survey and Wellness Survey, Wellness Story of the Month (staff feature story), as well as numerous face-to-face interactions through on-unit Wellness presentations and activities, wellness classes, focus groups, and more. A Wellness Program also needs to take into account objective indicators from our demographic profile, Employee Assistant Program, drug plan, and extended absences reports.
Strong evidence. As mentioned, St. Joe’s embarked on a joint research study on mindfulness with both frontline healthcare workers and leaders. With results demonstrating significant decreases in depression, anxiety, stress, social adjustment problems in work, leisure, and family life, as well as increases in empathy, it was clear that a mindful foundation was key. The evidence towards modifiable risk factors including significant impact on cost savings (risk-free employees incur approximately three times less medical expenditures than high-risk employees), decreased absenteeism, and on shift workers who face challenges directly related to modifiable risk factors simply due to their work routine (e.g., disrupted sleep and diet).
Vision. Though we do not know where we will be in the next 5, 10 years, it never hurts to plant some seeds of what you hope to see! We envision peer-to-peer healthcare at St. Joe’s – staff caring for each other’s well-being. While traditional healthcare involves healthcare provider and patient, why not extend that care between our staff community? Going for walk with a colleague during break, suggesting mindfulness to someone during a difficult time, having a healthy potluck with your team...This can transform St. Joe’s culture to become more self-aware, more resilient, have better health, and continue to be inspired to deliver the high quality care each and every day.
We encourage employees, physicians and volunteers to get involved - here's how!
Read about our program brochure here.
For scheduling and resources, visit MyStJoes > Employee Wellness (internal employee on-Campus intranet access only)
Set up an on-unit Employee Wellness overview presentation with your team by contacting wellness@stjoes.ca or calling 905.522.1155 Ext. 37689