1. The Employers Network Forum 1: Mental Health and Wellbeing
Dr Suzanne Wood
Consultant in Public Health
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team
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2. Welcome
The Cardiff and Vale Employers Network aims to support organisations to promote and protect employee health and wellbeing as an integral part of their business practice.
Welcome to the re-launch of the Cardiff and Vale Employers Network.
The aim of the network is to support organisations to promote and protect employee health and wellbeing as an integral part of their business practice.
The purpose is to engage with organisations across Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan from all sectors and of all sizes, through a series of health related workshops, exploring how to implement health improvement initiatives targeted at staff within the workplace.
Within these workshops we aim to provide evidence based examples of best practice, and where possible utilise existing best practice from Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan, and explore how you can implement them within your own workplace.
Dr Suzanne Wood
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team

3. Why the workplace? As a setting, the workplace:
Provides access to a stable population of adults;
Provides the opportunity to invest in long term health improvement initiatives targeted at staff.
Workplace settings have a unique potential to influence health positively (Black 2008; WHO 2008). Full-time employees spend about a third of their waking hours in work. They eat at work, they travel to, from and during work and they socialise in and through work. Thus, there is potential for worksites to promote and support the health of workforces through the development of physical environments, social supports, time and financial incentives and pro-health cultures (Caan 2006).
The working environment offers a unique opportunity to engage with a stable population of adults and invest long term commitment into promoting and protecting the health and wellbeing of staff, and assist them to live long, happy, healthy lives.
Dr Suzanne Wood
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team

4. Healthy workplaces Improved employee health and wellbeing
Improved rates of attendance
Increased organisational productivity
Research suggests that a focus on primary prevention of illness by implementing activities that promote and protect the health and wellbeing of staff will lead to an improvement in staff health and wellbeing, improved rates of attendance, all leading to increased organisational productivity.
Therefore health and wellbeing initiatives targeted at staff within the workplace should be a priority for all employers.
Dr Suzanne Wood
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team

5. Mental health and wellbeing
Forum 1
Mental health and wellbeing
As the first forum of the Employers Network, today we’ll explore an area of health and wellbeing that has the potential to effect us all in one way or another at some point in our lives – mental health and wellbeing.
Dr Suzanne Wood
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team

6. Mental health and wellbeing
As many as 1 in 3 working age adults are likely to have a mental health condition.
Stress causes more working days lost than any other health problem.
The financial cost of mental ill health to British business has been estimated at as much as £40 billion per year.
The impact of mental ill health is estimated to be huge.
Our mental health and wellbeing is known to be a result of a complex interaction of a variety of factors including genetic, social, situational and wider determinants.
As our mental state has such a huge impact on our day to day existence, it has the potential to affect all aspects of our modern lives, including our employment.
Whereas employment itself is known to be a protective factor against mental illness, the pressures and stress related to employment are also understood to have the potential to negatively impact on our mental health and wellbeing.
Dr Suzanne Wood
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team

7. The role of employers
You have the opportunity to positively influence the mental health and wellbeing of your employees.
There are opportunities for organisations to proactively promote and protect the health and wellbeing of their employees.
Today, we will hear a series of presentations from speakers representing a variety of organisations within Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan, and we will have the opportunity within the workshops to discuss how you can incorporate some of the work around promoting and protecting mental health and wellbeing of staff in to your organisation.
Dr Suzanne Wood
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team

8. Thank you Dr Suzanne Wood Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team
We will now hear the first presentation on the Mindful Employer Charter by Helen Bennett of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.
Dr Suzanne Wood
Cardiff and Vale Public Health Team