Action Cancer places health and wellbeing at the heart of its organisation - Business In The Community

Action Cancer places health and wellbeing at the heart of its organisation

Set up over 40 years ago, Action Cancer is Northern Ireland’s leading charity saving lives and providing to support to people suffering with cancer.

Background

Over 90 employees and 400 volunteers work with the charity across 19 locations to help provide early detection services, deliver health promotion and healthy living programmes. It services communities directly with it ‘Big Bus’ mobile detection unit.

What Action Cancer did

The charity’s goal is to make a difference and secure its reputation as a local employer of choice. As a values and behaviours-focused organisation, Action Cancer recognises the importance of putting its people first. As such, it has developed a structured programme to support to develop the personal wellbeing of its employees.

To ensure this approach is implemented in all avenues of its operations, Action Cancer set up a Health, Wellbeing and Corporate Social Responsibility Committee which reports and monitors the progress of actions behind the organisation’s goals in its strategic plan. The committee is led by the Chief Executive and is made up of two board members and 12 individual CSR champions who represent their respective departments within the charity.

Health, Wellbeing and CSR team set SMART objectives and targets in relation to the number of staff (all anonymous): accessing health checks, availing of complementary therapy sessions, staff care counselling services, and training and development. It also monitors staff satisfaction, assessment of line manager support, absenteeism, staff turnover, number of grievances, mediations etc. Information is recorded through anonymous staff surveys, CSR feedback and staff comments on consultations.

Targets are monitored on a quarterly basis by the CSR Team and reported to staff through the organisation’s newsletter. Action Cancer continually tries to improve on this targets.

Awards Highly Commended StampAll goals and actions are documented, embedded into strategic planning, allocated to individual task forces and then progress is updated at various communication points throughout the organisation eg staff away days, team meetings and CSR committee meetings.

The outcomes and impacts

  • 225 ‘Big Bus’ visits annually
  • 87% of employees rated Action Cancer 10/10 for meeting their Health and Wellbeing needs
  • 46% of employees availed of a free health check
  • 108 sessions of complementary therapies were used
  • To find out more, email amcgeown@actioncancer.org