Belfast Health and Social Care Trust - Business In The Community

Belfast Health and Social Care Trust

The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust delivers integrated health and social care to 340,000 people in Belfast and offers a range of specialist regional services to all citizens across Northern Ireland.

Background
With a budget of £1.3 billion and over 22,000 employees, the Belfast Trust is one of the largest health trusts in the United Kingdom.

What Belfast Health and Social Care Trust did
To achieve its ambition of being a world leader in health and social care, the Belfast Trust passionately believes that it needs to encourage a workforce that is healthy, motivated, and supported to act as champions of their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families. In 2015, the Trust’s health and wellbeing sub-group established a project in 2015 with two main aims and one overarching purpose; to unify all health and wellbeing activities under one brand; ‘bWell’, and to enhance access to the information platforms of targeted initiatives.

The project saw the launch of two unique wellbeing tools for employees: an app and a website, available 24/7 for busy staff ‘on the go’.

The ‘bWell’ website focuses on the provision of advice, videos and tools under five key themes; ‘b active’; ‘mind ur mind’; eat well; positive choices; and ‘Here 4 U’ (free classes). The website also contains information on all the Trust’s employee support services, and videos of Trust employees highlighting what they do to ‘bWell’. The ‘bWell’ app currently focuses on three of the ‘bWell’ themes; ‘b active’, ‘mind ur mind’, and positive choices and streamlines advice from a range of NHS sources, and hosts a unique range of content composed by Trust Occupational Health Physiotherapists, Clinical Psychologists, Cognitive Behaviour Therapists and Health Improvement. This includes 40 videos of exercises and 90 minutes of recordings of guided relaxation and mindfulness exercises.

The app also acts as a platform to launch various initiatives including ‘sit less: move more’ campaign and ‘fit4life: fit4work’ campaign.

Impacts and Outcomes
49,469 website views equating to 9,814 online users
1050 app downloads
Employee engagement score is 3.72
Absence rates reduced by 5.4%
60% of staff would recommend the trust as place to work
To find out more, email samantha.whann@belfasttrust.hscni.net