United Utilities named as one of Britain’s Healthiest Workplaces for 2018

United Utilities has been named one of Britain’s Healthiest Workplaces, following the largest, most comprehensive workplace wellbeing survey in the UK.

The water company which has a 5,000-strong workforce serving 7m customers across the North West, has over the past four years been raising its game to improve the wellbeing of its employees.

Rebecca Eaton from United Utilities said, “The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees is vital to the success of our business.

“In 2015 we started participating in Britain’s Healthiest Workplace and throughout this period we have continually reviewed our approach.

“For example, helping employees quit smoking has had a fantastic success rate – far higher than the UK-wide average for the National Health Service’s stop smoking services.  We also offer discounted gym membership, nutritional programmes and help to improve and support our colleagues mental health, which has included training mental health champions and first aiders.”

“People are telling us that being able to talk about mental health has improved the workplace for them and being more open means that people are a lot more honest with us about why they need to take time off, which means we can do much more to offer support that’s effective,”

Britain’s Healthiest Workplace 2018, incorporated data from 129 organisations and 26,432 employees ranked United Utilities as the third most improved organisation.

The awards, developed by VitalityHealth is now in its sixth year. Britain's Healthiest Workplace aims to study the link between modifiable health risks and short-term productivity, develop a common understanding of what employee health and wellbeing means, and establish a common set of standards that can be applied to all industries.