The Charter is about working together to make sure work doesn’t impact on health, and that health doesn’t impact on work.

The Charter is open to all public, private and voluntary sector organisations based in Greater Manchester.

The size of your business is not important provided that you employ staff and will be able to undertake the minimum steps necessary to comply with the standards.

Self-assessment

First complete a self-assessment to help you better understand where your organisation stands under each set of standards.

At this stage, it doesn’t matter if there are gaps in what you do. The most important thing is to develop a plan that shows how you are going to fill any gaps.

Once you have agreed an action plan you may decide to just focus on one of the standards or you may decide to do activities to achieve all eight standards. Go at a pace that suits your organisation and make sure that you involve as many of your employees as possible in finding ways to meet the standards.

If you are struggling to find ways of filling those gaps please contact your local Health, Work and Wellbeing co-ordinator who will be able to direct you to resources and support to help your organisation.

Good Work: Good Health Award

If your organisation decides that it wishes to achieve a Good Work: Good Health Award it will first need to decide which level of award it wants to achieve. The award works at a number of different levels and we have worked with businesses to make sure that the scheme reflects the different needs of small and large businesses.

Award levels

Commitment level can only be awarded to organisations with less than 100 full-time equivalents (FTE) staff. Organisations with more than 100 employees can apply for the Achievement or Excellence level but must still fulfil the requirements of the Commitment standards.

Collect the evidence

You must be able to show that you meet the standards. This evidence will take a variety of forms – from written policies to staff surveys to physical evidence such as equipment or the premises. You may also conduct staff surveys to demonstrate the level of knowledge your staff have about the wellbeing activities in your organisation. Other forms may be testimonials, certificates of training or websites/intranet. These various forms of evidence, depending on their type, can be electronic or paper based – but evidence must show that they have taken place and the results must be available for assessors to review.

Register for an Award

As soon as your organisation decides it wants to achieve an award please contact the North West Health, Work and Well-being Co-ordinator. The co-ordinator will then contact you and talk you through the award process in your local area. You will need to complete a Request for Accreditation form (204kb).

Why you should sign up?

Do it for your business:

• Improved performance
• Retain good staff
• Effective leadership
• Legal reasons
• Employer of choice

Do it for your staff:

• Staff feel valued and involved
• Ageing workforce with greater health needs
• Lower levels of sickness
• Happier and healthier staff

Do it for the community:

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
• Improved local reputation
• Sustainability

Click here for more information on the Workplace Wellbeing Toolkit.

How can we help?

There are a range of resources available across Greater Manchester to support you towards achieving an award, and improving health and wellbeing in the workplace.

You can access our list of resources here.

Please note: this is not an extensive list of resources, but does provide some useful links and resources available online. We cannot take responsibility for any of the external websites, and cannot recommend any of the resources available. This is only a signposting service.

Downloads:

• Good Work: Good Health – Self-Assessment Tool (489kb)
• Good Work: Good Health – Leaflet (228kb)
• Request for Accreditation Form (204kb)
• Good Work: Good Health – Minimum Evidence Requirements (552kb)