What is the role of this resource?
It is critical that your organisation’s integrated wellness strategy is directed and supported by senior leaders and stakeholders. However, they may not have the capacity to drive the implementation of the initiatives and activities.
When we have a network of passionate Wellness Champions, we can create a strong and supportive community within our organisation that assist in embedding and reinforcing these initiatives. Additionally, having a quorum of people who are modelling behaviours that support and improve organisational wellness is necessary to create a tipping point for new behaviours and kick-start a movement towards long term positive change.
We can think of Wellness Champions as employees within our organisation who are passionate about improving organisational wellness, and whose role is to advocate for the actions that the Wellness Officer wants to put in place.
By promoting these initiatives and actively discussing wellness and psychological safety with their colleagues, they are also able to increase awareness and engagement with your organisation’s wellness initiatives.
These champions can exist at all levels of your organisation with either informal influence or formal power and may come from different disciplines. In fact, having a diverse community of Wellness Champions may help to bring a wider range of perspectives and encourage a broader movement towards new behaviours.
“A cultural change around mental health and stigmas must be championed from the top through senior leaders and embedded by ‘frontline’ managers and other operational leaders.
This change is instrumental to ensuring staff are comfortable seeking support with any mental health concerns and is key to a mentally healthy workplace.”
What are the responsibilities?
There is no universal agreement on what the responsibilities of a Wellness Champion should be, but some of their activities could include:
Promoting and role modelling best practice psychosocial health and safety behaviours
Taking part in and leading activities, as directed by the Wellness Officer
Discuss the wellness initiatives and principles with their colleagues, to ensure that messaging from the Wellness Officer is disseminated throughout the business
Checking in with their colleagues and conducting open discussions about wellness and psychosocial safety and communicating with the wellness officer when these discussions may inform future policies
Calling out behaviour and policies that do not support wellness or align with your organisation’s integrated wellness strategy and communicate this with senior leaders such as the Wellness Officer.
What are the selection criteria?
Compared to the role of a Wellness Officer which requires a set of specific skills, the focus for Wellness Champions is primarily on their attributes. Some critical selection criteria to consider when nominating your Wellness Champions are:
Those who take up this role are often motivated by their own experiences with mental health and psychosocial safety incidents, or the experiences of those close to them. These experiences can help to create passion and build empathy, which are both essential characteristics for this role
Able to lead by example by participating in wellness initiatives and role modelling positive behaviours
Able to draw others into the program in order to ensure employee participation in wellness activities
They must feel comfortable speaking up about wellness and psychosocial safety issues with their colleagues and leaders, especially to advocate for their colleagues
Basic mental health training, such as mental health first aid that is updated regularly is essential. This will enable them to adequately support others and conduct conversations in a way that is not detrimental to the mental health of other colleagues.