Case Study: Pierce Business Advisory and Accountancy Group

The challenge: Pierce wanted to support their employees working from home with their physical health and wellbeing.

Solution: YOLO Wellbeing – Employee Working from Home Survey to identify the level of requirement and support of home working teams. Followed by a series of small group DSE Health and Wellbeing Consultations.

About Pierce Business Advisory and Accountancy Group

Pierce is a business advisory and accountancy group based in Blackburn, Lancashire. They recognise the importance of their employees on business performance, which is why the company has a robust health and wellbeing policy in place.

This is clearly reflected in the average length of service, which is currently 15years; 53% of their employees have over ten years’ service, which is particularly impressive when 36% of employees only have between 0-4years service.

They chose to work with YOLO Wellbeing, because we can deliver 1-2-1 DSE (display screen equipment) assessments bespoke to home working; an understanding if homeworking is impacting employee health, and advice on how to work from home safely.

Our online service provides employees with the information they need to meet the health and safety responsibilities for home workers and be able to look after their own health and wellbeing better.

Objectives

The Management Team at Pierce wanted to:

1. Ensure that their employees were working from home safely, and not at risk of musculoskeletal injury.
2. Understand if home working arrangements were impacting the health and wellbeing of their employees. 
3. Meet their duty of care and health and safety responsibilities to their home working teams, and demonstrate they are invested in the health and wellbeing of their employees; and where necessary intervene to help staff who were struggling.
4. Raise awareness amongst their home working teams, of posture in relation to their health and provide them with the tools and knowledge to look after their own musculoskeletal health.

How did YOLO Wellbeing meet the objectives?

YOLO Wellbeing shared a home working questionnaire to the staff at Pierce, to help us understand how employees were working and if it was impacting their health and wellbeing. Following the results of the survey we carried out a series of Consultations in groups of 6 to enable us to review each employee’s work station, providing DSE (display screen equipment) advice for improvement and reasonable adjustment.

Within the Consultations we identified a small number of employees whose home working set-up put them at a higher risk of musculoskeletal injury. We were able to highlight this to the client, recommending that they may need further intervention, or an early return to the office. This met their health and safety responsibilities to minimise risk to employees working from home. We raised this privately as part of our evaluation report, to enable the company to respond confidentially with the individual members of the team.

As part of the delivery of the sessions we provided tips to work from home safely and manage their musculoskeletal and mental wellbeing.

The attendees took part in a 15 minute stretch, mobilisation and breathing session, which targets all the freely moveable joints in the body and helps to relieve stress and tension.

After the sessions all the participants were invited to complete a feedback survey, the results of which were included in our evaluation report.

Benefits to the Attendees:

We received feedback from 64% of respondents following the consultations:

100% Said they were more aware of their posture and how to improve it.

82% Said they felt better equipped to avoid aches and pains.

65% Said they felt some improvements in their health and wellbeing after the session.

Some of the attendee’s comments included:

‘Doing the movements highlighted how rigid my body has become! So, I will certainly be moving/stretching more!!’

‘Helpful low impact stretches especially for the neck that is generally forgotten.’

‘Good session, using towel to improve spine posture.’  

 This benefited the client in the following ways:

• Provided a better understanding of how their employees are working from home, the evaluation report showed most workers are well; but it also highlighted a small number of employees who are at risk of absence due to ill health or poor wellbeing. The Pierce HR Team intervened to take preventative action to manage the health and safety of their staff and avoid absences.
• The Consultations provided the awareness, information, and tools their employees needed to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, whilst working remotely. This meets and exceeds their health and safety responsibilities to risk assess the DSE set-up of their teams working from home by providing holistic support and intervention where required.
• Pierce employees recognise their employer is invested in their health and wellbeing. The level of participation in the questionnaire, consultations and feedback survey demonstrates high employee engagement.
• The tools supplied to Pierce following the Consultations will allow them to keep employees more mindful of their posture and health as working from home continues.

Testimonial from the client:

“The YOLO Wellbeing Consultations have been a great success; helping us to go beyond our health and safety responsibilities. Our staff were not just reminded about good posture, it has motivated them to move more to improve their health and wellbeing whilst working from home. It’s also identified some areas where we can help our employees.”

Lisa Kennery, HR Director, Pierce Business Advisory & Accountants

Contact us

If you would like to find out how YOLO Wellbeing can help improve the Health and wellbeing of your employees contact us:
hello@yolowellbeing.co.uk
01772 283139