Developing Inclusive and Decentralised Workplace Wellbeing
Mary works for Permanent TSB and is responsible for Engagement, Wellbeing and Diversity and Inclusion initiatives across the bank, supporting over 2,500 colleagues, who in turn look after 1 million customers. She has had a varied career over the years, from her first job at 12 in the local hardware shop to serving pilgrims in Lough Derg, working in bars, barbershops and Burger King. Once she finally settled down and found her ideal career path, she has worked for Grafton Recruitment, PricewaterhouseCoopers and now in Permanent TSB. In her personal life, Mary is married to Marc and mother to three kids under the age of six. In between juggling her family and working life, she likes to fit in some trips back home to Monaghan – something that has been limited over the past year, but she’s looking forward to getting back to – and eventually giving her elderly mum a long-overdue hug.
Decentralising Wellbeing Responsibilities
Mary shares how they create shared ownership of wellbeing. They have a wellbeing committee that has representatives from different areas of the business as well as from the various locations they have employees in; this guarantees that every department is represented.
Everyone brings a different voice to the table and different perspectives on how roles impact people or how their role impacts wellbeing, even how the geographical side of things affect employees, making sure that they are not too Dublin centric. Mary also comments on how COVID has actually supported the inclusive approach, especially when it comes to organising corporate events that everyone can be a part of.
Offering Wellbeing Resources to Employees
At PTSB, they make sure they have the correct support strategies for the employees during COVID. An example of this would be the Employee Assistance Program, which offered communications and grieving support not only to the employees but to their families too. This was only the first action taken by the HR team; later on, they started organising things like 5k initiatives and support for people with children.
More recently, they have organised mental wellbeing support sessions on healthy relationships and first aid for children.
Using the Right Tools is Key to Adapting
There are still many changes going on at the moment, and of course, this will influence the way everyone works in the future. Considering this, Mary’s team is implementing a new project called “Ways of Working”, which is promoting all the tools they’ve made available to people. Including, of course, all the various technologies but also putting in place guidelines around things like email etiquette and the right to disconnect.
Mary comments that the tools and guidelines are used in different ways by teams because, as she explains there is not a one size fits all approach. So, they encourage teams to set up agreements on what will work best for them.
As a final note on this topic, Mary explains that while many companies are using software to restrict the hours in which people can send emails to colleagues, they prefer to use a friendlier common sense approach based on agreements made by team members that adapt to what they need and works best for each team.
The 4 Day Week
One interesting thing about Mary’s job is that she works on a 4-day week model, so she works from Monday to Thursday, and this is something that is becoming more and more common in a lot of companies, and it can be implemented in many different ways.
This is an excellent arrangement for Mary, and it could potentially be for many people, especially those with kids. She mentions that she is, of course, available to work on Fridays if something urgent comes up, but that rarely happens, and she gets more time to be with her family.
These kinds of arrangements are focused on employees being productive and not just “clocking in and clocking out”. Mary assures that if a company trusts their employees enough to put in place something like this, people will make it work for them and their productivity will not be compromised.
A Company Should be Inclusive in Their Wellbeing Strategies
As Mary highlights in the interview, having an inclusive culture overlaps with wellbeing strategies. Many of the efforts to support employees include resources specifically for women and LGBTQ+ members, but something that comes to attention is that men tend to be less involved in wellbeing initiatives. Although, Mary shares how she’s noticing a change in this regard: “I think younger men and women are definitely a lot more proactive about managing their health, both physical and mental health and certainly a lot more than my generation or the generations before me.”
If you want to connect with Mary, you can do so by visiting her linked in profile: Mary McCluskey | LinkedIn
Listen to the entire podcast above or on your preferred podcast platform, and you can watch the video of our conversation through this link.
About Your Host
Brian Crooke is a wellbeing educator, speaker and adviser, empowering Irish organisations to promote and sustain wellbeing within their workplaces.
He is the founder of The Work Well Institute and the Workplace Wellbeing Ireland community and is Course Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Workplace Wellness at Tangent, Trinity College Dublin. He is the host of The Work Well Podcast
If you want to bring sustainable wellbeing to your workplace then check out The Work Well Institute’s flagship programme, Developing a Workplace Wellness Programme that Lasts.
In his spare time, Brian is bringing free resistance training to every county and community in Ireland through his parkHIIT social enterprise.
If you have any suggestions for future topics you'd like to hear on the show, email Brian directly, brian@workwellpodcast.com
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