Workplace Wellbeing and Culture Transformation with Dalkia Facilities

In partnership with Robertson Cooper, Dalkia Facilities adopted a comprehensive, long-term strategic approach to evolve its health, safety and wellbeing strategy.

Good day at Work Consultancy:

Vision & Goals Workshops

A number of workshops were held with senior leaders and people managers to facilitate the business case and define the vision for the future to be:

• Attract, develop and retain the best talent to enable the business to deliver quality outcomes.
• Develop leaders who have the capability to inspire and engage their team, motivating them to deliver their best work.
• Boost engagement and advocacy for the organisation.
• Support diversity by creating an open, fair and inclusive culture where everybody feels safe to speak up.

The Cultural Maturity Assessment

Robertson Cooper used an evidence-based maturity model to assess how Dalkia were currently performing in the four key dimensions of GDAW culture:

• STRATEGY Mission, vision & values and purpose, Goals & performance; Agility
• WORK ENVIRONMENT Organisational structure; Process, policy, & procedure; Resources
• SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT Leadership; Collaboration; Learning & Development; Recognition; Diversity, equity & inclusion
• HEALTH, SAFETY & WELLBEING: how the organisation ensures it provides the environment, systems and practices that enable and support effective physical and psychosocial risk management and control

The assessment was not an audit of management systems and performance; rather, an assessment of the current GDAW culture using a number of data sources –

Samples of business and health, safety and wellbeing management system documents.

• Qualitative data from stakeholder meetings and focus groups.
• Data sources were explored for any gap between what is written/said and what happens in practice (work as imagined vs. work as done).

The results were presented as observations and recommendations, overlaying Dalkia Facilities’ Vision & Goals, previously defined in our leadership workshops to formulate an overarching strategy across the four dimensions.

GDAW Assessment

Through employees completing our Good Day at Work questionnaire, a baseline measure of wellbeing was established, providing actionable insights for the business, highlighting priority areas to address improvements.

All participants received their personalised wellbeing snapshot report on completion with an overview of their results, advice and tips based on their responses, and guidance on action planning to boost wellbeing, cope better with stress and build resilience with insights and support resources.

Strategic Action Planning: Results from the assessment were analysed and reported back with summary findings and recommendations to Dalkia Facilities via Board, Leadership and Manager briefings and broadcasts, integrating into Dalkia Facilities’ broader strategy, enabling teams to align wellbeing goals with organisational priorities.

Further initiatives commenced:

Following the GDAW Assessment, “focus sites” were identified which had 1:1 coaching sessions with Robertson Cooper’s business psychologists to support the managers, to help them build capability and plan the next steps.

Team programme: Managers were provided with team-wide insights, with advice on how to use the information, with advice and guidance, and action plans to create healthy team performance.

Managers received personalised feedback on their own leadership style via our Leadership Insights report. Providing a unique insight and self-awareness on how their own style impacts wellbeing in their team, identifying strengths and risks, with advice and guidance on how to adapt for positive change

Trainers the Trainers: A programme to recruit, select and train Dalkia Facilities’ employees to support the Team Manager briefings and Team Talks at local level with their teams.

Manager and Employee programme – learning broadcasts were created to provide additional support and learning on the topics of Staying Ahead of Stress, and Wellbeing Conversations for Managers and Employees. Workbooks and reflection tools to focus back on employees personal Wellbeing Snapshot reports were included.

Almost 70% of employees used their voice by completing the GDAW Assessment.

This provided a baseline to identify a clear link between employee wellbeing and safety, to prioritise areas to address improvements.

Between August – December 2024, managers ran their Team Talk sessions, allowing them to facilitate meaningful conversation with their team on the results and demonstrate and agree a shared responsibility for action.

Over 250 individual “local” actions were recorded and aligned to the 6 Essentials to understand the areas of pressure that help or hinder individual wellbeing. Managers regularly revise these actions to ensure they’re being addressed and build on them where needed.

From the action plans, baseline GDAW assessment insights and maturity assessment, Companywide actions were agreed to create more Good Days at Work for all employees.

• Employee Forums were set up to make wider use of the two-way feedback/engagement channels.
• Recognition – a review of methods and tools to refine and celebrate the achievements of employees across the business.
• Wellbeing – making the wellbeing resources more accessible and responding to feedback on them to support peoples’ health, safety & wellbeing so they can thrive at work.
• Action plan creation and continued enablement for leaders to act on results. Adopting a “You Said, We Did” approach. The Quality, Safety, Health and Environment team facilitate regular ‘Safety in Numbers’ session at all levels across the business to keep the conversation alive around health, safety and wellbeing, and what continuous improvements are needed.
• Continuing to use a multi-channel approach – including a dedicated GDAW Hub – to ensure awareness around GDAW remains high; wellbeing conversations remain positive, and they continue to signpost employees to useful resources.