Wellbeing Champion Training
Our training programme ensures your Wellbeing Champions lead with confidence, creating a workplace culture that prioritises mental, physical, and emotional health. Partner with us to cultivate a resilient, engaged, and high-performing workforce, all passionate about creating Good Days at Work.
Download our Champions guideWellbeing is not just a task for HR—it’s a collective responsibility across everyone in your organisation. Our Wellbeing Champion training is designed to empower your people to become advocates for wellbeing, creating a network of ambassadors committed to supporting your wellbeing strategy, spotting the signs and symptoms of people who may not be coping, and facilitating meaningful conversations about health and wellness.
– Why Wellbeing Champions Matter
Wellbeing Champions serve as vital contributors to your organisation’s wellbeing strategy. They are the frontline supporters, driving engagement, delivering interventions, and ensuring that wellbeing initiatives resonate with your workforce. Unlike Mental Health First Aiders, Wellbeing Champions can act as a preventative measure that your organisation can easily and quickly deploy to mitigate the risks of stress and poor mental health in the workplace, while also being a force for creating more Good Days at Work. Ready to empower your people with our Wellbeing Champion training? Get in touch today.
Our Support Services
From rolling out global, multi-lingual Champions networks, to upskilling your existing local ambassadors on the ground, our tailored services are designed to support you and your Wellbeing Champions at every stage:
We can assist in defining the role, creating a Wellbeing Champion profile, setting priorities, supporting communication, and aiding in the selection process, all while supporting your internal wellbeing coordinator.
We consult with your wellbeing coordinator, offering an implementation guide, an 'Activation' questionnaire, and a 'Champion bio' template. The Activation Day programme itself covers creating a shared understanding of wellbeing, effective health campaign strategies using behavioural insights, and mastering impactful wellbeing conversations. Post-training, we develop an action plan based on the activation day and offer strategic feedback.
You can maintain momentum with our tailored webinars, face-to-face check-ins, workshops, Wellbeing Champion toolkits, and resource packs. Our diverse extended learning topics encompass workload management, energy management, a coaching approach in wellbeing conversations, understanding behaviour change, and recognising stress and its impact.
-Spotlight on: Activation Day Programme
Training modules:
- Understanding Wellbeing: Defining ‘Good Days at Work’ and understanding barriers and enablers.
- Campaign Creation: Utilising Behavioural Insights for effective health campaigns.
- Wellbeing Conversations: Equipping Champions with techniques for meaningful conversations.
What your Wellbeing Champions gain:
- Clear Framework: Champions grasp the essence of a healthy workplace.
- Effective Campaign Delivery: Techniques to engage your workforce in health initiatives.
- Conversation Skills: Tools to navigate and manage wellbeing conversations successfully.
Get in touch to discuss how our Wellbeing Champion training programme could benefit your workforce.
SARA RAWSTRON, HEALTH & WELLBEING LEAD, NATIONAL GRID ESO"We have run the Wellbeing Champion training programme for our Health, Safety and Wellbeing Champions for the last two years. We always receive excellent feedback from our Champion network - they find the course lively and engaging, and are able to share their experiences, receive guidance on supporting colleagues with mental health issues, and learn how to run wellbeing campaigns. We would have no hesitation in recommending Robertson Cooper as an organisation to work with, and this particular training course for your Wellbeing Champions.”
Wellbeing Champion FAQs
A Wellbeing Champion is a volunteer selected to further your wellbeing strategy by supporting health campaigns and having purposeful wellbeing conversations with colleagues. Wellbeing Champions or Ambassadors are your eyes and ears, they’re out on the ground activating your wellbeing strategy and making sure it truly lives – these guys are banging the wellbeing drum and speaking to those hard to reach populations that often don’t, or can’t engage.
There are two areas in which Wellbeing Champions may add value to the wellbeing activity in your organisation:
- Supporting existing wellbeing campaigns or creating their own wellbeing campaigns
- Being on the ground looking out for people who may need support by having wellbeing conversations and signposting them to support
Wellbeing Champions are not Counsellors and they are not Doctors, and the boundaries of the responsibility they hold requires absolute clarity during your organisation’s activation process. The role and responsibility of the Wellbeing Champion is to spot signs and symptoms of compromised mental health and wellbeing and be committed and skilled enough to have a wellbeing conversation which signposts your people to the wellbeing resources that are available – their value is being the early intervention.
This is a key bridging function in an organisation, often there are lots of resources available to people such as counselling, Occupational Health, EAP services, yet people are not accessing and using them at an early stage. The Wellbeing Champion can be this vital bridge to promote the resources and assist people in accessing them; their role is not to solve issues, it is to support people in accessing the help they need.
Wellbeing Champions and Mental Health First Aiders have a different focus and entry point. The attention of a Wellbeing Champion covers both physical and mental health, focusing on catching and supporting people before they enter a crisis thus acting as a preventative measure inside your wellbeing approach. Mental Health First Aiders support those people who are in a mental health crisis. These roles therefore are very different in terms of focus and the necessary skills and tools required to support people at different places in terms of their health and wellbeing.
The Wellbeing Champion is a role that people take on as an addition to their day job so it is recommended that your network is formed from volunteers who have an interest in health and wellbeing and learning new skills.
Advertising the role across your organisation with a clear definition of the role and responsibilities usually generates enough interest to create a well-resourced Wellbeing Champions network. We often find that there are a number of volunteers that have experienced a physical or mental health issue themselves – these Wellbeing Champions are often therefore well placed to understand how people in need may be feeling and what support they require. It is important to remember however that these Wellbeing Champions can be vulnerable individuals themselves and it is critical to build support and awareness around this into your development process.
There is no magic number of Wellbeing Champions required, however it is recommended that all areas of your business have a Wellbeing Champion who is visible and available. This may be by departmental function, geographical location and/or job level.
Robertson Cooper can support you in all aspects of creating and training a network of Wellbeing Champions:
- Support in setting up the network effectively – recruiting the Wellbeing Champions, setting out the role definition, and importantly, designing how the network will govern itself as time progresses.
- Our activation programme gives a full day of learning to get your network of Wellbeing Champions off the ground and ready to go, ensuring they are behind your strategy, know how to create a good health campaign, and can confidently have those all-important wellbeing conversations.
- Our ongoing support keeps their engagement and enthusiasm alive, delivering them new wellbeing topics, new tools and continually updating their knowledge and expertise on crucial aspects of workplace wellbeing.
Get in touch
MANDY COALTER, DIRECTOR OF PEOPLE, UNITED LEARNING"Building, developing and training a Wellbeing Champions network is playing an important part in our wellbeing approach. There’s no point in having a cohesive strategy with lots of engaging activities if no one knows about it or is engaged enough to take part. Robertson Cooper’s approach has enabled us to get out there and make some noise around wellbeing – creating the interest and energy that any wellbeing approach needs."
