9 | Q4 2022 Sep22073 Best Workplace Wellness Consultancy 2022 Founded 17 years ago, Affinity Health at Work (Affinity) is a workplace health and wellbeing research and consultancy group which advocates for better health and wellbeing at work for all, from SMEs to global organisations. Keeping people well at work can be complicated. In the UK alone, stress, anxiety, and depression costs UK employers upwards of £33 billion due to lost productivity, absence, and job loss. No one has been untouched by the challenges brought by the pandemic and its aftermath, both in home lives and at work, with incidents of mental ill health having risen sharply across the globe. Many organisations have started to offer mental health and wellbeing support over the last two years, but many do not know where to start, or what to do. This is where Affinity Health at Work can help. It is a company that passionately believes everyone has the right to good work. Since its establishment, it has conducted award-winning research and contributed to national guidance on health and work. Affinity’s work is organised around four activities: ‘Discovery’, where it works to understand the organisation’s needs and its strengths and gaps in provision; ‘Delivery’, where it develops tailored solutions for employees and managers, such as mental health at work training or developing managers in core skills to manage absence and performance; ‘Embedding’, where it works with organisations to roll out programmes and provide guidance for those who are in positions of responsibility for health and wellbeing; and ‘Sustaining’ health and wellbeing, where it works with organisations to upskill those who are leading health and wellbeing initiatives. Together, these four activities provide a comprehensive platform to improve health and wellbeing at work. Alongside this, over the years, Affinity’s core values have guided its growth: to take an evidence-based approach, to continually learn, to share learnings and to build knowledge and practice among the community. It is a company that strives to be bold in its approach; it does not follow trends and quick fixes but rather focuses on those things that are known to make a meaningful difference to the way people work. These values are held close in the way the whole team works. Affinity’s Managing Partners, Jo Yarker and Rachel Lewis have job-shared for many years, balancing academic roles (currently at Birkbeck, University of London) and young families. Everyone at Affinity works flexibly, choosing their own schedule and work location to allow them to work around other commitments and interests, and to work at their best. The team takes a collaborative approach towards allocating project work so they can work to their strengths and develop new skills. Affinity has launched a sponsorship programme, with two team members studying for a Professional Doctorate, and it encourages its team members to contribute at professional conferences and research publications. As the company continues to grow, the team asks themselves: Are they striking the right balance? Are people getting what they need from work? Is the company doing its best work for clients? Has it got the right policies and processes in place to achieve this? Each of Affinity’s projects start with a familiarisation stage. This is where the team develops a deep understanding of each organisation and its people. Depending on needs, they may review organisational policies and data, interview key stakeholders, run focus groups across staff, and amalgamate sectoral evidence from academic and practitioner research. This stage is essential to develop a shared understanding of the specific organisational challenges and the delivery context. This step helps the Affinity team to develop an understanding of the language used and ways of working in each organisation and gain a broad engagement from across key stakeholder groups. Everything Affinity does is driven by cutting-edge research, and as mentioned, applying evidencebased approaches brought together with realworld approaches for work, health, and wellbeing. To conduct its research, the company often collaborates with universities across the world, to ensure that it is tested, and that the team is always learning and sharing new knowledge to shape workplace wellbeing practices. It works closely with a number of organisations through its Research Consortium, which comprises a collaboration of researches and members (individuals, employer organisations, and national institutions) who come together to share ideas and identify new workforce trends. Affinity’s main current focus on building its provision of training for line managers, and its audit and gap analysis services so it can help organisations identify their strengths and gaps in workplace wellbeing provision so clients can prioritise their activities, and investment, in ways that really make a difference to their workforce. It is also looking forward to committing some of its time and resources to charitable support as part of its new team initiative to offer pro bono time for social purpose organisations who need workplace wellbeing support. Company: Affinity Health At Work Contact: Dr Jo Yarker & Dr Rachel Lewis Email: [email protected] Website: www.affinityhealthatwork.com
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