Working Voices is a free NHS initiative which seeks to reach people at work to ensure that local working people have the opportunity to tell us their views and join conversations about local NHS services. Through this we can gain a valuable insight from this often ignored group. Working Voices also offers support for employers with regard to staff health and well-being opportunities.

Helping the workforce to have their say
We want employees across the city to have their say about local health services. Further to our duty to ask the opinions of local people about local health services, we want to do as much as we can to share our ideas, plans and issues and get feedback about them. Will our ideas work? Will we create the kind of services people want? Is there a better way? Do the public have a solution that will help us solve a problem? The views of workforce matter.

Helping local employers to access health and well-being support
We want employees to have access to a range of services and information to support their health and well-being, but we recognise that being at work can present difficulties in accessing information about health services and healthcare itself. We hope a partnership between employers and the NHS will create useful opportunities to help workforce health and well-being needs.

How does it work?
The NHS wants patients to be at the heart of service planning, but people who work often don’t have time to get involved with engagement and consultation activity and their voice is never heard. To help tackle this, Working Voices looks to create partnerships with local employers where we then have the links to involve the workforce in what we do. This might mean from time to time we ask businesses to share a health-related questionnaire with the workforce so we can find out their views about a key issue for the people living and working in Hull. Most often this will be via a paper or electronic survey.

We also work with employers to find out what health and lifestyle services or information we can bring into the workplace to support employee health and well-being. This may start with a health needs assessment and can extend to organising input from a range of statutory and voluntary health organisations for the benefit of the workforce, such as:

• NHS Health Checks
• Mental health services and local support groups
• Suicide prevention training
• Menopause advice/support
• Smoking Cessation support
• Drugs and alcohol services
• Cancer Champions programme
• Social prescribing services
• Healthy weight & physical activity schemes/support
• Volunteering with local charities
• Mindful Employer Charter http://www.mindfulemployer.net/
• Time to Change https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/

Working Voices helps us to develop a deeper relationship with the local community, support employers to create a happier, healthier and more empowered workforce and help the public to understand how the NHS and other health services operate. All of this helps us to engage with local people around services and their health needs and create a healthier Hull.  Find out more about why other businesses have joined Working Voices below.

See an information leaflet for EMPLOYERS here
See an information leaflet for EMPLOYEES here
Find out how your organisation can get involved here.

Click on the links below to see why so many local businesses & organisations have already signed up and how your business can benefit too.