Faced with high levels of absenteeism and rising workers’ compensation costs, Centrelink’s Area Pacific Central (APC) undertook an inspiring health and wellbeing program.

The results? Centrelink APC’s Comcare premiums and absenteeism losses were reduced, while staff engagement, customer satisfaction and productivity all increased significantly.

The LivWell-Life Works program was so effective that it won the prestigious ‘Best Workplace Health and Wellbeing Program’ at the Safety, Rehabilitation & Compensation Commission’s National Safety Awards last year.

Jody Bell, Centrelink Area Business Manager for Corporate Services, explains the progression to a successful health and wellbeing program.

In the beginning

“Some of the drivers for having a workplace health and wellbeing program were around our absenteeism rate, Comcare premium, frequency of comp claims, and generally a disengaged workforce,” says Bell.

Looking at these drivers, Bell’s team realised they would require an approach combining both preventative health and wellbeing measures, as well as proactive return to work strategies.

 “Three and a half years ago we had a lot of staff taking more than 40 days leave. We couldn’t ignore that; we had to look at what we could do to get these people back to work.”

“The other data that was screaming at us was the nature of our work in Centrelink. We have a highly sedentary workforce: a lot of work behind computers and interviewing customers. We had a lot of physical injury as the result of poor posture or not taking enough breaks. Also, some of our customers have experienced challenging life situations, so sometimes staff can find that stressful.”

“So, we were trying to look proactively at how to prevent either physical or psychological injury in the workplace. And we came at it from a health promotion and prevention space, more so than a case resolution at the end – although that was still important.

Bell also reminds us of the need for ‘future proofing’ with regard to our country’s ageing workforce. “The other thing that was important to us too is that as the workforce ages, it’s going to be a tighter labour market and we’ll be competing for talent.”

A considered approach

Taking the time and effort to carefully design a program specifically for their needs has been a major factor in the success of the LivWell – Life Works program.

 “We had to look at the data around the number of days leave per individual and where we had the most leave, and target our approach accordingly,” says Bell.

“It wasn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. The staff in our offices reflect the demographic in which they live, so, what worked in one place wasn’t going to work in another. We had to have a holistic strategy.”

The importance of gathering relevant data is critical to the implementation of effective wellbeing initiatives. Bell explains how regular worksite intervention helped shape the wellbeing program to the needs of her staff.

“We’d offer staff – on a voluntary basis – a fitness age test and blood test, where they would get their own individual report, says Bell. “It was highly confidential...we’d just get a group result.”

“Then we’d put that together with results from the DAS – the depression anxiety stress test – run by our internal psychologist, and we also used the work limitations questionnaire, which is one of the measures of presenteeism, explains Bell.

“So we’d get the site result of those four tests and say, ‘OK, what is the data telling us about this site, and what interventions will we recommend?”

Taking this tailored approach to new health and wellbeing initiatives ensures they’ll hit their mark.

“In the Gold Coast office, flexibility was a real issue - probably as a result of our sedentary work but also the age of our workforce,” Bell explains. “And also resilience; stress management was an issue. So we ran some Pilates classes in work time and we also did some resilience sessions. And then we’d go back and re-test to see whether what we’d done had made a difference.

This retesting - which Bell points out is industry best-practice - makes all the difference in effectively targeting a health and wellbeing program.

 Initiative

A major centrepiece of Centrelink’s Liv-Well – Life Works initiative is what has become known as “Thewheel.”

“What we needed to do for staff was have an interactive product so they could see for themselves what it was we were doing and what was on offer to them,” explains Bell.

The wheel is an intranet-based interactive tool that allows staff to assess their work/life balance in different areas of their lives, receiving support if required. The wheel is comprised of eight different components:

1. Financial wellbeing;
2. Relationships;
3. Work/career goals;
4. Personal/professional development;
5. Fun;
6. Mental wellbeing;
7. Spiritual wellbeing and meaning; and
8. Physical wellbeing.

“The self-assessment product helps you score – out of 10 – where you are on the wheel,” says Bell. If staff receive a low score on an element of the wheel, they can then click on the corresponding wedge to access a range of resources designed to help them improve their work/life balance – and ultimately their health and wellbeing.

“Some of them are information products, some of them are other online resources, and some of them point to training programs that we might run in-house,” says Bell.

“Also we say to people that this is something they could do in coaching, with their staff, asking where they can help as team leader. It’s self-service and self-paced; people can engage with it whenever they want to.”

Outcomes

“When we were at our worst three and a half years ago, we had staff taking on average 15.55 days per leave, each. Less than two years later, we were down to about 11.65,” says Bell.

“We also reduced our compensation premium quite significantly. In fact, in one calendar year we actually had no compensation claims, which is just outstanding.

“I think what happened (is) because we’d changed the culture of the workplace, people felt more supported. We did prioritise early intervention, so instead of leaving something to develop into a really serious injury that was compensable, we’d say to people, ‘if you experience neck pain, back pain, whatever; we want to provide support at the earliest opportunity,” says Bell.

Return on investment

“There is a correlation between early intervention spending and compensation,” advises Bell.

“We turned around our spending and got the results. When I measured return on investment in the first year – and we tried to do ‘like for like’ –  our spending was about $80,000 more, but in return we had on average 10 more staff a day at work. So when you look at the salary of that, you’re talking about spending $80,000 to get a return of about $800,000 in salary.

In addition to that return:

• Productivity increased- because more people were at work;

• Customer satisfaction improved from about 80 per cent to above 90;

• They managed on budget every year – which is difficult when attempting to resolve an issue like absenteeism;

• Workers’ compensation frequency and cost were reduced; and

• Centrelink’s  annual people surveys enjoyed increases in measures such as:
  • Is your workplace safe?
  • Do you feel that your team leader listens to you?
  • Do you get feedback?
  • Do you think it’s a great place to work?
  • Do you feel like you have work-life balance? 

“And they did increase in year one to two, and two to three. It’s not like we plateaued out in those results,” notes Bell.

Key components

Bell and Centrelink’s APC have worked hard to create a creative, highly functional workplace health and wellbeing initiative. Reviewing their work, we see that they have successfully:

• Identified specific drivers within each sector of staff;
• Utilised a combination of approaches across preventative health and RTW; and
• Maintained site testing and data collection measure the effect of implemented programs.