Enhanced wellbeing to support a thriving community
Wellbeing on campus must be a collaborative effort to affect positive change. There exists a joint responsibility where everyone plays a part in caring for their own wellbeing and supporting a culture of care. The Employee Wellbeing Road Map is intended to provide suggested areas of action, based on data collected from Queen’s employees and best practice that will have a meaningful impact on the wellbeing of employees at Queen’s University.
How to use the Road Map
The Employee Wellbeing Road Map offers tools that leaders and employees can utilize in the interest of promoting a culture of wellness at the university. The Road Map can be used to:
- To guide the development of initiatives and programs within your department and on campus
- As a tool to share and celebrate best practices on campus that have had demonstrated impact
- To measure the successes of the objectives, and KPI’s across the campus
- To track and report to the Queen's community efforts that have been taken across campus to improve wellbeing.
Where workplace culture speaks to how work gets done, changing workplace culture is a process that takes time and patience. It includes a series of intentional and deliberate actions over several years to alter the mechanics of how your organization communicates and achieves its goals. We anticipate that the biggest change will be inspired by influencing the day-to-day interactions within a team, and this is where we have focused our work. Based on similar work from other post-secondary institutions, we anticipate a time horizon of 5 years to see noticeable change to our Key Performance Indicators.
To ensure that we are considering best practices in employee wellbeing, an environmental scan was conducted in the fall of 2022 and included the collection of employee data and trends, review of literature, the results from the Employee Experiences Survey, and employee focus group work.
Building on the work of the Campus Wellbeing Framework, the Road Map was developed through a multi-phased process involving members of the Queen’s University community. The first step of the work began in the fall of 2022, with the establishment of five focus groups who were tasked to explore wellness themes to determine the best way to approach, plan, implement and evaluate employee wellbeing at Queen’s. The themes of the focus groups included:
- Appreciation and Recognition
- Work Life Balance
- Defining Wellness
- Role Modelling and Leadership, and
- Communications (Centralized process to support the Employee Wellbeing updates)
The next step in the consultation process was the establishment of a Wellness Champions Advisory Committee formed in May 2023. This group of 26 people represent a diverse cross section of employees, both faculty and staff, who sit in a variety of portfolios at Queen’s. There has been a focus on providing feedback on the Road Map Framework, and to gain consensus on its objectives, key initiatives, and key performance indicators.
Further targeted consultations took place in the summer and fall of 2023 and involved identifying key stakeholders from the Human Resources Team, other potential Institutional Leads, and with the Culture, Equity, and Inclusion Office. General employee consultations were conducted over the summer and fall of 2023, and included employee coffee chat events, a town hall meeting, and presentations both virtually and in-person during Thrive Week.
In 2018, the University launched The Campus Wellness Project, to facilitate campus-wide engagement and conversations to advance a culture of wellbeing at Queen’s. Out of this project came the Campus Wellbeing Framework and its four pillars.
The Campus Wellbeing Framework was the result of six months of consultations with Queen’s students, staff, and faculty, and represents the shared well-being vision of more than 1,800 Queen’s community members who told the Campus Wellness Project team that campus wellbeing is rooted in a culture of care, inclusion and respect, social connectedness, the places we learn and work, and in the multiple dimensions of personal health. This framework was released by the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Wellness and was endorsed by the University’s Senior Leadership Team.
In 2019, Queen’s University made a formal commitment to the health and wellness of students, staff, and faculty by joining universities around the world in adopting the Okanagan Charter: An International Charter for Health Promoting Universities and Colleges. In 2022, Queen’s University Human Resources created Employee Wellness Services to further the work of both the Okanagan Charter and the Campus Wellbeing Framework through the development of the Employee Wellbeing Road Map.
The pillars of the Campus Wellbeing Framework; including Culture, Social Connection & Belonging, Personal Wellbeing, and Places, form the basis for the Road Map and demonstrate what we are trying to achieve. The Road Map creates objectives under these pillars to demonstrate how we are going to get there.
Team Culture in the Workplace
Desired Outcome:
Expand opportunities for reflective, positive leadership and recognize a shared responsibility among all members of the Queen’s Community, to advance a culture of care, equity, inclusion, respect, and empathy.
Cultivate and communicate knowledge for leaders to enable them to create and sustain a healthy working environment by:
- Providing training for leaders to educate, engage, and inspire them to create a healthy working environment for their team, including the Enhancing Well-being and Preventing Burnout Certificate Program, Appreciation and Recognition Toolkit.
- Providing information for leaders on the HR Intranet that is easily accessible with supports to create and sustain a healthy working environment including supporting acute situations as they arise and where to go for additional supports.
- Develop and implement internal Human Resources guidelines to support inquiries from leaders and employees.
Leading Wellness Appreciation and Recognition Toolkits Thrive 365
Advance the principles of I-EDIAA to assist in the development of new policies and the review of existing policies by:
- Developing a Wellness Lens Checklist for policy makers to use in developing and reviewing policies at Queen’s University.
- Ensuring that all new policies, procedures and guidelines developed within HR are reviewed with a wellness and I-EDIAA lens prior to release.
- Reviewing current policies, procedures and guidelines with this lens and make the necessary adjustments to documentation and re-launch as necessary.
- Working closely with our partners in VPCEI to establish a peer review process for documents
Identify and share leading practices that address wellness in the workplace strategies for leaders and employees by:
- Gathering information on leading practices for wellness in the workplace from a review of literature, and from the COP HR Committee
- Providing information for leaders on the HR Intranet that is easily accessible to provide tips and tricks for understanding and implementing workplace strategies to support wellness.
- Develop and implement internal Human Resources guidelines to support inquiries from leaders and employees.
Enhance a culture of appreciation and recognition at Queen’s by:
- Enrich the Events and Recognition HR webpage to include toolkit resources that reflect the best practices of appreciation and recognition for supervisors and employees.
Increase the awareness of professional development opportunities available at Queen’s for all employees and ensure the leaders and managers understand their importance in employee growth and development by:
- Sharing the links and resources of professional development opportunities offered at Queen’s e.g., Emerging Leaders, Foundational Leadership; Organizational Development and Learning Newsletter; Thrive Calendar; HR Events
Explore our professional development opportunities Thrive 365
Belonging and Social Connection
Desired Outcome:
Recognize the important role that strong, active, and inclusive interpersonal connectedness plays in supporting well-being and in sustaining a vital community.
Implement initiatives to foster engagement at Queen’s that considers the I-EDIAA principles by:
- Expand and evolve Thrive 365 initiatives to include on-campus and hybrid events through an I-EDIAA lens that encourages inclusivity and welcoming spaces for working, learning, and socializing for all employees e.g., coffee chats, social breaks at the Employee Wellness Garden, Diverse Employee Wellness Lunch
Strengthen the ability of the university to understand and respond to diverse and varied employee mental health needs by:
- Developing a Gold Card for employee mental health resources.
- Creating an online Gold Folder for employees to support one another and share this on the EWS webpage.
Get Help The Gold Folder (PDF 287 KB)
Encourage employees to participate in the planning and implementation of wellness initiatives and strategies by:
- Offering consultation opportunities through Coffee Chats, Town Halls, Mural Links for employees to engage, and share their ideas for employee wellness initiatives.
Personal Wellbeing
Desired Outcome:
Promote the multiple dimensions of personal health and recognize the roles and responsibilities of both university and individuals in supporting personal health.
Increase employee awareness of national, provincial and Human Resources health and wellness-related resources and programs by:
- Create a hub of resources on the EWS webpage that highlights the national, provincial and EWS health and wellness programs available to employees.
Increase employee awareness of the mental health resources available through EFAP and the benefits’ provider by:
- Creating a hub of employee mental health resources available through benefits and EFAP providers.
Places
Desired Outcome:
Create and maintain inclusive, accessible, sustainable, and inspiring indoor, outdoor, and online places that promote learning, enhance social connections, advance active-living, and contribute to the overall personal, environmental and community wellbeing.
Create and sustain inclusive and accessible campus spaces by:
- Integrating the Wellness Lens Checklist into the creation or review of accessible and inclusive spaces on campus.
Promote indoor, outdoor, and on-line spaces to advance active living, enhance employee social connections, learning and contribute to personal, environmental and community well-being by:
- Creating an online interactive Places Map, highlighting places on campus for employees to enhance social connections and contribute to wellbeing.
- Develop a sticker program to recognize thriving spaces on campus.
Acknowledgements
The Employee Wellbeing Road Map is the result of contributions made from the Queen’s community, through both targeted stakeholder engagement and general consultations and we appreciate the commitment employees have demonstrated to further wellbeing on campus. We wish to acknowledge the leadership and significant contributions made by the Wellness Champions Advisory Committee.