Healthy Families Far North | What is workplace wellbeing?

It is a complex combination of physical, mental, emotional and social health factors critically to be aligned in the workplace.

We spend a lot of our time at mahi/work. So how can we look after ourselves and others while at mahi, and why are workplace wellbeing policies such a worthy investment for our kaimahi/staff?

These are the questions that the Healthy Families Far North team took to their lead provider, Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa (TRoW) staff, in beginning a co-design process to introduce wellness/wellbeing policies to be introduced.

We started by facilitating co-design workshops with team members from TRoW to explore what wellbeing wellness could look like. Completed empathy-building and design thinking activities, leading to wellbeing and wellness initiatives pathways developed. We then used these information pathways as the base for workshops where staff designed, teamed, tested, and refined the initiatives, insights, and learnings.

We have now completed the recent 3rd workshop with a group of core staff, brainstorming prototypes that will help TRoW develop final wellbeing initiatives and policies, from prototype findings now being investigated

We acknowledge that TRoW sits within an exciting space to develop wellbeing initiatives that could be more holistic to cater to its staff and Te Ao Māori or the Māori Worldview. As we cannot easily divide aspects of a person’s life from another – we can’t tackle wellbeing at work without also thinking about wellbeing at home, and vice versa.

 A workplace that considers the whole person provides support for all aspects of wellbeing. People bring their whole selves to work. We cannot easily divide one element of a person’s life from another – we can’t tackle wellbeing at work without also thinking about wellbeing at home, and vice versa.

The model Te Whare Tapa Whā developed by Sir Professor Mason Durie describes our health wellbeing as a wharenui or meeting house with four walls. These represent taha wairua (spirituality), taha hinengaro (mental wellbeing), taha tinana (physical health) and taha whānau (social relationships), and with the whenua (land) forms the foundation. All four walls are needed, must be in balance, for the house to be strong, if we liken this to our workplace then the same applies.