Halfway milestone reached on sustainable workplace wellbeing in action

CEIH and WCHN have been work­ing togeth­er to deliv­er a ground­break­ing research part­ner­ship project, imple­ment­ing our evi­dence-based frame­work to build sus­tain­able organ­i­sa­tion­al work­place wellbeing. 

https://​ceih​.sa​.gov​.au/​a​s​s​e​t​s​/​l​i​b​r​a​r​y​/​B​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​-​W​o​r​k​p​l​a​c​e​-​W​e​l​l​b​e​i​n​g.pdf

The project has now met with over 240 WCHN staff across two clin­i­cal divi­sions to iden­ti­fy the key work-relat­ed fac­tors affect­ing well­be­ing and our ground up approach has received pos­i­tive feed­back and engage­ment from staff involved in the process and local leadership. 

One of the key prin­ci­ples of our best prac­tice-based mod­el is the util­i­sa­tion of co-design in lead­ing team lev­el action. At the CEIH we believe that change and improve­ments start with lis­ten­ing. This pro­vides access to rich insights into the dri­ving fac­tors influ­enc­ing work­er and work­place well­be­ing with­in an organ­i­sa­tion. We have been able to uncov­er these insights by con­duct­ing ​“Ask and Lis­ten” ses­sions as described in our guide. From here preva­lent themes are iden­ti­fied and cat­e­gorised as ​“peb­bles”, ​“rocks” and ​“boul­ders” before we move to Step 7 of our approach, to engage staff in redesign­ing the sys­tems, process­es and activ­i­ties of work that impact their well­be­ing. Sub­ject mat­ter experts and staff work togeth­er through a struc­tured co-design process to cre­ate inno­v­a­tive solu­tions that are fit for pur­pose with­in the local con­text. Co-design is a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry process with its prin­ci­ples ground­ed in cham­pi­oning team­work, demon­strat­ing respect, equi­ty of input and opin­ions and being out­comes focused. 

At WCHN, through the co-design process, staff in one divi­sion have already cre­at­ed a num­ber of inno­v­a­tive solu­tions aimed at improv­ing the expe­ri­ence of work and reduc­ing the risk of burnout. The research team is work­ing close­ly with divi­sion­al lead­ers and oth­er key stake­hold­ers to pri­ori­tise and progress these actions. In Decem­ber 2025, we plan to repeat the ​“Lead­ing EAST” project staff sur­vey and busi­ness data to mea­sure the impact of the solutions. 

The part­ner­ship project is now past the halfway point as we work close­ly to embed the ground up work­place well­be­ing approach as a new way of work­ing and look for­ward to engag­ing with the next group of WCHN staff in this next phase of the project to cre­ate inno­v­a­tive work design opportunities. 

To find out more about the project check out our project page.