United Utilities named one of Britain’s healthiest workplaces

United Utilities has been named as one of Britain’s healthiest workplaces for 2018.

The North West water supplier which serves seven million customers across the region, was ranked as the third most improved large organisation with more than 1,000 employees.

The awards, developed by Vitality Health, incorporated data from 129 organisations and 26,432 employees.

Rebecca Eaton, health and wellbeing lead business partner at United Utilities, said: “The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees is vital to the success of our business.

“In 2015 we started participating in Britain’s Healthiest Workplace and throughout this period we have continually reviewed our approach.

“Helping employees quit smoking has had a fantastic success rate – far higher than the UK-wide average for the National Health Service’s stop smoking services.

“We also offer discounted gym membership, nutritional programmes and help to improve and support our colleagues’ mental health, which has included training mental health champions and first aiders.

“People are telling us that being able to talk about mental health has improved the workplace for them and being more open means that people are a lot more honest with us about why they need to take time off, which means we can do much more to offer support that’s effective.”

Now in its sixth year, Britain’s Healthiest Workplace aims to study the link between modifiable health risks and short-term productivity, develop a common understanding of what employee health and wellbeing means, and establish a common set of standards that can be applied to all industries.

Tideway was highly commended as a medium-sized company for the overall Britain’s Healthiest Workplace category. The company was also ranked as the most improved company for a workforce of between 250 and 999 employees.

Meanwhile SSE was named the healthiest new entrant among large companies.