All that Glitters is Gold as College achieves Corporate Health Standard

Coleg y Cymoedd has been granted a gold award in Health Standards for work encouraging staff wellbeing.

The college has been revalidated with the coveted Corporate Health Standard Gold Award following a reassessment day on 16th April 2015.

The award is given to organisations who demonstrate a strong commitment to the health and wellbeing of their employees and both legacy Colleges, Morgannwg and Ystrad Mynach, had achieved the Platinum and Gold levels of the award respectively pre-merger.

The reassessment consisted of visits at Nantgarw and Ystrad Mynach campuses, a meeting with the Principal and a meeting with the Health and Wellbeing Group who gave a detailed presentation explaining what the College is doing to promote and encourage staff wellbeing.

Prior to the assessment the college undertook a lot of work behind the scenes in order to evidence the organisational commitment to staff using various means such as policy development, Health & Safety and travel planning and various wellbeing initiatives. These initiatives include a Cycle to Work scheme, Childcare Vouchers, provisions for healthy eating in catering facilities, on site gyms and discounted leisure membership.

Many strengths were highlighted as part of the positive feedback from the assessors including effective communication, the recognition by senior management of the importance of staff wellbeing, implementation of flexible and equitable policies and procedures, staff performance reviews, mental health promotion, tobacco/smoking policy, alcohol and substance misuse, exercise and nutrition as well as excellent on site gym facilities.

Commenting on the success of the award, David Spencer, Human Resources Officer said: “On behalf of the College, I am very proud to receive the Gold Award. I would like to thank everyone involved for their hard work and expertise throughout not only this revalidation process but during the past twenty months or so that I have been leading on the wellbeing programme.”

“I think it is important to recognise those who were involved in the Health and Wellbeing initiatives in both the former Colleges as without their previous hard work embedding a lot of these initiatives this award would have undoubtedly been a lot harder to achieve. We will now look forward to achieving the Platinum award next year.”

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