Edinburgh Airport – Winner 2020 – Scottish Top Employers Awards (Health and Wellbeing)
Edinburgh Airport is Scotland’s busiest airport ensuring thousands of passengers reach their destinations each day safely and with the best customer experience.
Employees at Edinburgh Airport are working in a fast-paced environment on a daily basis which can be stressful. Creating a positive working culture which includes being proactive about managing mental health and wellbeing is a key strategic priority for the airport. The leadership team recognise that good mental health is integral to the performance of a service organisation like the airport. They want to ensure they are doing everything possible to look after employee mental health and have invested in a wide range of support services including; training, counselling, massage, mindfulness sessions, physiotherapy, podiatry and coaching on a range of topics from personal resilience to financial awareness.
Providing mental health and wellbeing support for employees helps people to be their best at work. Edinburgh Airport has taken a proactive approach to providing this support and the business is benefiting with reduced staff turnover and a decrease in stress related absence. The aim is to ensure that all staff are aware of the support that is available to them and know they will be supported if they experience a problem in their personal or work life.
Winning insights
- Our level of absence related to mental ill health has reduced by 10% in the last 2 years.
- Regularly match occupational health initiatives to national campaigns with monthly topics and engagement plans.
- Employee absence at Edinburgh Airport remains below 3% per annum
- Provide Mental Health First Aid and Mindfulness training courses regularly throughout the year
- Target zero employees leave the business due to lack of support for mental ill health
- 38.7% of occupational health referrals in 2019 related to mental health concerns, compared to 25.4% in 2018
- Ensuring services are properly utilised by employees is seen as a positive step for the organisation as this demonstrates raised awareness
- Feedback from Occupational Health highlights excellent satisfaction levels across all employee services
- Ambitious annual targets for Mental Health First Aid and Mindfulness training
- Absence target is 3%. Over the past 4 years, the overall absence average has been 2.76%
- Integrated communications campaign reaching across all agencies highlighting how to access support mental health and wellbeing support for all employees
What their people say:
“Earlier this year I was unfortunate enough to experience quite severe mental health issues caused by work related stress and anxiety. From the minute I made occupational health aware I found myself in a support stream that was superbly organised and full of understanding people, experienced in helping those in my situation. This started with immediate contact with an in-house counsellor and sessions with an external psychologist where I was able to discuss my feelings in confidence and remote from the working environment. Contact was maintained with me during my period of absence and when I was ready to return to work, occupational health and HR guided me through this, without any pressure and at a pace that was comfortable for me so as not to cause me any setbacks. Now that I have returned to my full working hours, the contact with occupational health has continued and I know that if I ever require their support again, I will receive it with the same great professional standard of care and understanding”