On the eve of World Mental Health Day, a new industry guide is putting wellbeing firmly in the spotlight.

The Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) in partnership with Mott MacDonald and International SOS has launched Managing Wellbeing Risk – A Practical Guide for the Engineering Consultancy Sector.

The guide has been created to help consultants in a bid, project or line manager role to think about wellbeing risks throughout a project’s life cycle and put effective, evidence-based controls in place.

Written in collaboration with both external and ACE member wellbeing experts, human resources specialists as well as health and safety leaders, the guide shares a variety of best practice case studies and offers a framework for raising safety and wellbeing standards.

From work/life balance and workload demands to social factors, project delivery and the environment we work in – the publication is a comprehensive guide to wellbeing within the sector.

Its publication comes just over a year since industry came together to pool ideas on the topic at the Wellbeing Risk: Setting The Industry Standard event in London last September, organised by ACE, Mott MacDonald and International SOS.

Laura Hague, chair of ACE’s Health and Safety Group and group safety manager at Mott MacDonald, has been part of the team responsible for creating the guide.

Today she presented an overview of the guide’s contents to guests attending the guidance launch webinar.

“With health and safety there’s a very traditional route to identifying risk and managing risk through risk assessment – wellbeing can be a lot more difficult to define,” she said. “The boundaries are not as obvious.

“The challenges of working on complex projects to high client expectations, often against stringent timelines, in today’s modern world of work, can place pressure on project teams.

“We need to be more proactive and more preventative. If we take an approach like safety and identify the risk upfront we can then look to manage it – and it is easier to do that collectively as an industry."

At last year’s Wellbeing Risk event – which featured guest speakers including Olympic swim champion Rebecca Adlington – companies came together to look at key challenges and share ideas and opportunities to help shape the content of the guide.

“Wellbeing is a complex subject,” added Hague, “there’s a lot of different strands that interact and overlap – but our industry is also complex.

“There are things in the guide that anyone can do. From those as simple as managing out-of-hours working to much more complex subjects.

“The hope is people pick it up and use it as a practical guide – there are simple, small things that we can all do to improve wellbeing.”

This year marks 50 years since the Health and Safety at Work Act was introduced. In terms of where the act will go next, many see wellbeing as an increasingly important topic for industry to tackle – especially in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

“An employer’s obligation now isn’t just to provide a physically safe place to work, but one that’s safe in terms of emotional resilience - and that contract of trust that should be there,” added Hague.

“If it’s not, it really does impact that psychosocial risk profile. So I think wellbeing is really, really important - and it’s not going to go away.”

Kate Jennings, chief executive officer at the Association for Consultancy and Engineering, opened today’s webinar launch and said: “The establishment of a wellbeing guidance demonstrates our members’ commitment to ethical business practices and social responsibility.

“Adoption of the guidance will support organisations in our sector to stay compliant with regulations, attract top talent, and enhance their reputation as employers that genuinely value their workforce.”

Co-sponsor of the guidance and launch, International SOS, has also welcomed its publication.

Rodrigo Rodgriguez Fernandes, medical director at International SOS, added: “This guide is a much-needed resource for the sector. It provides actionable strategies that can help companies of any size create healthier work environments that prioritise mental wellbeing.

“Sharing best practices within the industry is a powerful tool for raising standards and supporting employees.”

World Mental Health Day is celebrated every year on 10 October.

This year’s theme, set by the World Federation of Mental Health, is workplace mental health - highlighting the importance of addressing mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, for the benefit of people, organisations and communities.

Hague added: “One of the things that gave me the confidence to do this was the ACE Health and Safety Group – everyone is very open and honest. That gave me confidence that industry would work together and share.

“It’s great that the sector has come together to shine a spotlight on best practice.

“This guide will help to identify potential wellbeing risks from the offset and enable response to wellbeing challenges in a timely and effective manner.

“Our aim is to foster healthy workplace cultures with more engagement on wellbeing leading to positive morale and higher productivity for all working in our sector.”

For your copy of the guide click here