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Our mission is to empower Kiwis to live their healthiest lives. Every day we challenge ourselves to set new and higher standards in everything we do and continually look for innovative ways to deliver even better service and value for over 850,000 Members. Our People & Strategy team has a key role in achieving the Society’s vision and focuses set out in our 2023 business plan and we believe innovation needs to start with us! We’ve invested in establishing a diverse People & Strategy team covering people & culture, strategy, communications, transformation and workplace. We believe this is a unique model in New Zealand that gives us the breadth to both influence and execute – from internal communications (how we talk to our people) to employee experience (the voice of our employees) to our built environment (the workspaces we create for people to function at their best) to governance of our strategic priorities, the target operating model for the Society and our people facing programmes.
We created ‘Mission Control’ to provide an enterprise wide view of all the strategic programmes, key outcomes and capabilities, and create transparency and cohesion on how the Society is tracking to collectively contribute to reaching our 2023 destination. Mission Control includes a highly interactive approach where the leaders in the business doing the work stand up on a fortnightly basis and have a conversation with our people about how things are going. It feels very different from a conventional ‘programme office’ approach and we get great feedback from our people on the experience. We also believe we are a pioneer in New Zealand in the employee wellbeing space. We are very proud to have developed our hugely successful and longstanding wellbeing initiative, Switch2Well, which encourages and rewards our people for living a balanced and healthy lifestyle. Switch2Well isn’t a bolted-on programme; it’s part of our DNA. We care about creating and maintaining a healthy culture. Our data shows Switch2Well has led to increased engagement, employee retention and a positive correlation between health and reduced absenteeism. In the past decade, the programme has evolved from a focus on physical health to a more holistic approach. Today, Switch2Well offers a wide range of opportunities and options for our people to get involved in healthier lifestyle choices, from mental wellbeing and financial literacy seminars to sustainability and community support activities. Most recently, we introduced flexi-leave and flexi-work policies. Individuals can track their personal health and design a programme to meet their current needs while earning points for participation. These points are accumulated towards a day of paid wellbeing leave, among other benefits. Last year, Switch2Well’s success inspired us to launch BeingWell, a workplace wellbeing programme for New Zealand businesses. BeingWell is an integrated, personalised workplace wellbeing programme that’s customisable, online and tailored to the health and well