At Superdrug, we pride ourselves on being the very best in accessible beauty and health. We are passionate about what we do and we are committed to operating as a socially responsible business for our customers, staff and community.

We’ve always offered a great discount to colleagues on our own products and services, and we decided a couple of years ago that we could build on that and do more.

Headed up by our healthcare director Michael Henry, our wellbeing focus brought together a group of people from across the business to think about what else we could do.

The team did a full audit of rewards and benefits, services, training and culture.

We took inspiration from our competitors and sister companies. Three is part of our group and it has some great work going on around physical, mental and financial wellbeing, with initiatives such as Wellbeing Wednesday, which is incredibly popular.

“We want to give our teams the skills and confidence to help customers impacted by mental health problems”

We also took inspiration from our teams and asked them what we should focus on. We heard loud and clear that mental well-being should be the focus.

It’s not a surprise, nearly one in seven people experience mental health problems in the workplace and evidence suggests that nearly 13% of all sickness absence days in the UK can be attributed to mental health conditions. We’re also seeing a surge in violence against retail colleagues, reportedly up 25% compared with last year according to Usdaw.

In addition to this, we have stores in the majority of the government’s identified cold spots; people living in the lowest income brackets are two to three times as likely to have mental health problems.

As a value retailer, we have customers that fall into this bracket, and we want to give our teams the skills and confidence to help customers impacted by mental health problems. It all goes back to our vision of accessibility.

Offering support

Our teams wanted two things; to support their own mental wellbeing and that of others. We found that we had more and more managers having to manage situations they didn’t feel equipped to, not really knowing what to do or how to do it, it’s a tricky area.

We’ve looked at a few options from mental health first-aiders to group sessions and in the end have balanced what we do. We’re delivering face-to-face training to managers and online learning to the majority of our people.

Only when we started running the face-to-face sessions did we really appreciate how much it matters. We started with our senior leaders – a group of just over 30 directors and heads of department. The feedback was incredible and gave us licence to do more.

Apart from a general positivity around doing more we also saw some behaviour changes. One of our directors is now caffeine-free and sleeping better, we’ve had changes in attitude to working time and family time, and we’ve had people openly talking about challenges that they’ve had.

“A few years ago this stuff was on the ‘nice to do if you must’ end of the spectrum. Now it’s imperative. Our managers are asking for it and I think we all need it”

So why does this matter? I guess at a very basic level it improves productivity. Will we get more from someone who’s mentally well? Yes, of course, we will. Are they more likely to have a positive impact on their team? Yes, of course. Will they be an ambassador for our business and culture – I have no doubt.

Going back a few years, this stuff was all seen as a bit weak and probably on the ‘nice to do if you must’ end of the spectrum. Now it’s imperative. We are seeing more cases involving mental wellbeing and it’s not just a nice-to-have any more. Our managers are asking for it and I think we all need it.

There is of course much, much more to wellbeing than mental wellbeing and I know that we’re still at the beginning of our journey. I’m incredibly proud of where we’ve got to so far and I’m looking forward to doing more.

Joanne will be taking part in the panel How to put wellbeing at the top of your leadership agenda at Retail Week Live on March 25.

For more information about the event, which takes place on March 25-26, and to secure your tickets click here.