In light of Mental Health Awareness Week 2025 (Monday 12th – Sunday 18th May), City West Country are highlighting their wellbeing strategy to emphasise the importance of employee mental health and wellness.
Putting employees first
City West Country is committed to making long-term investments in the health and happiness of its people. The organisation understands that when its employees thrive, the business thrives with them. With mental health challenges affecting one in four people each year—and those figures continuing to rise—it’s clear that mental wellbeing is not a peripheral concern, but a vital part of everyday life. The organisation saw this reflected internally, with a steady year-on-year increase in mental health-related absences and recognised that access to support and education wasn’t as straightforward or effective as it should be.
In 2024, City West Country launched its dedicated wellbeing strategy—not only to address these growing challenges, but also to enhance the overall employee experience and build a more supportive, sustainable workplace. The strategy aims to make support more accessible and to foster a culture where wellbeing is consistently prioritised and openly discussed.
The wellbeing strategy
To mark the launch, the initiative kicked off with a roadshow across all City West Country sites throughout the South West. Led by the HR team, the roadshow introduced employees to the core commitments of the wellbeing strategy and highlighted the tangible actions being taken to support individual wellbeing. Since the strategy’s implementation, several key initiatives have been rolled out, including:
- Tripling the number of fully-trained Mental Health First Aiders available throughout City West Country
- Mental health training provided by Recovery Devon, a local charity, to all middle and senior management as well as City West Country’s Aspiring Managers
- Financial wellbeing drop-in sessions with local businesses, such as The Mortgage Quarter
- Financial support loans available to all employees
- Enhanced family-friendly policies
- Interactive wellbeing calendar including monthly information, resources, and competitions
- A quarterly wellbeing newsletter with a wealth of updates on the strategy, educational resources, and support mechanisms
- Weekly on-site presence from the Human Resources team at every location ensures all employees have direct and consistent access to support.
These benefits have joined a number of wellbeing initiatives already in place, such as our Employee Assistance Programme offering talking therapy, discounted gym memberships, and more, as well as dedicated one-to-ones for each member of staff from their manager, and their bi-annual Best Companies B Heard survey to give our employees the opportunity to anonymously submit feedback on every aspect of their experience at work. This allows us to consistently review and improve upon our methods to ensure maximum employee satisfaction.
Positive results
Since the implementation of the strategy, City West Country and their employees have seen increasingly positive results:
- Employee Engagement Excellence: City West Country has proudly maintained a Best Companies 2-star employee engagement accreditation in both 2024 and 2025—reflecting an ‘outstanding’ level of workplace engagement, the second-highest standard awarded.
- Stronger Management Support: Year-on-year improvements in management capability results demonstrate the company’s ongoing investment in leadership development and the quality of support available to employees.
- Mental Health related absences: a significant decrease in sickness-related absence hours, with a 37.88% reduction in mental health-related absences in 2024 versus 2023.
- Inclusive Training for all: Mandatory training has been introduced for all employees on key topics such as diversity and equality, menopause awareness, and unconscious bias—reinforcing City West Country’s commitment to building a truly diverse, inclusive, and informed workforce.
Richard Syree, Head of Human Resources, said: “As a family-run business, it is of absolute importance to us that our employees are happy and healthy. We are incredibly proud to be able to introduce a dedicated strategy to ensure each and every one of our colleagues have multiple wellbeing options available to them. A happy team leads to a productive team, meaning our strategy is a win-win for both our employees and our business. We will continue to monitor our methods to make sure we are consistently doing the best that we can for our teams.”