Oberstown has won Wellbeing Initiative of the Year at the Ibec KeepWell Awards 2020. The announcement was made on Tuesday 25 August at a virtual awards ceremony broadcast via live stream from the Mansion House in Dublin.

The Ibec KeepWell Awards celebrate companies who successfully implement corporate wellbeing strategies. The 28 finalists came from a range of sectors, including multinational organisations. Oberstown was featured as a shortlisted finalist in three categories:

• Best in Class: Mental Health
• Wellbeing Initiative of the Year
• Company of the Year: Large

As well as winning the headline Wellbeing Initiative of the Year Award, Oberstown was named as runner up in the Best in Class: Mental Health Award.

Oberstown recognises the link between health and wellbeing, staff engagement and organisational performance. Our strategic health and wellbeing framework, Working Well, was developed by Oberstown organisational psychologist, Cara Driscoll, and launched in early 2019.

Working Well features an in-house, onsite peer-to-peer support service for all employees. Oberstown staff members are trained in critical incident stress management, ensuring that they are in a position to support colleagues after an incident. This type of service for staff is almost unique in the care sector.

Oberstown has trained 90% of its peer support workers in mental health first aid for colleagues and is one of only two organisations in Ireland to train facilitators in suicide prevention and self-harm mitigation as a support for both its staff and young people.
Oberstown is committed to encouraging and supporting employees to develop and maintain healthy behaviours. We use the resources on Campus to promote a healthy working environment and initiatives such as smoking cessation, sun protection and daily exercise.

Ursula Kilkelly, Chairperson of Oberstown Board of Management commented: “Oberstown’s commitment to employee wellbeing is central to achieving our mission of providing the best possible care for young people. We see winning the Ibec KeepWell award as highly welcome external validation of the progress being made in this core element of the Oberstown culture.”

Director of Oberstown Pat Bergin added: “Winning this Ibec KeepWell award underlines how staff in every part of Oberstown are embracing and implementing the Working Well framework devised and led by Cara Driscoll, our occupational psychologist. Every member of staff benefits from and contributes to our strategic approach to health and wellbeing, and this is a key factor in our work with the young people in our care. To have this recognised by Ibec alongside leading organisations is a massive achievement that makes us proud and at the same time spurs us on to achieve more.”

See the full list of Ibec KeepWell Award winners here.