Working with Employers
Partnerships with employers are an ideal way to raise awareness of stop smoking services among local communities. A number of large national employers have signed up to partnerships with Smokefree in the past and activities have included working with the local service to offer workplace support and training occupational health teams to make brief interventions and generate referrals.
In regional pilots in 2010 in the East of England and the North East, over 70 per cent of businesses contacted said they were interested in receiving more information about NHS support (R&M sectors with 50+ employees). This indicates that staff health improvement remains high on the agenda.
In a local pilot with Swindon PCT in 2011, Royal Mail was approached to trial workplace support groups. In the recruitment events, 2% of the depot’s employees signed up for support with 91% of these going on to set a quit date. The groups achieved a 66% quit rate and opened up the potential for future activity with the business.
Developing relationships with large employers may take a number of weeks or months and is most likely to be successful if there is a dedicated member of the stop smoking team who can take ownership for building relationships with HR/health teams, arranging workplace sessions and refreshing display materials on an ongoing basis. If you search under ‘employers’ in resources, you’ll find case studies of successful partnerships between NHS services and local businesses.
In this section, you’ll find a range of materials for targeting employers, as well as display materials for staff. The templates can be adapted by designers to include local contact information.
