How Reckitt Benckiser made wellbeing a prime mover for transformation.

How Reckitt Benckiser made wellbeing a prime mover for transformation.

Health, hygiene and home product manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser (RB) put employee wellbeing at the centre of its thinking to deliver a major global change programme to drive sustainable growth.

Keeping production facilities open and supplies still running, making sure staff jobs were protected, was a severe challenge for the business through 2020. Health, safety and wellbeing was made paramount across the global operations. The EAP service was extended to be available to all 37,000 employees wherever they worked.

Other resources provided included leader-led wellbeing podcasts, training and tips on working from home and how to maintain hygiene standards through the pandemic. Staff were given an extra two days’ holiday and extraordinary work was rewarded with special hampers. The Sir James Reckitt Award was introduced to recognise and celebrate employee work: the first award going to the team at an RB factory near Wuhan who kept disinfection production running through the first frightening weeks of lockdown in China.

Wellbeing benefits

RB has seen an uplift in engagement among staff, with an increased number of people taking part in the organisation’s survey, in those who recommended RB as a place to work and sense of pride of being an RB employee. Despite the pandemic operating and trading conditions, the net revenue increased by more than 8%; net income improved from a loss of £3.68 billion in 2019 to a gain of £1.19 billion in 2020.

In 2021, RB launched its £3.5 million global wellbeing programme to ensure that wellbeings stays at the heart of the company’s employee experience.This includes an online wellbeing hub and ongoing digital conversation platform.

Model-making

EAPA UK chair Eugene Farrell said: “Awareness of the importance of employee wellbeing to employer brand and workplace culture has been growing at pace over the past five years or more.

“But Covid-19 has brought about a step change. Not only in terms of wellbeing support as an attractive benefit but in the essential value of physical and psychological wellbeing to organisational performance, as the foundation to resilience for the future. The approach being taken by RB will provide useful lessons to many other employers.”