Lake District Estates

Lake District Estates joined Being Well Together's Workplace Wellbeing Programme to create, implement, and maintain an integrated wellbeing strategy.

Lake District Estates is a family-owned business based in the Lake District. They have holiday parks in the Lake District and Kirkby Lonsdale, and a marina in Lancashire. They also own some of the Lake District's top visitor attractions, including the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway, Ullswater 'Steamers', and both Peter Rabbit and Friends™ and ‘The Veg Patch’ shops. Additionally, they manage a portfolio of residential and commercial properties, and have a growing collection of holiday homes for sale.

Their vision is to create special experiences and memories for their visitors, using the outstanding natural surroundings in and around the Lake District.

In 2023 Lake District Estates identified that wellbeing wasn’t a topic of conversation at any level throughout their organisation and contacted British Safety Council’s Being Well Together team, to discuss becoming a Being Well Together Supporter. They undertook a 3-year programme, to create, implement, and maintain a wellbeing strategy to help ensure that their 200 employees were supported with an integrated wellbeing programme, that mental health and wellbeing was prioritised by the business, and more employees engaged in their wellbeing provisions.

Following their free consultation, Lake District Estates and Being Well Together assessed their health, safety and wellbeing requirements and discussed where they wanted their programme to go. Working together with British Safety Council, the Human Resources and Health & Safety teams took time to understand the gaps and explored the most effective measures to create Lake District Estates’ first wellbeing strategy.

One of the benchmarking activities was carrying out an employee wellbeing survey, which helped Lake District Estates to clearly identify areas to address. On the back of the survey results they launched a company intranet aimed at:

• Improving the sense of togetherness across all sites within the company
• Bringing important documents and policies together in a centralised location to improve accessibility and reduce repetitive enquiries, freeing up staff time.
• Improving communication between sites.
• Improving morale by highlighting individual or team achievements.
• Providing employees with wellbeing resources and information that can be accessed 24/7.

One of the unique elements of the Being Well Together Programme is that the right solution is tailored for each individual organisation: there is never a one-size-fits-all solution to wellbeing in the workplace.

Bethanie West, said, “Prior to working with Being Well Together, there was no real structure to our plans, but we have been supported to create a strategy and develop a more positive wellbeing culture in the organisation. Being Well Together have provided advice and guidance as we launched our company intranet in response to the results of our Wellbeing survey. We have also been supported by our account manager to ensure our survey results were fully understood. The insight from a professional helped us get perspective of the results and focused us on where to make improvements.”

“The support of Being Well Together has given us the confidence to start more conversations around mental health and wellbeing, something that we previously would have struggled to navigate.”

Another benefit to Lake District Estates being a Being Well Together Supporter is that the Being Well Together team has provided additional resources and have assisted Lake District Estates’ HR team in supporting employees to deal with more complex matters relating to wellbeing.

The hands-on approach and support that the Being Well Together team provides is unique for each Supporter, and tailored to each set of problems, no matter how complex.

Being Well Together’s expertise supports organisations every step of the way. Dedicated Support Managers help interpret findings, access research, resources and campaign materials, as well as signpost reputable sources and understand best practice. This has been proven to save time, provide assurance and, above all, enable organisations to get the most effective results from their investment.

The consultative approach of the programme allows Being Well Together to act as a ‘trusted partner.

In addition, Bethanie, says, “Through working with Being Well Together and developing our wellbeing strategy, wellbeing has become a larger priority within the company - allowing it to be further integrated into positions such as my own [People and Support Services Coordinator]. Personally, my role changed - through working with Being Well Together and becoming more involved in wellbeing, I identified the direction I wanted my career to go in and I have been lucky enough to have been supported in making that a reality.”