Healthy Heads for an industry under pressure

Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds is reshaping the way the transport and logistics sector thinks about mental health, with more and more businesses in the industry utilising its ‘roadmap’ to help promote the health and wellbeing of their workers. 

Speaking at the ATA’s recent Trucking Australia 22 conference on the Gold Coast, the CEO of Healthy Heads, Naomi Frauenfelder, reminded delegates of a grim statistic regarding our industry. 

“We’ve got some pretty severe risk factors in our sector,” she said. 

“Postal, road transport and warehousing is ranked 19th out of 19 sectors for being mentally healthy, so literally the worst, and that’s because of many psycho-social risk factors.” 

Those factors span shift work, the isolation and disconnection of being on the road, and fatigue, among others, while many trucking businesses are also subject to contact work and myriad financial pressures. And that was all before the additional stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, and major natural disasters including bush fires and floods. 

But after launching in August 2020, Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds has gained serious momentum, both attracting sponsorship and support from key industry players, and rolling out not only a roadmap to help trucking businesses adopt their own health and wellbeing programs, but numerous other initiatives to get more people talking about mental health. 

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Upstream initiative 

Ms Frauenfelder said the Healthy Heads mission focused more on preventative measures to keep people well, resilient and robust, thereby heading off mental health issues before they occur. 

“We worked with organisational psychologists who developed the roadmap in line with the Safe Work Australia guidance around prevention, protection and support,” she said. 

“There’s long been a lot of emphasis on people who become mentally unwell and how we can support them, but this is more upstream – how do you catch people before that happens, and what can you do in the workplace to try and prevent people becoming mentally unwell in the first place?” 

In addition to the Healthy Heads roadmap and all the resources it provides for businesses seeking to improve their own workplace mental health culture, the organisation has also produced a smartphone app, and is working with partner BP to promote the importance of nutrition and making healthier meal choices. 

The body headed out on the road recently with its inaugural Healthy Heads roadshow, courtesy of a custom-kitted DAF truck provided by PACCAR Australia, and has also partnered with national suicide prevention initiative R U OK? to deliver the first ‘R U OK? in Trucks & Sheds’ day, on May 17. The day asks workers in the transport and logistics sector to check in with a colleague who may be struggling.

COVID catalyst 

According to Kate Sykes, Employee Engagement and Project Officer, PACCAR Australia, the Healthy Heads roadmap has been pivotal in challenging PACCAR’s approach to employee safety, health, and wellbeing. 

“COVID changed the landscape completely,” Ms Skyes told Trucking Australia 22 delegates. 

“We [PACCAR Australia] have a proactive approach to physical safety and physical health … but wellbeing hasn’t always been top of mind.” 

Ms Sykes said that in crafting a framework to support PACCAR’s people, finding the Healthy Heads roadmap was a “Eureka moment”. 

“It brings absolutely everything that I’ve read about organisational psychology, health and wellbeing, nutrition, and physical health and safety, into one integrated plan that is broken down into seven workplace strategies, supported by a framework of prevention, protection and support,” she said. 

PACCAR Australia then overlaid its existing programs with the Healthy Heads roadmap to produce the firm’s ‘Thrive’ framework, which delivers a holistic approach that encompasses workplace safety, physical health and mental health. 

PACCAR Australia then expanded on its existing Employee Assistance Program (EAP), rolling out on-site face-to-face counselling sessions with a psychologist at its Baywater plant and Laverton branch. It adopted a corporate fitness challenge based upon the ‘Steptember’ initiative, encouraging friendly competition between teams of employees to tally as many steps as possible within a set period, also highlighting the strong positive impact physical health can have on mental health. 

A series of webinars were offered to staff dealing with topics such as burnout, sleep, nutrition, and the importance of taking annual leave, while mental health first aid training was offered alongside traditional first aid training. 

“When people at work are physically and mentally healthy, they feel happy, they feel engaged and supported, their output is higher and they take fewer risks,” Ms Sykes said. 

“So, while we wanted to do the right thing by our people because that’s what we like to do, it actually makes brilliant sense to embed these sorts of things within an organisation. 

“You don’t need to be a big organisation to work through this [the Healthy Heads roadmap]. It’s so simple. It’s backed by science, and anything you can implement as a consequence of the roadmap is going to make huge inroads for your business and for your people’s health and wellbeing.” 

Checklist for change 

Toll Group is a foundation sponsor of Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds, and it too has made numerous changes to better support its staff, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

According to Peter Stokes, President Global Logistics, Toll Group, the Healthy Heads roadmap has served as a great checklist to ensure it has covered all the bases and help identify any gaps. 

The freight and logistics giant has moved its EAP from an annual subscription model to a pay-per-use model with Connect Psyche Services, offering staff easy engagement with a program that gives them up to 10 counselling sessions, instead of the usual one or two. 

The company is a big supporter of R U OK? Day and has also embraced R U OK? in Trucks & Sheds, while it’s achieved Gold Level certification for its mental health first aid training. 

Much more to do 

Through the pandemic, mental health has also come to the fore for Australia Post, which employs 66,000 people. Paul Graham, CEO and Managing Director of Australia and Chair of Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds, urged the transport and logistics sector to step up. 

“If our industry had challenges before, it’s got even great challenges now,” he said, in reference to the difficult times experienced by the freight sector in recent years. 

“We know that as an industry we can and must do better to look after our mental health and the wellbeing of our people. Historically, the industry has been a poor performer, but we are seeing improvements. 

“Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds is focused on our industry, nothing else. Its overarching aim is to build a psychologically safe, healthy and thriving work environment for all our people ... by facilitating and co-ordinating industry-wide strategy for best practice psychological safety, wellbeing, and physical health. 

“The foundation endeavours to support all operators nationally regardless of size and scale. This is not a corporate foundation. This is a foundation for everybody in the industry. So please, I encourage you to join the foundation. 

“Talk about mental health and wellbeing, make it part of your daily routine … It’s time to put our words into action to work together to protect and support the people that really keep this nation moving.”