A series of “inspiring and impressive” initiatives to support staff development has led to a Cornish college receiving a Healthy Workplace Gold Award for the second consecutive year.

Truro and Penwith College is delighted to achieve the recognition from Workplace Health, which is a county standard of good practice and a quality mark of health and wellbeing in the workplace. The award has ten key elements in which there are currently 137 criteria of good practice, including mental wellbeing, health and safety, recruitment, retention and return to work and physical activity including active travel.

The workplace health assessor visited the college and met with several staff, along with Jane Cashmore, director of operations and the personnel team. They commended the college on its ‘inspiring and impressive’ initiatives, before confirming that, “It is clear that staff health and wellbeing is important at the college and meeting you all reflected the impact of what looking after and valuing the health and wellbeing of staff can achieve.”

Overall they felt the college was “a great example of a company supporting the mental and physical health and wellbeing of staff with more exciting plans ahead.”

Rebecca Smith, who coordinates the Workplace Health award programme at the college, said: “This is a fantastic achievement for the college and a great accolade for the staff who help contribute to the services we provide or benefit from the initiatives on offer. These include providing a pleasant and safe place to work, supporting staff back in to work, providing great staff development opportunities, along with many free physical activities and events regularly organised by our successful health wellbeing and sport team. This award exemplifies the impressive culture of support we have here at the College.”

The award will officially be presented to the college at the Royal Cornwall Showground later this month by Professor Dame Carol Back, Department of Health’s expert advisor.

Future plans for the college include a back pain prevention workshop on staff development days, in-house health screenings for staff by its university students, and further events from the health, wellbeing and sport team, which will all hopefully enhance the working lives of college staff and help contribute to a happy and healthy 2016.