Health and wellbeing check-ins, also known as health and wellbeing conversations, were introduced by NHS England and are essentially a pretty informal chat between a line manager and colleague around your wellbeing.

For colleagues, check-ins create an opportunity to raise any work or personal concerns, helping boost your line manager’s awareness of your wellbeing needs at any given time. For line managers, conversations act as useful prompts to consider what support is available from the organisation that you could be signposted to; the proactive measures that can be taken to help keep you well at work; and get a better understanding of what things might look like for you when things aren’t so good.

Check-ins should be designed as a relaxed and casual opportunity to chat. They might even be part of a wider conversation like during a one-to-one, and are really there to ensure you’re taking care of yourself and that you feel supported by the Trust. They must happen at least annually, and ideally should happen much more regularly.

Health and wellbeing check-ins must take place at least annually. That said, there is no bad time to have a check-in and as they’re pretty informal and natural conversations around how you’re doing, they really should occur quite regularly. Rather than their own designated meeting, they might form part of another discussion – like a 1-to-1 for example.

Line managers should generally initiate a check-in, but really check-ins are more about ensuring you’re well and well-supported – so they can really be initiated by yourself or your line manager. For example, if you wanted to download a Wellness Action Plan or Wellbeing Plan and ask your manager to work through this with you, there’s certainly no harm in doing so.

There is a checklist box in your annual appraisal which asks if you have had an health and wellbeing chat within the past 12 months. With this in mind, managers should be discussing your wellbeing with you at least annually in any instance.

Due to the informal nature of check-ins, we recognise that where some managers might see a certain discussion as a check-in, our colleagues might see it as a normal conversation. Please bear the informality of a check-in in mind when considering if you have had one in the past twelve months.

Equally, managers may wish to consider how they make it more apparent that a conversation constitutes a check-in. This might involve following up on a conversation and touching on the previous “check-in”, to create a mutual understanding in a natural manner – or by using tools like the Wellbeing Action Plan or Wellbeing Plan to create more tangible outputs.

Check-ins are recorded through annual appraisal documentation, in which you’re asked if you’ve had a health and wellbeing conversation in the previous 12 months. This data is uploaded to ESR, so we can analyse the data across the organisation and understand where they are not being conducted.

No personal nor information from a check-in is shared at any time, in any direction. The main purpose of a check-in is to ensure you have an opportunity to be supported around any particular issue. In that respect, your feedback is only really used for your line manager to identify how you can best be supported.

Absolutely. While we encourage everyone to have a check-in with their line manager to help build relationships and help them to understand your concerns and challenges so they can better support you, we understand this isn’t always possible or ideal. In the first instance, we advise you request a check-in with a more senior line manager from within your area.

Alternatively, you might wish to contact a Mental Health First Aider, who are skilled in signposting and listening.

Of course. Please get in touch on [email protected].