We do that in three key ways:
- Put safety first to prevent physical and mental harm and mitigate consequences – a safe, healthy and well workforce
- Compliance – Managing occupation health risks on physical and mental health
- Promoting good mental health and physical wellbeing in a healthy workplace
The nature of our work has the potential to expose us to conditions that could harm our health. From noise and vibration to ergonomics and lifting, we continually invest in programmes and controls that mitigate these risks. Our occupational health providers conduct a full range of statutory surveillance medicals to look for any early signs of occupational disease and to meet legal and regulatory compliance obligations.
The leading causes of illness are noise induced hearing loss, work-related upper limb disorders and mental health stress. This reflects our global risk profile and provides the focus for our health improvement activities and implementation of early and targeted interventions to improve or prevent adverse health outcomes. In 2024, we continued support to our colleagues with information and resources on menopause – running a menopause café and expert panel on menopause updates and work with our Chief Medical Officer and a consultant specialist in menopause and womens health.
We have an internal health worksite scheme we call LiveWell. This award programme recognises sites that have taken steps towards creating supportive work environments where healthy choices are encouraged and rewarded. Sites are required to meet a stringent set of requirements to be accredited.
Wellbeing
We take a holistic approach to wellbeing to support our people to thrive both personally and professionally, including physical, emotional, social and financial wellbeing.
Our approach involves fostering a workplace culture that prioritises the wellbeing of our people, including work-life balance, mental health and creating a psychologically safe workplace.
By providing resources, programmes, and a supportive infrastructure, we aim to empower our people to prioritise their health and wellbeing and create a working environment where everyone can be at their best. Our virtual wellbeing site contains tools and resources to help support our people’s health and wellbeing. These wellbeing resources form a key part of our LiveWell programme.
Our LiveWell Framework
When we live well, were able to be at our best. That’s why caring for the health and wellbeing of our people is essential to our success.
LiveWell brings our wellbeing strategy to life locally. Our goal is to create workplaces and teams where our health and wellbeing can thrive.
Our LiveWell programme is our global, evidence-based approach to improving the wellbeing of our people. Our accreditation scheme helps our workplaces understand where they are today, and how they can make tangible improvements to support the wellbeing of our people. The accreditation programmes span across four levels from Bronze through to Platinum, our ambition is for all of our workplaces to reach Silver accreditation by 2026.
Healthy mind, healthy body and healthy workplace are all key components of our LiveWell programme, encompassing topics such as mental health, financial wellbeing, workplace culture, nutrition, leadership support, physical activity, our community, and healthy behaviour change.
The programme is for our people, by our people. It enables our global workplaces to tailor their wellbeing approach to the requirements of their workplace and employees. This creates autonomy and flexibility in workplace wellbeing approaches, supporting improved engagement and participation in wellbeing initiatives.
Our LiveWell framework spans 82 workplaces globally across 21 different countries and over 100 new resources including toolbox talks, engagement activities, posters, nudges and resources.
Mental Health at Rolls-Royce
Mental health considerations is a core part of our approach to wellbeing and is integrated within our LiveWell programme under healthy mind. LiveWell supports people to make informed decisions that can improve both their mental and physical wellbeing, and the wellbeing of others. It empowers teams and individuals to set data-based goals and focused actions on removing barriers to health and wellbeing. A mandatory element of our LiveWell programme’ s bronze accreditation level is the completion and regular review of workplace pressure risk assessments. Our workplace pressure risk assessment tool supports our people leaders to manage and mitigate risks in the workplace which may prevent our people from being at their best. This allows people leaders, and teams, to assess workplace pressures and identify team level actions that can be made to better manage workplace pressures and reduce potential mental health impacts. As part of the updated mental health approach – this will be enhanced with a more detailed risk-based tool to identify the key drivers of poor mental health at work.
We take a holistic and systemic approach to mental health ensuring the safety and effectiveness of our initiatives through evidence-based interventions. We recognise the connection between work and mental health across different colleague groups, including early careers and apprenticeships, progression, and flexible working. Understanding our brains as a tool for safety is fundamental, as mental health directly impacts our safety at work. We provide tools and resources to support mental, physical and financial wellbeing through our internal wellbeing site and run events year-round.
Rolls Royce is dedicated to integrating ISO 45003 principles, ensuring the prevention of work-related injury and ill-health, and promoting positive mental health throughout the workplace. We recognise that fair pay and financial security, as well as leadership support and psychological safety and workplaces free from harm are important to colleague mental health. Our global mandatory learning programme includes training on psychological safety in the workplace, supporting our people leaders to develop a psychologically safe working environment with their teams. It emphasizes the critical role of leaders in fostering safe working environments by increasing understanding of mental health and equipping people to feel safe and healthy and perform at their best. Last year, we extended this principle to the impact psychological safety and mental health can have on colleagues – with our Chief Medical Officer leading a global safety moment on mental health.
A main Board director has responsibility for HS&E and the CEO and Board receives regular reports on progress. A Board Safety and Ethics Committee oversees the operation of all HS&E, Product Safety and Security policies, practices and procedures for the Group. Our HSE Mental health remains a key focus and it is identified as a risk on our HSE risk profiles, with regular reporting to the Executive Team on related absence trends and support service uptake.
In 2024, we also conducted a gap analysis with external specialists against the ISO 45003 standard for psychological health and safety and information from this will help to shape our future work in managing workplace mental health risks.
Leaders play a critical role in managing and supporting good mental health at work and we make mental health training a requirement for our leadership roles. Our global mental health champion network, a group of trained volunteers offering guidance and support, grew by 18% to 855 champions across 13 countries. We continue to expand this network, sharing best practices and providing new toolkits to help champions and leaders connect colleagues with support resources.
Our ambition is to create inclusive and supportive working environments where people can talk freely and opening about wellbeing including mental health and are confident in seeking any support they need.
In addition to consulting with workers through our mental health champion network, we regularly attend employee forums - where we have worked collaboratively on refining mental health pathways and workplace assessments for neurodiversity for colleagues in the UK.
We also meet with our UK and German works councils and our trades unions in the UK - where we have been engaging around the topics of stress risk assessment and neurodiversity support. We also consult with workers through our employee survey “ Our voices”, where we asked specific questions around Mental health and wellbeing and the association with other measures of engagement and belonging, such as do our managers care about individual colleague health and wellbeing and how our colleague feel about their wellbeing at work.