JW Filshill has been raising awareness of what GroceryAid does up in Scotland, with the company’s health and safety manager Amanda Casey revealing that it has repositioned the business to put mental health and wellbeing at the heart of everything it does with the help of the charity.
“In the last two years, at Filshill we have repositioned the business to put mental health and wellbeing at the heart of everything,” she said. “So we are delighted to work with GroceryAid to strengthen what we are doing to support our staff by getting the message across that both Filshill and GroceryAid are there for our customers too.
“GroceryAid is an amazing charity but many independent retailers aren’t aware that it is there to help them and their staff – we want to collaborate with the charity to really raise awareness of its critical work.”
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Amanda points to April’s GroceryAid Day which represented an ideal opportunity to signpost people to the charity. “Raising funds is obviously crucial for GroceryAid but what is arguably more important is that it helps people by offering what can often be life-changing support – be that practical, financial or emotional,” she says.
Engaging all staff at Filshill is important, Amanda continued. “Our drivers, for example, because of the nature of their job, are not always around during office hours so they can’t always have that quiet, confidential chat with someone so easily,” she explains. “So we had a think about how we could engage with them and for GroceryAid Day, we gave keyrings featuring the free 24/7 Helpline number to all our drivers.”
That such a simple tool can help an individual was quickly confirmed when a staff member revealed to Amanda that he had been struggling with an issue for some time and called the Helpline as a result of seeing it on his keyring.
“This is exactly what GroceryAid is about,” she adds. “I also know that another two colleagues received support after calling the Helpline. In fact, 37% of our staff have used GroceryAid’s services at one point and many have told us they had previously been unaware of the charity and that they could benefit from it.”
While Filshill’s strategy is to support staff via a range of measures with the focus particularly on mental health and wellbeing – the wholesaler has 23 mental health first aiders – GroceryAid’s remit sits perfectly alongside the wholesaler’s commitment of “Always Doing the Right Thing”.
“When you are part of the Filshill family,” Amanda explains, “we are there for you whatever the problem is. Colleagues know that they can speak to us confidentially about any issue – anything that’s worrying them, or even if they just need some advice on something they feel they can’t discuss with a loved one.
“GroceryAid allows us to reach out to our retail customers and let them know that there is free and confidential welfare support available to them through the charity’s website and, most importantly, the 24/7 Helpline – emotional, practical and financial support is available and it’s so easy to access that support.”
