Headfit Award Winners

A thriving One Team culture - that is the reality of Cook Brothers Construction in 2022. It was such an honour to be recognised last night at the first Headfit awards as a winner in the Best Emerging Programme category. 

With the adversity of COVID19, combined with the startling statistics around suicide and mental health in the construction industry, Cook Brothers recognised the critical risk around mental health and wellbeing within their national team. 

What resulted, was a concerted effort to forge a holistic wellbeing culture that would inspire resilience and communication. 

Through the mentorship of an in-house People And Performance Manager, and firmly established health and safety practices, Cook Brothers have formed an innovative, inclusive and collaborative wellbeing programme across their business today. 

With the onset of COVID19 in 2020, and the construction industry holding the highest suicide rate, mental health was a critical risk that required immediate attention. Seeking an innovative approach to this opportunity, Cook Brothers sought a People and Performance Manager to develop a strategy that focused on individual performance and wellbeing by developing resilient behaviours. One of the applicants was a sports performance coach, Natalie Fraser. 

Utilising her background in psychology, wellbeing through resilience programme was rapidly rolled out when just after her appointment, New Zealand went into lockdown for Covid-19. Identifying the external stressors of our usually active construction workers, this programme reached our team whilst many were unable to work from home. A scaleable approach was implemented whereby the team could participate in live sessions or view at their leisure. This programme was supported by an internal training schedule tailored to different roles within the team, right down to individual apprentice sessions.

Following on from Covid-19, a formal strategy was developed expanding on this skills training. An engagement survey was created to allow the team to voice their feedback, providing qualitative and quantitative positive impacts on workplace mental health to be measured. This formed the basis for further development and integration of health and wellbeing into the Cook Brothers culture. 

We are so proud of our people. They are the heart and soul of our business. Congratulations on your well-deserved win.