Putting some WRAW into payroll

When the CIPP needed to assess its resilience and well-being, the WRAW framework caught the organisation’s eye. As a company committed to all its teams, WRAW was an obvious way to support staff development and continue the CIPP’s trajectory of being a top employer of choice.

What is WRAW?

WRAW is a psychometric measure of resilience and its impact on well-being for working people. It stands for workplace resilience and well-being, describing a subject of increasing importance in the modern workplace. WRAW is founded on the five pillars of resilience, a validated and evidence-based model, which offers a holistic view of the five key elements which support well-being:

• energy
• future focus
• inner drive
• flexible thinking
• strong relationships.

What does the CIPP do?

With more than 9,500 individuals benefitting from the CIPP’s membership benefits, support and education services, the Institute is dedicated to raising the profile of payroll in businesses across the UK and internationally. The CIPP works with a pool of circa 80 tutors, who deliver its qualification programmes. The CIPP has been named in The Sunday Times top 100 best not-for-profit organisations to work for, which highlights its commitment to the development of its staff.

Where did the CIPP start?

Ursula designed the CIPP’s WRAW journey following a discussion regarding resilience with Dr. Sue Smith, the CIPP’s education director. After this initial conversation, the first cohort to experience the WRAW process was the senior leadership team (SLT), in August 2021. Next up were:

• the operations team, followed by the business development team, back in November 2021
• the CIPP tutors at the end of 2021, in December
• the education team in February 2022.
• The final cohort to undergo WRAW was the CIPP’s board of directors, who started the programme in April 2022.

An interesting part of this process involved making WRAW available to the tutors who deliver CIPP programmes. This highly valued group support students, so key aims were to:

• better role model resilience and well-being to them
• help them to spot any students who may be experiencing well-being issues.

Every tutor who participated received an individual report and could access an introductory webinar, along with the pillar workshops. Ursula delivered the webinar to provide an explanation and a taster of WRAW. The workshops provided a deeper understanding of the pillars they wanted to understand more about.

The workshops lasted 60 minutes and took place online in the early evenings over the course of five consecutive weeks. This meant CIPP tutors who went through the WRAW process could select the pillar workshops most relevant for their self-development. Many of the tutors who attended the first pillar workshop went on to attend all five.

What’s involved?

Firstly, Ursula invites all team members to complete a workplace resilience and well-being questionnaire.

The WRAW profiling provides an insight into where individuals are now. The questionnaire takes 15 minutes to complete and measures the five pillars of resilience and well-being.

The team workshops enable every individual to discuss their profile results and map out their next steps. In addition to this is the team report and group work, facilitated by Ursula to identify:

• team strengths
• trends and challenges for the team
• strategies to collectively develop an appropriate team charter.

The charter is designed to support healthy, high performance with actionable outcomes that can be measured and monitored regularly by the team. All sessions were facilitated in a structured environment, based on real facts to encourage emotionally intelligent conversations.

What did the CIPP say?

The education services team came together to experience the full WRAW programme, which included the:

• individual questionnaire
• team report
• online workshop discussions on well-being and resilience.

The team rated WRAW as an extremely high 4.6 out of 5, with many comments highlighting the importance of understanding resilience and working on it collectively. For example, feedback comments included: “I liked the way the workshop encouraged discussion across the team” and “hearing everyone’s different ideas and viewpoints”, along with “the team’s ability to share and connect will positively impact the resilience of the team, which ultimately improves well-being”. What’s more, the WRAW process enabled people to have moments of enlightenment including: “I need to work less hours to become more effective” and “to take more time for myself, i.e., away from my desk and exercising”.

This is what WRAW facilitates – connecting a team, enabling them to understand where they’re all at when it comes to emotions, energy, excitement, experiences and having open, supportive conversations with each other.

Combine this with realisations of where their individual and team resilience is right now and what they need to do to improve it, and you have a team of people who can perform better both professionally and personally.

Featured in the May 2022 issue of Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward. Correct at time of publication.