Blue Light Wellbeing Framework (BLWF)

The Blue Light Wellbeing Framework (BLWF) is a statement of intent, showing a commitment to health and wellbeing. This is the third edition of the framework.

Organisations use this framework to audit and benchmark themselves against an independent set of standards, which have been tailored to meet the specialist needs of emergency services staff. The BLWF will help to identify what an organisation already has in place and what gaps there may be in providing the best wellbeing provision it can for employees.

The aspects of the framework are based on widespread consultation with leading academics and professionals in the field, as well as practitioners at all levels. The framework has always been intended as an up-to-date and ambitious guide for employers to self-assess against. This facilitates subsequent strategy and interventions that are based on evidence of need and improved outcomes.

Since the launch of the first edition of the BLWF and Oscar Kilo in 2017, the wellbeing landscape across policing has begun to see a positive shift. We have seen an increase in investment into police wellbeing from the government, the introduction of the Common Goal for Police Wellbeing, the launch of the National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS) and the Police Covenant.

As a result, our understanding of the evidence base and ‘what works’ has deepened. This has led to the publication of this updated version of the BLWF to ensure, in a spirit of continuous improvement, that it remains an up-to-date and relevant resource for organisations to use.

Refined and updated questions

While the seven areas of the framework remain the same, we have made refinements to a number of questions in each area.

For example, following the introduction of the Police Covenant, we have made changes to some questions in order to directly reference the consideration of police families or for those who may be preparing to leave the service.

Please note that all the questions in the Occupational Health section have been revisited and refined.

Occupational health section

The occupational health foundation standards (2019) were introduced into the second edition of BLWF and have enabled us to gain valuable information about the status of occupation health in policing. Many forces are now either fully or over 70% compliant with the BLWF.

The development of standards in occupational health were always envisaged as a process of continuous improvement. Therefore, five years on from the foundation level standards, enhanced standards were formally published in 2023, with a transition period in 2024. Whilst the foundation standards still remain as the solid base, the enhanced standards enable forces to extend and build on what is being done already. It is timely to now incorporate the enhanced standards into the BLWF.

Recognising that many occupational health services remain under pressure to meet the needs of their forces, we will continue to provide support and guidance to forces as they move towards the adoption of the enhanced standards.

To avoid the associated costs that often come with outside accreditation, we have created the option for inter-force peer review, enabling forces to apply challenge and support in a very strengths-based approach that we feel is better suited to this area of practice. In line with this, we have created a ‘Peer Review’ option that you can select once you have completed your framework online – this means you can submit your framework for an online, distance peer review by another force.

Peer reviews are carried out by a practitioner who is experienced and skilled in the area of wellbeing. Ideally, it will be a person with ownership of their own organisation’s framework so that they are familiar with the question sets and how it feels to lead this agenda. 

The Oscar Kilo team will identify which forces are ideally suited to peer review each other taking into consideration a range of factors including workforce numbers. When you arrange for a peer review, the Oscar Kilo team receives a notification, and we then make contact with you to progress the review. This includes providing you with a copy of our peer reviewer guidance document. If you require any further information, please contact us.

Planning templates

These planning templates are a companion guide to the BLWF and have been designed to assist organisations to consider both at a strategic and tactical level.

In both the strategic and tactical planning, it is key to determine the goals of the actions taken and whilst these maybe quantitative or qualitative in nature it is recognised that they need to be tailored to what will work for your organisation.

Therefore, when evidencing the framework, it is noted that some flexibility will be required in the interpretation of the elements, and it is anticipated that the use of these planning templates will assist organisations to provide plans which utilise the framework whilst enabling local delivery options.

Through the assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation process organisations will be able to influence the overall wellbeing plan and maximise the impact and encourage long lasting changes and engagement in local areas.

• Download the planning templates (pdf) 395 KB

(Hesketh and Rhodes, 2015)

This is a strategic HR model that can assist organisations to develop practical categories and metrics to illustrate employee status in relation to wellbeing.

This model was developed in a policing environment to provide a simple illustration of where the workforce operated. It can also be adapted and used in any other organisation with considerable ease, the beauty being the simple nature of the notion of a snapshot in time of the workforce, and what is the status.

The levels of engagement aspect illustrates that although an employee may be struggling to cope, they may well be, and probably are, still engaged in the workplace. Here, phenomena such as Presenteeism and Leaveism can be observed by managers trained in the recognition of these features and can form the basis of early intervention to assist their workers.

What is seen in many organisations is that the trigger point for help sits in the above category ‘not engaged.’ This misses out on the opportunity for effective intervention.

This, in turn, would provide access to the services in the next column, which increase towards the top of the column, both in complexity and of course cost. Management options also increase in both complexity and ambiguity, and again these are costly in terms of time, money and abstractions from core duties.

A common response that emanates from discipline or management-action meetings is the issue of why the particular problem was not identified and dealt with at an early point in time. This issue once more provides management challenges, and it is suggested that inclusion in training schemes for even first-line or junior managers may prove fruitful.

The Universal segment of the pyramid represents the workforce (employees) being well, a fully engaged workforce that is effectively line-managed, what some may term business-as-usual. The three segments that follow, culminating in crisis, describe the gradual deterioration of an employee’s health, with a model of the inevitable consequences illustrated alongside. Pro-active interventions, such as resilience training and clinical supervision models, ought to be provided across the workforce, but may be prioritised on high-risk groups of employees. In terms of policing, these may include firearms, covert, public protection or counter-terrorism officers and staff. The model can be populated using available data, sourced from a number of origins.

The use of HRM information can provide a good starting point, but the use of data beyond sickness absence figures can also provide valuable insight. These may include items such as misconduct, overtime worked, expenses claims, workplace accidents and professional development review information. These all contribute to creating a rich picture of individual and group wellbeing, and the impact of those persons in the workplace, and specifically with their relationships with the co-workers.

One of the challenges for HR is essentially getting upstream of sickness absence. The suggestion here is that analysing multiple data sources and placing them in an easy-to read framework can help identify individuals who are in need of additional help. This proactive approach may well help organisations reduce sickness levels, but more importantly improves the environment in which they work, with better outcomes in terms of attitudes and perceptions. Workforce surveys, such as ASSET (Cooper et al., 2005), have identified that working relationships, communications, control and work-life balance are all important in the assessment of workforce wellbeing, but to rely solely on sickness figures alone to somehow illustrate this appears to be an immature approach considering what is available.

Published in Strategic HR Review, Vol. 16 Iss 1, pp.17 – 23