Interview with Gary Webb, Regional Health & Wellbeing Manager – Asia Pac, Middle East, Africa & LATAM, Mars, USA

What does it mean to you to be a Global Healthy Workplace Awards winner?
Winning a Global Healthy Workplace Award is a fantastic recognition of the Mars team’s hard work, and the long-term commitments and investments the company has made to create a culture of health, safety, and energy where all our Associates can thrive. It provides affirmation that Mars is focusing our efforts on the right things and truly having an impact. It’s also an honour to be recognized alongside the calibre of previous winners, which we continue to benchmark against and learn from.

What do you think are the particular strengths of your program?

• Our Associate Health & Wellbeing vision to create a culture of health, safety, and energy where everyone is thriving: It is directly connected to one of the Mars Purpose destinations: In the world we want tomorrow, everyone is thriving. It is an integral part of how we do business every day, and is an example of Mars delivering on our Five Principles through action.
• Our global strategy’s holistic approach with customer needs at the forefront: Our strategy and Be Well Together framework incorporates all aspects of health, meets people where they are, and recognizes the importance and short and long-term health for our Associates at work and at home. It aims to drive reach and impact through integrating with business strategies and igniting a social movement. In order to achieve this, we have strong internal business partnering capabilities to design and deliver meaningful processes, programs, and initiatives that empower our businesses to solve local challenges and achieve global ambitions.
• Our investment in the enablers (signature processes, health and safety management systems, healthy leadership behaviours, healthy working environments, Be Well Together framework, etc.): These are critical success factors for how we deliver health and safety outcomes at Mars.

Where do you see the main challenges of creating a healthy workplace?
The success of a healthy workplace program is not determined by the activity set, but rather through the leadership, environments, processes, and capabilities that support it. One of the main challenges is to ensure that your capabilities continue to meet the evolving needs of your strategy and the business, and that leaders are brought along the journey. In our experience, leader sponsorship coupled with right capability delivers the best outcomes.

What advice would you give to a multinational employer thinking of developing or advancing a global strategy?

• Have a clear strategy in place that seeks to understand and positively impact—at the organisational, regional, and team level—the environmental, cultural, individual factors and ways of working that have biggest impact on health, safety, and wellbeing.
• Define the challenges and identify the root causes at each of those levels to ensure you’re solving for the right thing. Embed your strategy into the business, so it’s part of daily operations and clearly enables the business priorities, processes, people objectives, culture, and sustainability goals. It should be seen as an enabler of these, not a separate item.
• Invest in the enablers (e.g., healthy leadership behaviours, healthy working environments, a clear, holistic health & wellbeing framework), not only in products and processes, to maximise reach and drive meaningful impact.

What did you take away from the 2023 Global Healthy Workplace Summit?
It was inspirational to learn the latest best practices from global experts and other organisations. It was also a great opportunity to network with leaders in the field and gain a broader global perspective through interactions with other participants.

 

View Mars’ Profile and Awards presentation

Learn more about the 2023 Global Summit

Learn more about the Global Awards