Mark Allan explains that Bupa Dental Care’s top priority is taking care of the health and wellbeing of practice teams.
Please introduce yourself
My name is Mark Allan and I’m the general manager at Bupa Dental Care, which is a leading dental care provider in the UK.
I’ve been in the role almost two years and I’m passionate about making Bupa Dental Care the best place for dental professionals to work and providing the right support for our people to thrive professionally and personally.
What do you mean when you talk about holistic health?
At Bupa, people and their health and wellbeing are at the heart of everything we do.
When it comes to healthcare, our patients come to us for quality care and largely in times of need.
It’s important that we support our people to give them the right care, as well as maintain their own resilience and all-round wellbeing. This means making a difference to the lives of our people with good mental, physical, and financial health.
At Bupa, we are a dental provider as well as a market-leading health insurance business. This means we take a holistic, rounded approach to caring for our people, which sets us apart in the sector.
Over the coming months we’ll deep dive into all aspects of health and wellbeing and share advice from experts across our network – from mental health to women’s health, cancer and much more.
What makes us truly different is that we provide our practice managers, who are on the ground, with the necessary tools and resources to be well-informed and able to support and have sensitive conversations with our colleagues about health matters.
As health issues are part of everyday life, we want them to feel empowered and give them the tools they need to take care of their teams.
Talk us through some of the initiatives you have introduced to highlight these values
We strive to be the employer of choice in dentistry – this means offering outstanding career opportunities and a wide range of healthcare choices that sets us apart and supports our purpose of helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives.
We support our practice teams with JAAQ at Work and our Bupa Academy. JAAQ, which stands for Just Ask A Question, gives our people access to over 80 mental health and wellbeing topics, from depression, addiction and stress to fertility, bereavement, suicide prevention and everything in between.
We’ve worked hard to raise awareness and increase compassionate support for colleagues who are neurodiverse, LGBTQIA+, or are parents, or who are going through menopause, bereavement, or pregnancy loss.
Women’s health, such as period pain and menopause, can have a huge impact on the careers of many of our colleagues. We offer employees a Menopause Plan, completely free, which includes two appointments with a GP who is trained in the menopause.
We also offer a free Period Plan which includes an appointment with a GP to create an individual care plan for premenstrual syndrome, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, heavy, painful, or irregular periods. As well as a follow-up appointment to check how your plan is going and if your symptoms have eased or you have any concerns.
For our self-employed colleagues, we also offer subsidised Bupa health insurance, so they can access the same high standards of healthcare to support. These are just some examples of what we offer to take care of our people.
How do these initiatives impact your people?
We know that people who feel listened to, valued and recognised stay in their workplace for longer, so boosting engagement is key and we’re proud to say our people are increasingly advocating Bupa Dental Care as a great place to work. We’re always striving to be an employer of choice and are confident that our efforts to look after our people better are making a difference.
We continue to receive an extremely positive response from our 8,000 employed and self-employed people, and it makes me so proud to feel the world-class engagement we now have across Bupa Dental Care.
In particular, engagement within our self-employed community is up, who play such a critical part of our team. This demonstrates our continued commitment and investment in providing comprehensive, all-round care for our employees. This supports their physical and mental wellbeing and their career advancement, making our practices great places to work that they enjoy coming to every day.
Do you have any exciting plans you can share with us?
We are just at the start of this journey and there is always more to do. To ensure we know what our employees and self-employed colleagues want when it comes to health and wellbeing, we have created new specialist roles to represent the clinical voice across the business.
They support with engaging colleagues on the ground and keeps us in sync with want our people need and want – and we’re excited to share future plans overtime. Ultimately, we know Bupa Dental Care has a lot to offer and by prioritising wellbeing we can support our people to have happy, healthy, long-lasting careers with us.
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This article is sponsored by Bupa Dental Care.