Safety & Wellbeing

As part of our Environment, Health & Safety strategy, our wellbeing strategy provides direction and a common approach for our wellbeing programme, which ensures that we have the tools, techniques and support networks to take care of our people. Through our strategy, our aim first and foremost is to develop a culture and environment that fosters our wellbeing; where we all behave in a way that supports each other to feel our best. To achieve this, we continue to explore the variety of ways in which we can thrive and achieve our potential through practical guidance, emotional support, and like-minded communities.

Our strategy focuses on:

• Globally sharing best practice to improve Environment, Health & Safety.


• Continuously improving, strengthening performance and enhancing employee wellbeing while creating a safe, successful and resilient business.


• Creating a community of strong, active and visible leaders who have a clear commitment to safety, employee wellbeing and environmental matters.


• Enabling and empowering our people to make informed decisions that impact environment, health and safety.

With a focus on health and wellbeing, we encourage good physical and mental health, which is critical to our collective and individual success.

We continue to explore the variety of ways in which we can thrive and achieve our potential through practical guidance, emotional support, and like-minded communities.

With a focus on creating a safe and secure environment in which we can all thrive, we offer:

• Employee Assistance Programme, through which a comprehensive range of tools and resources are available, including independent counselling, financial and legal assistance and health and wellbeing support
• QinetiQ Hardship Fund supporting colleagues experiencing extraordinary financial challenge
• Mental Health First Aiders, located across the UK, who are a first point of contact if experiencing a mental health issue or emotional distress
• Thrive app, which is designed to detect and prevent the early signs of mental health conditions, providing support and advice for building the resilience needed to cope with life’s challenges
• Employee benefit schemes, which enable our people to purchase additional annual leave, access private health care, dental cover and gym membership, helping to make healthy lifestyle choices
• Manager Mental Health training, which is available to all managers enabling them to identify health concerns early and provide the required support and referral to their team members
• Flu jabs, which are available either through national schemes or funded internally
• A range of resources and toolkit, designed to support physical, mental and financial wellbeing

The film below shows our wellbeing garden, created by a team of volunteers at Portsdown Technology Park in the UK. The team gave up their lunchtimes and returned after work to deliver the project, including clearing out rubble, trimming overgrown grass and digging out the area.

The garden has benches, a wooden gazebo, gabion wall, pond, small trees, water butt, guttering and plants suitable to encourage biodiversity. It provides colleagues with a quiet area to appreciate a beautiful view of the downs and the fauna and flora as well as encouraging the local wildlife.