With this week being Mental Health Awareness Week we’ve been thinking about some of the positive steps this week will bring to workplace wellbeing and how to take these into next week and beyond!
Hopefully employers and employees will seize the opportunity this week to kick off or kick start a programme of learning activities that puts wellbeing at work top of everyone’s agenda! With a multitude of training and workshops now available to support employees in looking after their mental health there is without doubt something for every organisation.
Take a look at our wellbeing video series if you are thinking about training for workplace wellbeing for the first time.
Keeping it going
Whilst chatting in a recent team meeting and subsequent Linkedin discussion we raised the following question – How do you embed workplace wellbeing programmes into your organisation for the long term? We also pondered whether there is still some resistance to use L&D budget for anything labelled as ‘mental health’ or ‘wellbeing’ training? Most importantly what do employees consider useful for their wellbeing?
We concluded that perhaps there are several different approaches organisations could take to develop sustainable workplace wellbeing programmes:
Giving employees the tools and the space to look after their mental health.
Investing in regular wellbeing activities that are hugely beneficial to help employees learn to rest and refresh their mind – yoga, mindfulness and meditation or providing toolkit advice in wellbeing workshops.
Communication and connection being at the heart of your L&D strategy.
Providing training that helps your teams to communicate and collaborate more effectively with courses covering how to be a good leader/manager, communications, time management, giving and receiving feedback or how to stay connected to your team whilst working remotely.
Recognising the impact that all learning has on wellbeing, threading workplace wellbeing through all your L&D efforts.
Identifying and delivering any learning opportunity on a consistent basis to make employees feel valued and enriched with new skills.
Seeing the bigger picture
Understanding what approach will work for your organisation will help you to promote internally – getting the right people to buy into a new learning programme from the start will make it more sustainable for the long term.
We help our clients map out their organisation’s learning needs so they can see and promote the bigger picture for their organisation. Then starting off with small steps and committing to consistent activity will help build in learning programmes that are long lasting and meaningful.
What would help your organisation embed learning programmes that support employee wellbeing both now and for the long haul?
