There has been an increase in things like anxiety and depression.
You don't have the capacity to do the work that you do, makes people incredibly anxious
and this then has flow-on effects both to their productivity,
but also to their broader mental health.
People are investing more time, money and energy
into themselves because they're realising that the pace that they've
been operating in is not sustainable.
Depression is due to overtake heart disease as the most as a common health issue
by next year, and that's the World Health Organization's data.
We may be richer as a planet but we're not happier.
We've been reaching out to a lot of businesses and talking about
corporate wellness, and there's much more interest in it, I think, from higher up in
small to medium sized businesses that we've approached, to see
what do they do to look after their team, as an experience as an employee, an experience
being self-employed, and now as an employer. I think for businesses your
staff or your best assets and so if you can look after the people who work for you,
your business will thrive.
Our mental health is a thing, just like our physical fitness is a thing.
If we practice it, if we do certain things on a regular basis
then we'll get stronger in our minds as well as our bodies.
And again we tend to do those things more if we are
encouraged to do them by others, so if a workplace for example or a school
develops a culture of promoting well-being and promoting positive mental health,
then people are going to be influenced by their peers and
be encouraged to participate.
If there is true interest from higher up
and encouragement for employees from their employers, like if they feel
like their employers have buy-in, that they actually do want them to be well
rather than the Health and Wellness Committee ticking a box to say "oh yeah we
look after your mental health and here are the reasons you know why and
how we do it", versus an HR team or owners or directors that are actually
passionate and authentic around wanting to look after their staff, like there is
a difference, and I think employees feel that.
If you want to recruit the best staff, then having employee assistance programs or positive wellness
things in place is, going to make you an attractive employer. So I think that there are both,
it's the right thing to do - it actually makes sense to the bottom line,
and it has long lasting consequences that potentially protect the future security
of your companies.
Encourage people to get out and be active and again talk
about how does this make us feel not just the fitness side of it,
so build positive mental health and well-being into the sort of the day-to-day language
of the workplace.
For some people it's religion, other people it's nature,
other people it's meditation, like being able to look at a human being from a holistic
perspective and what their needs are, that to me what wellness is, is looking
at the whole picture and not just picking one or two things.
I think if I ran the world, I would have businesses take this very seriously, have a look at their
health and safety policies, explicitly integrate mental health into that,
so that it's both overtly acknowledged that this is something that's important,
but also that then leads on to having processes around managing it.
And as I say, at the end of the day that helps the business' bottom line,
not just the employees' well-being