A practical guide to workplace wellbeing
Image: Used with permission of the artist, Lisa Congdon.
At realgood wellbeing, we’re focused on the things that we can all do at work to build and maintain an inclusive and accessible culture of wellbeing. After all, happy and healthy employees are proven to be more productive and more creative. Winning! We understand the pressures of agency life having worked both in advertising for most of our careers, and for that reason both set up wellbeing programmes in our offices. Here are some tips for what you could do to introduce wellbeing rituals in to your workplace and try to avoid the collective burnout that the industry is known for. For more free resources, head to our website - realgoodwellbeing.co.nz
Start a movement. Need improved wellbeing initiatives at your work? Think about how you can proactively suggest this to your manager or senior leadership team. It can be difficult to authentically introduce wellbeing into your workplace long-term if people don’t understand or agree with the need for culture change and this is where leadership buy in and participation is key.
Budget doesn’t have to be a barrier. There are tons of activities you can do for free or for a very low budget. Weekly walks, run clubs, yoga classes using YouTube or simply just eating together. Think about shared interests and what might appeal to everyone. Be proactive and get creative!
Create safe spaces. Use check ins and team meetings to have honest, open conversations about how you are all doing and come up with solutions together. “Peak and pit of the week” is a good place to start, but you could even start to introduce coping strategy tools like the bucket model of resilience to build key skills to support wellbeing. Also think about physical safe spaces and if there is a space at work that can be turned into a dedicated chillout area for people to use.
Fear of stigma. Some people don’t speak out about mental wellbeing because of the fear of stigma. Breaking this stigma can be tough but having regular, open communications around conversations that can be hard to have such as mental unwellness is a great start. And there are lots of free resources online from places like the Mental Health Foundation of NZ to do this.
Work smart, play smart. Ad land is famed for work hard, play hard but think about reframing that to work smart, play smart. This is more inclusive of the different levels of resilience of everyone around you at work, and lets people know that whilst the nature of being a creative means that deadlines must be regularly met, it’s the responsibility of the whole team to make sure you get there in a smart way. Also make sure you are regularly celebrating small wins too, even if it’s just a simple thank you or the opportunity to leave an hour early to go surfing!
It’s ok to not be ok. But it’s not ok to suffer in silence. Don’t just be kind to those around you. Be kind to yourself too. Try introducing things like the 5 minute rule to your team. If you’re totally stuck on something after 5 minutes ask someone else. Rethink the benefit of ‘fake it til you make it’, why not just ask someone who knows instead? Also look out for the wider team.
If someone is having a tough time ask if you can help, even if that’s just to make them
a cuppa!
If you're thinking about setting up a workplace wellbeing programme or activities this year to support the people around you at work we salute you, and hope it goes well!
Katy Thomas.
