Healthy Minds = Healthy Cultures
"How are you today?"
This is a question we ask and are asked many times a day. However we don’t always answer truthfully, or expect a truthful answer. It may be because our generation was taught not to talk about our feelings - or maybe the (in)famous British stiff upper lip! Whatever the reason, unlearning this behaviour can help enormously in improving our mental health.
This was one of many powerful messages imparted by the phenomenal mental health campaigner Rob Stephenson at an event The PR Network hosted last week about mental wellbeing at work. Rob is bipolar and spoke honestly about his personal experiences.
Rob is on a mission to help build healthier modern workplaces. He’s the brains behind the InsideOut LeaderBoard which now counts 220 senior business leaders amongst its cohort of role models who are open about their own mental health challenges. Entries for the 2022 awards will close shortly - do enter, or enter someone you admire!
He’s also created the FormScore app which encourages us to check in with ourselves and our contacts daily, rating how we feel based on the factors he’s identified as driving good or poor mental health, including sleep, exercise, stress, work, family and connections.
I’ve been using it and it’s brilliant; but its use doesn’t end there.
The FormScore team are working with companies keen to improve corporate culture. The "FormScore for Teams” workplace platform aggregates anonymised data to build a picture of a team and the organisation’s wellbeing, and analyse the data to generate key insights. For instance, which driving factors are influencing overall health of a team, and calendar patterns. This helps FormScore’s customers more quickly identify potential collective morale issues, and personalise wellbeing benefits and resources at a team level. It's clever.
Rob also talked about the move to a hybrid workplace and the opportunities this offers to create a more flexible and supportive working environment, but also the challenges around lack of physical connection and the difficulty of ever switching off.
This graphic by our brilliant visual artist Caroline from Chapple Cartoons captures the event perfectly. If you’re keen to get more balance in 2022 for yourself and for your company, we’d urge you to get in touch with Rob. He’s a brilliant speaker (even on Zoom at 6pm…)