In the last few years wellbeing is a word we have come to know well, but with the anniversary of the first UK lockdown it has been more important than ever. Hands up who at any point during the pandemic has felt worn down, fatigued or just really low? According to Mind, a mental health charity, more than half of adults said that their mental health has gotten worse during lockdown restrictions.
We ran a Wellbeing Week across BECG, Cavendish Advocacy, Liberty One and CrowdControlHQ so as a team we could spend time focusing on how to improve our mental and physical wellbeing, with useful activities and learning sessions throughout the workday. It gave staff the opportunity to take a mindful break from their day, a practice we encourage staff to continue.
Wellbeing activities
We can experience “a social exhaustion in a time of social distancing” read a slide from Holly Dunn’s webinar series on working well from home and virtual fatigue. Holly is a BANT Registered Nutritionist and Wellbeing Consultant. In part one of her series, she shared tips for staying mentally and physically healthy during home-working such as establishing a routine and taking time to move throughout the day. Part two covered the virtual fatigue we can feel from staring at screens. Holly showed us online and offline strategies to reduce the chances of feeling fatigued or burnt out whilst we continue working from home.
For half hour every day, Clare Rawling, from Raw Movement, gave us head to toe tips on incorporating movement into our workdays. It is all too easy that once you sit down for work, you forget to move any part of your body that isn’t your fingers or head which can lead to all sorts of aches and pains. They were welcomed practices we can continue to incorporate whether home-working or office working.
To get our bodies moving, there was the opportunity to join a PT session with Louisa, yoga with Jade and Pilates with Amanda. They were for all abilities tailored especially to our team. They got us up from our chairs and mindfully moving. We now know plenty of new yoga poses to stretch out our muscles during or after working. There was also the chance to attend a live cook-a-long for the recipe of a healthy, yummy Pad Thai dish.
On the final day, we ended the week with a mindfulness session with Ell to consolidate everything discussed in the past week, and to offer insight into how beneficial pausing at the end or in the middle of the day, can be for mindset and productivity. Ell also discusses the importance of sleep, and how mindfulness before bed can help improve sleep quality.
Head of Group HR and Operations, Amy McNeill, was pleased with how the week went. She said:
With wellbeing at the top of our agenda, we were thrilled to have so many people engage with our first ever Wellbeing Week. We want our staff to build their own wellbeing into their list of priorities, and to support them in doing this. With engagement and feedback, we are hopeful that looking after wellbeing will become a ‘must do’ for everyone across the Group.
To enjoy throughout our wellbeing week, everyone was sent a wellness box. It was packed with delightful snacks, a scented candle, calming sleep spray, lip balm, bath salts and a gratitude habit journal. Check out some of the wonderful photos of them from our colleagues’ social media.
