Visit the Mental Wellbeing Zone on stand J110
The World Health Organisation has referred to stress as the health epidemic of the 21st Century. In the updated edition of the Stevenson Farmer report it was estimated that the total cost per year of poor mental health was between £2,100 and £2,900 per employee. A staggering £21,000 – £29,000 for a team of 10!
Employers should act now if they haven’t already, and whilst wellbeing days, gym memberships and mindfulness classes can be helpful interventions, on their own they are not enough.
If leaders are serious about supporting the wellbeing of their employees, it is important to go back to basics, reviewing, management practices, policies, organisational culture, expectations, and technology … Increased understanding of how the brain works, the real causes of stress and how to support individuals to perform at their best, even in the most demanding workplaces.
In the workplace, pressure is unavoidable due to the ever-increasing demands and challenges organisations are facing. Indeed in some instances pressure can be a good thing, when it is perceived as being at an acceptable level for the individual, as it can help focus the mind and provide motivation. However when pressure becomes excessive or unmanageable for pro-longed periods of time, it can lead to anxiety, depression and serious life threatening diseases
In the Mental Wellbeing Zone, the Jigsaw@work team will be available for one-to-one consultations, providing visitors with an opportunity to discuss mental health awareness, ways of creating healthy, regenerative workplaces and developing well-trained managers to identify employees with the early signs of stress which if left unattended could lead to burnout or serious mental illness.
They will also be running two group sessions, open to all visitors. Scroll down for more information.
There is no doubting that the world of work has certainly evolved and changed meaning that many people are now working in positions which require new and additional skills, the consequences being that whilst some people may have welcomed the changes, for many others, the changes have led to increased fatigue and workplace stress. Unfortunately many of the traditional stress management strategies, which help to relieve the feeling of being stressed in the moment, don’t address the root cause of the stress and therefore as soon as the individual returns to the workplace, the stress returns. Now is the time to challenge our thinking around stress. In this seminar we will be looking at how having increased levels of self-awareness, and behavioural based coping strategies , grounded in neuroscience, can transform the way you think about and respond to stressful situations at home or at work.
Being mindful of our thought patterns can really help how we feel on a day to day basis because very often our thoughts create neural pathways. The well-trodden neural pathway can impact how we feel, our mood and our perception regarding our ability to cope or manage a situation. Think of the time when you were asked to speak in public, or do something that makes you nervous. What are the thoughts running through your mind? What film in your mind are you playing? The more familiar the brain is with something, the easier it is to access. The brain doesn’t necessarily know the truth between reality and a movie, it thinks it has done it before and so can do it again, in a similar way. Athletes have been doing this for years calling it visualisation. Katarina Johnson-Thompson visualized being in the stadium ‘almost like a gladiator’ and then went on to ‘manifest my way through my whole career’. Denzel Washington calls this ‘imagineering’. We will look how to make sure this process works for you, rather than against, and what questions you can ask yourself to ensure your think your way to success and contentment, and avoid anxiety, which can lead to cognitive impairment, making it even harder to perform at your best.