When working in an industry that has many different companies vying for solutions, business and attention, what are you doing to get the best out of your most unique asset? And by that, I mean your people – your key differentiator from the competition.
By encouraging wellbeing and looking after your people to keep them at the top of their game, you’ll be successful. One step towards this is by engaging people differently in looking after their own minds.
Supporting your people with things like flexible working initiatives, time and space to meditate, mindfulness (an awareness of our mood and thoughts and how this influences our behaviours) and coaching, can increase productivity and quality of work.
Just like a healthy body will get people performing well, a healthy mind – the main tool of our trade – will do the same.
I attended the book launch of Andy Gibson’s ‘A Mind for Business’. The new book from the CEO and ‘Head Gardener’ at Mindapples brings together a lot of the theories out there already on things like mental health at work and mindfulness to give a view of how people work. Themes include reducing stress and managing wellbeing, and their importance for businesses.
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. One of the key points Andy makes is that the term ‘mental health’ is full of negative associations – like stress, depression and anxiety – and is often used interchangeably with ‘mental illness’. This automatically makes it harder for people to engage in a positive dialogue about their minds at work.
One of the reasons Andy believes ‘A Mind for Business’ was commissioned, and why it went to the top of WH Smith’s business books bestseller list, is that people are coming around to the idea of ‘mental health’ being more linked with wellbeing and are therefore more willing to talk about it.
He also gives credit to the part played by some good campaigns dealing professionally with the issues and making the business case for preventing mental ill health. He says that the environment now has become more like pushing on an open door when it comes to convincing businesses about the benefit of promoting wellbeing and mental health.
Again, the language used to ‘sell’ the idea of encouraging wellbeing in a business environment can have an impact on its acceptance. For some, calling meditation or mindfulness ‘a way to keep your edge’ will be much more appealing.
Whether motivated by the economic or moral case for investing in the wellbeing of their people, employers can see the benefits of this investment in a variety of ways, like increasing creativity or motivation, or reducing stress – all of which can have a significant ROI in the long term.
#MHAW15