Many of you will be
aware of the 'five ways'
as a well-researched approach to look after your wellbeing. It’s
become a wellbeing approach adopted by the NHS for good mental health – but the
research behind the approach is about much more than mental health and can even
provide a platform to help business continuity!
You may not know
that the five ways to wellbeing that the NHS and charities like Mind mention in
conjunction to good mental health, were developed back in 2008 by the New
Economics Foundation
to find a simple philosophy to help people look after
their personal health (physically and mentally). Much as the 5 A Day
concept was born years
before to help with encouraging people to eat more healthily.
At the core of the
five ways there is a wonderful framework both for individuals and businesses to
start to give structure around wellbeing.
For you personally,
it is a reminder that your health is about more than what we eat and how we
move. For organisations, the five ways
link into business continuity management and operational excellence.
So how do the 5
ways have relevance to you anyway?
Let’s remind
ourselves of each of the ‘ways’: Connect – Be Active – Be Mindful/Curious –
Keep Learning and Give
Sound familiar? How many of these have you adopted in your
personal approach to coping with lockdown and the challenges of the pandemic?
Most of us have
reached out and connect
ed to family and friends on zoom (and realised
how much we miss and need face to face connection), most of us have pushed
ourselves to be active
if only to enjoy the ‘escape’ of the house
lockdown with daily exercise, getting out for a walk or run or staying in
trying Joe Wicks or another You Tube workout, at least once.
Many of us have kept
learning
by exploring new skills and hobbies. Some learning has been hates
by many, such as trying to home-school, learning about fronted adverbials along
with your 7 year old or complex trigonometry, biology and history. Some learning
has been loved by many – baking bread
for the first time (if you could get flour), gardening – even just growing a
few seeds on the window sill, painting – even if it was just rainbows displayed
on the windows.
Many people have
started to get curious
about mindfulness, exploring meditation, trying
breathing techniques for calm, wanting to understand anxiety and how our mind
works. More and more of us have been trying to find a sense of wonder and
adventure in the ‘ordinary’ to bring delight to the challenge of being stuck in
alone – or with family
And hundreds of
thousands of us have given
– given time as volunteers to local communities,
the odd can or regular donation to the much needed food banks, the calls for
food, treats and support for NHS workers and given time to help people in our
communities, families and friends to those battling depression, grief, illness,
loneliness and more.
So how can these –
seemingly very personal reflections on looking after your wellbeing have any
relevance to your business?
The five ways are
not just relevant – they can help as a framework for the business of wellbeing.
Connect
– is
probably the most obvious. We need to connect with colleagues to get the work
done. But 2020 taught many of us that connection is so much more than just the
Teams meeting to plan your workload or your one-to-one with your manager. After the honeymoon period of having no
commute was over, many quickly realised how much they miss the human contact
over coffee, the conversations about life and work outside the meeting room or
on the way to see your client and the ‘debrief’ over a beer or round the dinner
table.
Adding the question
‘How are you looking after your wellbeing this week’ to the monthly full team
meeting shifted one client to find team meetings were suddenly shorter and more
productive. How did asking a question to
30 people make the meeting take less time?
Because people suddenly cared about what their colleagues had to say and
really listened. Connections happened with an ease of synchronicity and work
became more efficient!
Another client
started weekly coffee mornings, a chance to be present with each other outsider
the formality of work, but within a work structure – where people would share
their challenges with home schooling and positive things that had worked, they’d
share positive habits and ideas and be able to problem solve outside a formal team or project meeting. As well as a teams session, they had a
supportive Slack group, a what’s app hub and even a Facebook support group for
home schooling.
Clients have
witnessed divisions and challenges between communities who have been working
with key worker status and those who have not – and identifying ways of
connecting distinct local communities within an organisation as well as
bringing separate teams together has been an objective to meet under ‘Connect’.
Be active
– has
been harder. After the joy that so many no longer needed to commute, many were
realising they were not getting the movement they needed – being stuck on
almost endless video meetings, caught with children and trying to be their
teacher while somehow fitting in an 8 hour working day meant many were not finding
a way to be active. Businesses that
paused and allowed true lunch breaks, had ‘no meeting Fridays’, allowed reduced
working and flexible working for parents and carers and maximise furlough and
flexi-furlough schemes noticed something interesting – allowing this space and expecting less from colleagues – began to
restore their energy and productivity.
Monthly challenges have enhanced this – couch to 5K, getting the team to
virtually climb a mountain, rewarding
movement and allowing time for colleagues to go for that walk/run/yoga class –
began to improve morale and efficiency.
Learn new skills
– happened instantaneously – worldwide people had to adapt to video conferencing,
parents had to begin to learn how to home school, support groups popped up
everywhere to help with the rapid learning of new technologies, new covid-safe working
practices and new work-life practices.
Many clients noticed how colleagues stopped to genuinely ask questions
of concern to colleagues and paused to give them new skills and resources.
But it hasn’t been
plain sailing – many organisations relied on individuals to pick up the pieces
and didn’t support them, some even made it a taboo subject to talk about home challenges.
Fortunately, this is the exception
rather than the rule, and many have embraced learning new skills so much that whole
industries have changed the way the work and some of them might just stay this
way.
Be mindful/curious
– as an advocate of meditation and mindful curiosity who has been using this
with businesses for over 15 years, it was no surprise that lockdown triggered
an explosion of interest in the mental focus of mindfulness and how this could
help businesses keep focus in the challenging world around us. Many are just waking up to this opportunity
now. Realising that our best crisis
problem solving comes from a wise and calm approach to stress and an open sense
of curiosity of the world around you.
Encouraging teams to embrace and share ‘adventures in the ordinary’ has
lent one client to go beyond the once a month teams quiz to run curry cook a
longs, cocktail making evenings, create your own aromatherapy at home evenings.
Murder mystery nights, Holidays for the Mind, Emotional Eating workshops, Parenting
Support groups and even online bee keeping courses to name just a few. As a result teams have innovated new
solutions to old problems, been motivated and engaged and taken fewer days of
sick than ever before.
One smaller client
was cynical to meditation, but wanted to
‘fall back in love with work by managing their stress better’ and we worked on
a leadership programme one-to-one with their Directors to ‘inspire wonder and
reduce stress’ – it included some ‘old fashioned’ breatjing techniques for
calm, meditations for a better night’s sleep and Tai Chi to energise people –
it’s now led onto a dynamic programme – of working on individuals blocks
(perfectionism, low self-worth, conflict with particular personality types,
trying to be a super hero and deep rooted anxiety) that has seen personal and
professional transformation that is simply inspiring to behold.
How can the
framework of mindful curiosity inspire your business?
Give
– giving
for too long has been stuck out with the old concept of CSR or a tag on ‘we
ougt to do something for charity’ after thought – but putting giving into a
business framework – helps engage and motivate staff and helps add meaning to
the giving. One client has combined be
active and giving where teams nominate their own charity and ‘compete’ with other
departments for physical fundraising challenges to see which team can
walk/cycle/run the furthest and raise the most money for their chosen charity. Another
decided to change the way they looked at wellbeing – instead of paying for an
annual subscription to Head Space that was only used by 5% of the company –
they gave each employee a £50 a month fee for their wellbeing – they can
expense acupuncture, massage, meditation or yoga classes, gym membership,
football club membership or a day’s pass for fishing on local lakes. Returning the power to the employee has had a
dynamic spark in engagement and stimulated productivity, loyalty and a sense of
pride in their employment.
Can you revisit
giving within your business?
Want to explore how to use this framework (and others!) to guide your business approach to wellbeing - get in touchto find out how BalanceTime can help.
Image thanks to Gabin Vallet from Unsplash
