At FD Consultants we offer a full-day ‘Mental Health Awareness’ Workshop for Managers. We have divided this workshop into two half days as we are currently offering this remotely. “As a manager I now have the tools and confidence to manage mental health challenges in the workplace.” The workshop provides managers with the tools, knowledge and understanding of how to support the mental health of staff members and their teams. We have found that managers often feel less confident dealing with psychological health issues compared to physical health problems. Due to living and working through a pandemic we are all impacted psychologically, and mental health is being discussed more openly. Organisations need to have procedures in place to encourage and promote discussions about the mental health and wellbeing of staff in the workplace. This workshop provides managers with evidence-based techniques and models to support staff psychologically. We explore many of the common mental health disorders, so managers can identify specific mental health issues in the workplace and be alerted to early warning signs. We discuss risk issues, mental health myths, and the management of suicidal ideation. We share various leadership models to improve communication and listening skills. We share an easy to use ‘Wellness Action Plan’ that managers can refer to when supporting someone with mental health issues. “This is the best workshop I have attended in the nine years I have worked at my organisation.” Living and working through a pandemic and managing staff remotely is challenging therefore managers will learn how to support staff through this unprecedented time. The workshop will create a universal language to discuss issues of mental health and wellbeing throughout the organisation, and in turn challenge the erosive impact of stigma. If you or your organisation would like more information on any of our courses, then do get in touch with us today. Check out our website www.fdconsultants.net or email us directly [email protected]
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Throughout February we have been exploring ‘Psychologically Safe Management’. In this post we are offering further tips on how to create a ‘Psychologically Safe Workplace’ and position the wellbeing of staff at the heart of the organisation. We will share with you a further ten simple tips on how to support the wellbeing of staff during this pandemic.
We live busy lives and the pandemic has forced some of us to slow down. Although it is important to note that key workers, medical services and those working on the frontline are working harder than ever. For those of us working from home we have the challenge of separating work life to home life, and possibly juggling many responsibilities. Covid is a traumatic incident, it brings uncertainty and longevity, and therefore will increase our stress levels. When we feel activated into our stress response our concentration and memory go offline, and we can become either more withdrawn, or sensitive and irritated by those around us. We all need to find pause moments throughout the day. These moments are a time to reflect, take a deep breath and stop. In a psychologically safe working environment, we need to create space for reflection and learning to take place. Ten simple tips on how to support the wellbeing of staff during this pandemic.
Please contact FD Consultants for any management or staff training needs, or individual support sessions. We can offer our trademark ‘Stress Management & Resilience Building’, ‘Trauma & Vicarious Trauma Awareness’ or ‘Peer Support’ programmes. Additionally, we can offer any other training specifically tailored for your organisation. You can contact us at [email protected] If you are interested in learning more about this topic you can listen to FD Consultants webinar on ‘Psychologically Safe Management’ please click here For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. We are currently living and working through a pandemic and this is impacting individuals in different ways. Some individuals are isolated and feeling lonely, others feel they have no space and have to juggle many family responsibilities. It is important as managers that we spend some time getting to know each of our staffs’ individual circumstances through this unprecedented time. During the pandemic everyone’s stress levels are heightened as we navigate uncertainty, we become disconnected from family and friends, and we have less access to many of our usual coping strategies.
Themes we have noticed from supporting staff over the last few months include, online fatigue, reduction in motivation and feeling disconnected and lonely. At FD Consultants we have been supporting organisations for several years and at this time of the year, we have noticed an increase in mental health struggles. We support the Samaritans and are aware that the numbers of suicides can increase during the December and January months. This year FD Consultants have seen an increase in the demand for regular supervision sessions for staff, to enable staff to focus on their wellbeing and remain resilient through this challenging time. We have been offering more individual mental health management coaching session to offer guidance to manager’s when supporting staff with mental health needs. Our ‘Stress Management and Resilience Building’ and ‘Trauma Awareness’ workshops have also been in great demand, as well as our ‘Psychological First Aid Peer Support Training’. Some organisations have been completing wellbeing plans with their staff, specifically during the Coronavirus period. We are aware of many versions of this plan and a great deal of inconsistency in how they are delivered to staff. We therefore decided to develop a simple ‘Wellness Action Plan’ for staff to complete and discuss further with their managers. We have been sharing this with our client organisations and we are happy to share it in this blog today. Some organisations complete this ‘Wellbeing Action Plan’ with all new staff, and it is reviewed every six months. Other organisations refer to the plan when a member of staff is in a mental health crisis. I would suggest completing this plan with all staff during this pandemic as we are all experiencing a crisis in one way or another and reviewing the plan every six months. The Wellness Action Plan is a useful tool to help identify what impacts our mental health and what keeps us resilient. It enables conversations to take place about mental health and challenge stigma in the workplace. Wishing you wellness and comfort throughout December. Best wishes, Fiona For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Throughout October FD Consultants will be looking at the impact COVID-19 has had on all of us in one way or another. We’ll be focussing on our new webinar service entitled “Living in uncertain times”, sharing tips on how we can all look after ourselves, exploring the positives of living with Coronavirus, and the impact it may have on our future. In last week’s blog we talked about challenges people were facing, this week we’re going to look at resources we can all implement to reduce our stress and anxiety levels.
FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. If you want to find out more request one of FD Consultants webinars to support your staff by emailing us at [email protected] Date: Oct 2020 Author: Maddie Nixon (Associate for FD Consultants) Throughout September FD Consultants want to highlight the impact of negative thinking, which often gets activated when we are stressed. In this week’s blog we look at a mindfulness approach to letting go of negative thoughts which entails accepting the presence of these thoughts, and, as best you can, simply letting go of them. It is easy to get swept away by our thoughts, especially in the face of strong emotions. We get stuck ruminating and dwelling about the past, filled with guilt or regret. Our minds start racing and we cannot stop worrying about the future and imagining all the things that could go wrong. Or we replay conversations repeatedly in our heads, trying to make sense of them or figure out what we could have said differently. When our minds get going like this, not only is it exhausting; these patterns of thinking tend to make us feel bad, intensifying the emotions we are already feeling and generating additional negative emotions as well. Because this experience is so unpleasant, it is natural to want these thoughts to stop, and to be able to prevent yourself from even having them in the first place. We often wind up trying to make these thoughts go away and shut them out completely. But just like we cannot control our emotions or suppress our emotions, neither can we control or suppress our thoughts. So, what can we do when our thoughts start racing, we get stuck ruminating, or we just cannot quiet down our minds? One way of approaching negative and disruptive thinking is to examine our thoughts and see if there are some alternative ways of thinking about the situation. One approach is to bring mindfulness to our thoughts and learn how to just let go of them. “We do not need to fight with thoughts or struggle against them or judge them. Rather, we can simply choose not to follow the thoughts once we are aware that they have arisen,” write Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, John D. Teasdale and Jon Kabatt-Zinn in their book The Mindful Way Through Depression, about the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) approach to depression. Mindfully letting go of thoughts is something we learn to do when we meditate. Many people think meditation involves having a blank mind completely void of any thoughts. However, in mindfulness meditation, the idea is not to shut out thoughts altogether, but simply to not allow yourself to get carried away by your thoughts. In mindfulness meditation of the breath, for example, we bring our attention to our breath, and try, as best we can, to keep our attention focused on our breath. Despite our intentions, our mind inevitably does wander from the breath, and we start thinking. For a guided meditation please click here When this happens, we simply acknowledge that our attention has wandered to our thoughts, and then let go of those thoughts and return our attention to our breath. And when our mind wanders again and we start thinking about something else, once again we acknowledge our thoughts, let go of them, and return our attention to our breath. Just as we learn to repeatedly let go of our thoughts and return our attention to our breath when we meditate, we can do the same thing as we go about our everyday life. When we practice letting go of thoughts in everyday life, we don’t always need to return our attention to the breath (though taking a breathing time out or returning to the breath for a few moments is always a great way to relieve stress). Instead, we can let go of a thought and return our attention to the work we were doing, or the book we were reading, or the person we were talking to, or whatever else we were doing when our thoughts began to steal our attention. Another way we can let go of a thought is to refocus our attention from our thoughts to our senses: the taste of the food we’re eating, the sound of the music we’re listening to; the sights around us; or the sensations of our feet striking the ground as we walk. Letting go of thoughts is as simple as acknowledging that our mind is off thinking about something other than the present moment, and then allowing that thought to pass out of our mind as we return our attention to whatever it is we are doing and whatever is going on in the present. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Please do contact us at [email protected] if you require our psychological support services, either as an individual or organisation. |
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