Mental Health at Work: What Real Support Looks Like

In this episode of the Inner Space podcast, Nisha is joined by Jo of Calerae to explore something that is often spoken about but rarely implemented properly in workplaces - mental health culture.

We discuss what it actually means to support mental health in a corporate or organisational setting, whether that’s a small team or a large company, and why so many current approaches stop at surface-level “wellness initiatives” that don’t create real change.

Mental health in the workplace is not about ticking a box once a year, or offering a wellbeing day here and there. It’s about how people are actually supported, seen, and held within the culture of the organisation every single day.

We also look at why mental health at work is not just an employee issue - but a leadership and culture issue that needs to be addressed at the root.

This conversation is for anyone in leadership, HR, or business ownership who knows that something needs to shift, but isn’t sure what that actually looks like in practice.

Ways to Work With Us

If you’re an employer or organisation looking to move beyond box-ticking approaches and genuinely implement healthier mental health practices in your workplace, you can get in touch with Nisha and Jo to explore how we can support you in building a more sustainable and conscious work culture.

Work With Me: Request Your Consultation Call 

With With Jo

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Podcast. I'm your host Misha and this is a space where we explore the inner world that shapes how we live, how we work, and how we show up in our lives. Today's conversation is a really important one, particularly for anyone who's working within an organization, whether it's a small business or a big corporate entity, and is also interested in the future of workplace well-being. I'm joined today by Jo of Calleray, who's the founder and who works within the corporate wellness space, supporting organisations to think more intentionally about the well-being of their teams. Together we're going to explore the current landscape of mental health in the workplace, what's working, what isn't, and many of the approaches that we still see today that feel very tick box exercising. We'll also be looking at what real, meaningful and sustainable mental health support in the workplace actually looks like, why it matters not just for employers and employees but for the success of the organisations themselves, and how companies can begin moving beyond surface-level well-being initiatives towards something that genuinely supports people at the heart of their business. Jo, one of the biggest misconceptions around workplace mental health is that an individual issue is one for the employee to manage themselves. But it's not, is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

No, absolutely not. And it does continue to be pushed back on people. But what I find from my own personal experience and talking extensively to others is that actually the our well-being, because everyone's focused on that at the moment, isn't it? But our well-being is it's simply that's what comes out of the structure that we live in. So it's it's about the the structures and the foundations and the rhythm and flow and processes and all that stuff that we do every day that it shows in our well-being. It's not a that comes out, the well-being's at the top, and then we can fix it once it comes out. It's kind of a misconception completely.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Yeah, so maybe like you say, it's structural. Things like unclear work expectations, chronic um overload, pressure, the lack of psychological safety. Because you can't meditate your work out of a toxic workload, can you?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

You absolutely can't, and my own personal experience of burnout in the workplace was that I was in a place where the workload was too high, my health was suffering, I already had a known um issue with ME, and I flagged that at work. Um, I needed some changes to happen, and instead, you get the workplace doesn't change, it's kind of a fixed, immovable object, and you get sent off to occupational health who try to fix you and then dispatch you back into the exact same environment that caused the issues in the first place. It doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

And is that why you started calorie?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, it took a while to get absolutely there's a long road back of recovery because I did properly burn out and a huge ME relapse. Yeah, but yeah, when you come out the other side, you start questioning so what happened? Um, actually, you know, an 80s girl, we were told we could have everything, and I went after everything in its fullest um the job, and then eventually Matt married, and we had the kids, and we were told we could have it all as long as you just made it all work, and then it didn't work. Yeah, and having eventually come out of that, it's a me problem and the guilt that goes with a burnout. Yeah, you come out the other side and realise actually that's not the case at all.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Right, because it it sounds from what you said, it's it's quite pervasive as well. It's not just a oh, I'm not good at my job, but it can also affect a a person's sense of self, their esteem, their confidence, their worth. Because we live in a world where your work is everything, your job is everything, or it should be.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Do you know I go one step further? I lost part of my identity.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

I literally, who was I without that job? I'd been 25 years working corporately, and everyone asked you, don't they? Oh, what do you do? Yeah, actually, I I nothing at the moment, I'm just recovering.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

You know, that's that's not a good place to be when you've been, oh you know, I'm international manager at JLR and I do this and I do that to go to my identity went just straight. I was someone's mum. That was pretty much it for a while.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Which should be in and of itself incredible.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Which is great. Yeah, all mums end up with no name and just being so-and-so's mum. Yeah, that's fine, but I didn't have the other side of that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

And I can identify with what you say, it becomes a title. I remember when I worked in law and I was I'm Nisha the lawyer. Yes, right. It carried so much more weight than I'm a woman who trusts herself, is confident, I want to enjoy my life. Yeah, none of that matters. What you do is who you are. Yes, and it's this shame that we live in a in a world where we should just be who we are. And now people ask me, I say, I'm Nisha. Oh, what do you do? I'm like, Well, I do lots of things, right? But it's not my job, it's not my identity anymore. And I wonder if you feel the same.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Yeah, it well, it's far more now, isn't it? My job is now a passion, which is not an identity. It kind of comes from deep in here, doesn't it? The passion. So yeah, it it has changed, but it is you still get asked, don't you? It's still hi, what's your name? What do you do? Literally, that they fall in that rhythm, don't they? We still hold a lot of credence by the job that people do.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Absolutely, yeah. Because these mental health initiatives that we see in corporate structures, and I again when I say corporate, I I can also mean small business, any kind of company, they're very reactive. Yes, right, rather than proactive, where employees are expected to cope until, like with your situation, you reach that point of burnout, you cannot go on, and then they step in.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yes, so so you find that occupational health and mental health, all of that lovely stuff, is a reactive thing to the problem that's been solved. Yeah, where I've pitched my work now is actually the proactive part of creating work design that means that human capacity is designed into it. Yeah. So from a you know, the best way that I could describe it to corporates is that you already know how to do this, guys. Because go and talk to your systems, guys. I can guarantee you that we know how to design capacity, yeah, because every IT system in there is designed beautifully, yeah. And they don't expect it to work over the processing speed, they don't expect it to work without the beautiful conditioned environments that keep it at the right temperature, they don't expect it to work without maintenance windows, without downtime, without upgrades, and then we turn to the workforce and there's nothing there. Yeah, nothing there to look after the capacity, it's simply the outputs they're looking for, they're not looking for any of the inputs.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah. So when you talk about capacity, because I I talk about capacity building in my work, but more of a the capacity to build, to be with yourself, be present with yourself, your emotions. Is yours similar to that or different?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

It's kind of similar, so it's so sustainable human capacity is what I say I do, and everyone has no idea what that means, and that's absolutely fine. Um, human capacity, the way that I've come up with it and the diagnostic lanes that I use now, it's three things, and and that probably sounds far too simplistic, but that's where my brain goes.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

But as humans we overcomplicate things, so simple is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need simple, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

No, I first looked for a good well-being model when I started out and couldn't find one that wasn't nine, nine, nine long, and then it went into detail. So simply, if you look after your body, and this amazing thing we've all been given to take us through our lives, if you have a good outlook on life, and if you have really good connections, that takes care of your capacity. That is it, it is as simple as that.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Yeah, amazing. What does that look like then when you deliver workshops or work one-to-one?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

So it always starts with removing the guilt. Like you said in me. Felt very guilty for burning out, not being able to cope. It's always sin, as you said, it's a personal trait. It's like a personality trait that inability to cope, it's absolutely not. Um, so it's always the starting off with understanding how we've got here. So actually, it's only taken two generations, which is kind of scary. Yeah. Two generations to undermine the foundations of everything that supports our well-being. So, you know, two generations ago, look at my grandparents, um, they had a rhythm and a flow to life, they had that connection around, their social life was incredible materialistically. Can I just point out nothing? Because you know, coming out of a war, materialistic things weren't a big deal. Um, but they had the connectivity, their outlook was incredibly strong. Work was something they did for eight hours a day. I I can't say that what they had was jobs that gave them a great feeling of fulfilment. You know, my grandad worked down the mines and then he worked in a factory, did whatever he needed to, but it was a very contained space during his week that he went and he did his work and there were structure breaks in it, and then he came home. This revolutionary concept of coming home from work, and work was left in the workplace and never thought of again. So, you know, their outlook was amazing, their connection was good, and they naturally looked after their body because we didn't have all these amazing labour-saving devices, and things didn't get delivered to the door. It's meant to free up our time, isn't it? I'm just not noticing the time that it's given me back, if I'm perfectly honest. I feel like my days are still full. So two generations ago, we had the foundations, and then we, you know, I always explain it as a Jenga block, um, which I do demonstrate in my workshops. It's really scary trying to pull those blocks out without toppling the home. The pressure's intense, I tell you. But you literally start off with quite a stable Jenga tail that you can kind of poke and prod and move. You don't want to do too much, but it's there. But then we take blocks out, so we take blocks out for the work used to be work, and rest used to be rest, and we weren't switched on to the entire world. You know, we could both just pull out our phones now, and we'd know every bad thing that's going on in every country right now. If we looked hard enough, we don't have the capacity for that anymore, so you kind of take this out and end up with this really, really wobbly tower with lots of gaps, and then so we talk through that, and people get that all right, I get it, in terms of what we do next, and then we talk about so what have you tried? And of course, there's these initiatives that come up, and they're brilliant. I have no idea against a well-being initiative at all, except we layer them on top of this incredibly wobbly Jenga tower of well-being foundations and human capacity foundations, and then we wonder why it just makes the whole tower wobble even more. So we start out with things that actually can be incredibly good, but they have to go in the right place.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yeah, because the foundations aren't stable enough to sustain it.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Generally, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

I I've heard of in corporate um yoga classes, mindfulness apps, people coming in, but one mental health day does not solve everybody's burnout, overwork, their capacity work capacity, workloads, the pressures. We need more of that to be ingrained as a solid, stable structure in and of itself in the workplace, right? Because these initiatives they can't compensate for unhealthy systems. No, we can't just have a you know, it can't be a ratio of like 99 to one. Well, 99 bad to one, you always say bad, 99 of one um very intense thing at work to one good thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yes, yeah. So the worst I've heard of is a workplace put um a massage chair in the office so that when things got too bad, they could just go and pot and solve over for 10 minutes, sort themselves out and get back to it. Literally the worst well-being initiative I've heard of. On those like vibrating yeah, no, because that was gonna solve it apparently. But you're absolutely right, well being day, you know, who doesn't love an extra day off? Of course, we all love an extra day off. So well being day is great. Yeah, and you walk away and you feel good for the day. Yeah, but I always go though, what changes on Monday? Yeah, what changes? You come back into the workplace, you're feeling a bit, and how long does it take? You know, I used to remember two, three-week holidays, you come back what, ten minutes, half an hour if you're lucky, and it's like it never happened.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Yes, but you never left.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Yeah, that'll be the one.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Yeah, because they don't address the systemic causes of things like over um ridiculously high workloads or poor communication or a lack of autonomy.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

No, no, they don't address any of that. And there's a there's a m misconception. Is it misconception or is it a misunderstanding of human capacity? So unlike a machine that we know runs at a certain gigabytes of stuff and they do this and that, and they're fixed, you try to go above that, it's done. We as humans are absolutely amazing because we have a capacity, but in an emergency we can step that capacity up. So we know that we have you know, people, teams of people, if there's an emergency, can work for days without sleep. It's absolutely incredible. You know, there's something going on. If there's a friend in need, you'll do a full day's work and something, and you've already been on the go 14 hours, and still you're around there, you're sorting it out, you're helping, you're supporting. So we know as humans we can step up. The problem is we're designed to step up to deal with the emergency, and then we need to step back down and we need to recover. Yeah, that's the bit that's being missed. So you see, you know, the perfect example is you've got a team of five, somebody goes off. The four step up management go, amazing, cost saving, we've now decided that that's a team of four. We're gonna bank that head count and anything, thank you very much. Yeah, what you've now got is four people working above capacity full-time, and it's that sustained high-level capacity that is causing us to push into what I'm calling modern survival mode. Yeah, so I always think of survival mode as like clinging to the edge of a rock while the waves lap up your ankles and stuff. It's not like that anymore, but it's just that constant every day is just you're barely surviving because your capacity is stretched so far.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yeah. Well, I'd argue for some people that clinging to a rock is their new baseline. Yes. Right? Like you say, we step up into survival, we have to step back down.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

And rest and recover. People don't step down. We live our lives in that step up, and then what we try and do to be even more productive is we'll try and step up even higher.

unknown 14:52

Right?

SPEAKER_02 14:52

And we're hanging from this rock face with just like, you know, two fingers, you've seen these incredibly strong people on the internet that are just like rock climbing like with a fing finger or something. That's what people are trying to, I think, train themselves to do because your productivity, your performance, we got it wrong somewhere that that becomes your value. The more you can do, the better a person you are. Yes. And that's not true.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

No, we've relabeled it resilience, didn't we?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

We did. We did.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

We call it resilience. So if you're not able to work above capacity all the time, you're not resilient. So actually, resilience is being able to step up when needed, back down and recover, and up when that's resilience. Resilience is being able to do that time and time again. We've kind of got it a little bit wrong.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Yeah, yeah. So I have a stat here to show the impact that one in five employees experience mental health issues at work, but fewer than half feel supported by their employer. And I have I've worked with a lot of clients. A big part of my work with clients is work stress, whether it's people who work in business, own their own business, or they work in a corporate role, right? And they another misconception, I think, is that um employers or managers are trained to work in mental health or to understand and to spot the signs, right? But they're not always, and I think, in fairness to them, if they've not been trained, they don't know how to do it, but it has to be part of the role. Again, this is where the systemic culture of work comes in. That you can't be a manager and overlook. Well, you're managing people, people are human beings, not human doings, they're human beings. So there needs to be a level of of serious training that goes into this as well to spot the signs of when is someone burning out, is this a fair workload capacity? Not a quick phone call of this has come through, can you handle it? Yeah, I know it's five o'clock on a Friday, but I need you to do this, right? Wouldn't it be amazing if if the culture was, well, actually, you know what? It's Friday, I'll take this off and I can give it to somebody else because their workload has evened up. Right. And actually, let's just do less, or we'll do it in a sustainable way. I think is really important.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Yeah, I completely agree. And actually the the bit the managers are missing is work's getting dropped because people are going off, they are working at lower productivity levels than they would do if their capacity they were working within capacity. Yeah. Fluff that. Um but but actually it's they're leaving it to the individuals to work out which bits of work to drop. And sometimes they don't even work it out, they just drop it because they literally run out of steam. Yeah I think it would be much better if managers and lead leaders were able to go, so we have 200 things that need to get done, we have the workforce to to do 180, let's sit and look at the 20 that we can drop instead of let's give them the 200 and see which ones break them.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, to me that's the manager's leader's role to actually sit and go, Yeah, we need to put your big boy pants on and you need to come to the table and work out what that looks like.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Yeah. And actually, I wonder if this is my hot take for this episode is that mental health in the workplace isn't a well-being issue, it's a leadership issue.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

So I always I draw, I call it my well-being tree, because we love trees. So I always draw with the roots at the bottom of being outlook, body, and connection. Yeah. And then the leaves being the productivity and the creativity, and isn't that lovely? The trunk.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Always leadership.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

It's absolutely the thing that holds it all up.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Yeah. And and leadership isn't people being perfect, but it's stepping up when conversations need to be had to feel confident enough to be able to say, you know what, something's got to change here, how can I help you?

unknown 18:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Right? Staying calm. Okay, that's alright, something hit the fan, don't worry about it. But what do you need from me? How can I help you? How can I support you as an integral um talking to the employee but as an integral uh part of this business? What is it that you need that I can support you with?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Yeah, there seems to be I've noticed a shift from to be a manager was a job in its own right, and then we we kind of call them leaders, more than managers now. But actually managing people is an incredible skill. Yeah. To be able to sit and to notice and to work out what people are really good at and match the jobs and and and then be with them in a room is so important because you pick up the vibe of is someone okay? Are they not looking right? Is there something off with them? I think the online world has definitely taken away some of that ability to instinctively know you can't write it in a process, can you? No. I can't I can't process out how you're gonna spot this thing, but I'm gonna sit in this room and I'm gonna know that you're not right, and we need to chat.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Absolutely, yeah. Because I think when organisations get this right, not only do they reduce burnout, but there is an element of creativity that gets unlocked. Right? That element of creativity gets unlocked where you're not just working through that survival mode, but you have the space to sit and think, right, we want to create this amazing thing, get everybody in a room together. Let's all um hit the drawing board, right? That was where the phrase came from. We're all gonna just sit together and see what comes out of this incredible melting pot of different creativities and mindsets and views on things. Yeah, right. This is and um I think this is where um big tech corps in Silicon Valley in the States. There's something to be said, but what I will say is that they they do something really good in their employee well-being, right? Nap pods, free food and drink. It's it's so comfortable for their employees because they know that it's important that people feel um cared for and kept and and it's sustainable as a practice.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Absolutely. Well, you'll know. I'm the same. If I'm sitting and I'm not working on something, when's the time that that answer comes? Yeah, it's not when you're sitting there pushing for the answer, it's when I've gone to the gym, it's when I'm in the shower, it's when I'm walking up the stairs. Yeah, it's when your brain is just ticking away really quietly, nothing you know, just enough to distract it in front of it, but there's this bit at the back where the creativity goes, ah, look, and it makes all the connections. Yeah, if you're every day overloaded by produce, produce, produce, produce, produce no downtime, no rest time, there's never that chance for that part of the brain. But it's the uh it's the hidden cost, isn't it? It's unknown. Yeah, because we can look at burnout costs, and you know, I've seen 97 million pounds or whatever it is that we're busting through every year, and you can say attrition rates, or we can put a figure on that, and you can do right, our productivity seems to be down, our profits down. We can put figures on all that stuff. Yeah, can't put a figure on creativity because you just don't know what would happen. So for me, that is the real hidden gem in all of this. You go after. nutrition and productivity and stuff and you come out with creativity.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Yeah. Absolutely. And as you were saying that, I was thinking about how many of my like bright ideas, these amazing ideas I've had to my business have come from when I'm taking Nana for a walk. Right? Oh yeah. And I'm thinking, I'm wanting to walk thinking, where's my notebook? I need to write these down. And I leave my phone at home because I don't want to be disturbed. I want us to do a solid, you know, arrow walk and then I'm thinking oh yeah this is amazing. And like you say it unlocks something. There is an energy that comes from being able to step away, see the bigger picture and and the the mind's an incredible thing. It doesn't need more productivity. It doesn't need to be doing more. It needs to be stepping back and allowing it to do its thing right it's we're not machines. We're not built for this level of productivity but creating things and how many incredible things have come from creative processes where people have stepped back. Right? We call them artists now and we don't give them enough credit. Absolutely right we it's a dying thing oh artist creativity now we don't need it. AI tech we need all of this stuff. We need to be building more doing more right instead of stepping back and being able to to give us the space we deserve to create something important and something sustainable as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Absolutely well all this tech is programmed by us. So if we haven't got the creativity to program it to tell it what to do then then it can't come up with stuff on its own. It's limited by that whereas we're not actually limited by that we're kind of unlimited. We might not be able to process data at the same speed but we can absolutely come left field right field any which way look at a problem a different way have a moment of hindsight be talking to someone and the back of your brain goes oh that's what I was looking at the other day and now they've just said that I can see that from this different we're amazing in some things and we need to be left to do those amazing things. Yeah absolutely that space is just so important it's so important for a lot of things I after my baby had open heart surgery I held the grief for three months after until he was big enough well enough able to go into the crash at the gym yeah and it was I walked into the gym and I got on the walking machine and just the floods of tears the floods for three months I'd held it and it was I had space I had time and I had I'm in the middle of the gym it's not a great place to do it but that was when my brain was able to process it. So those moments of space yes creativity for processing for all the things we need to do are so important.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Yeah absolutely and as you say that I'm thinking about some people who perhaps that space away can feel in safe because the question might be especially for people who are very um capable very good at getting things done if they step back and say I I can I can hear you know um people I've worked with and recognise that um that well what happens if I take a step back what's going to happen to me because it's not driven by productivity anymore there's no outpour I have nothing to show for who I am as a person but like we said in the beginning your identity well who am I then? Yeah but you get to be you yes and you get to honour that journey of what does that look like who are you really underneath the performing um the perfectionism the people pleasing those horrible three P's right that we all we all try and nail ourselves to that cross um we get to like you say go on this incredible journey of exploring ourselves our creativity and what that looks like yeah yeah because you know we're unique we're absolutely unique so at the end of life you know what is the point of being here if you're not exploring who you are and being who you are and bringing that out there to the table you know when this is humanity it's great we've got this opportunity don't we?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah absolutely yeah and you're absolutely right about like capable people generally you'll find that the people that do burnout are the most capable because the ones they're the ones that are noticing something needs doing they're the ones that are noticing that something's been dropped they're the ones that are looking and going oh if I just did that and they're stepping up and stepping up and stepping up and stepping up and stepping up whereas someone who maybe isn't quite as capable isn't noticing or isn't feeling the need so you find actually the people who are burning out get kind of stuck in this capability trap where just because they can they do.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Yeah or just one more thing or let me just do this one on just one more thing I love that phrase I'm embarrassed to I can't even tell you how many times I've said I just one more thing let me just like I just tweak this one thing or just write this down. Yeah it's still gonna be there yeah it's the workload will never end no the list will it will keep going all right we'll get rid of one thing something else two more things will come on the list and the key is stepping away from that yes to have this healthy work life balance.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Yeah all right um because the cost of it turnover disengagement lack of productivity is huge it's massive and it's growing yeah and you know it's growing because everywhere you look now employees employers are putting lovely posts you know see loads of posts on LinkedIn about the days they've had and the events they've run and the initiatives and and and people love it in the moment and then they go back to the normal workplace but employers are clearly seeing the issues and they're trying to fix it. Yeah I think or they're tick boxing depending on which survey you look at but they're trying to fix it. They know it's an issue they can see it's an issue they can see the figures yeah but they're not actually coming at it the right way.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

No. And even with these um like mental health days off or retreats or whatever it might be the work I I remember when I was in in corporate law that I remember thinking oh great we've got this team building day but my workload's not going down. I'd rather have less workload and no team building than team building and because you can't be a team with people when you don't see them because you locked yourself in the office for 14 hours a day trying to get through all your your client stuff and then your billing and your performance is monitored in that way.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

Yeah and it's actually got worse than that. So I dealing with companies there are some companies that are brilliant they've stepped up and they have wellbeing managers great and there are some companies that don't want to go down that route so they offer their employees an opportunity to take on a wellbeing role in addition to what they're already doing. Right. For no remuneration for no days off for no added benefits? No they're just allowed to take it up and they do take it up because it's something that's very close to their heart. Yeah um and to start with I'm sure that the buzz they get back yeah from doing that stuff as we all know you feed your soul you get the energy makes you feel amazing.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

The human element of creativity and connection that passion is what drives us.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah yeah and and empowerment because they're able to come out and actually do something in that space that's clearly been draining them. But again that canoe you go on for so long that can't be the long term answer. Yeah so yeah I think we'll find that quite a lot of wellbeing people are actually going to find themselves burning out it needs to be a separate role of course it's not another it's another workload.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Yeah yeah well wellbeing for me kind of sits alongside HR so HR is about creating the boxes and then matching the right people to the boxes wellbeing is about looking after the names in the box yeah absolutely because at this point that sustainability will be the superficiality of it all try that again superficiality is that a word my brain just went I remember the words but I don't know okay so at this point sustainability in the workplace will be how superficial it looks in this tick box exercise because the short term perks can't outweigh the long term outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

No absolutely not so one small but targeted move to create sustainability will outweigh a hundred wellbeing initiatives absolutely one small thing you know even if it's just go home on time even if it's just we're gonna definitely break and we're going to ask you what's wrong if you're still sitting at your desk working during the lunch break and even if it's just those tiny things I often find working with people it's the small it's the nudges that just nudge that sustainability that capacity something that's possible to do regularly and often and every day and everyone gets on board with it just creates just a little bit of space it doesn't take much us humans are incredible just release that pressure a tiny bit and we've got room to breathe again.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Absolutely yeah because mental health mental health literacy is everybody's responsibility it's not just for HR managers but it needs to be a mindset that's embedded within the company so like you have your finance department and you have your tech comp your tech division and you have you need to then also have like you have your physical first aid you need your mental health your wellbeing pillar that's going to hold up the foundations of that company as well and I'm a small business owner you are as well why would we not want that I I know that if I had employees I would want to make sure that they're I mean being being a therapist because I'm 100% obligated in that way anyway that even if I didn't work in the mental health field right in health and wellbeing field I would still want my employees to feel this sense of you know what she she gets me she understands I can take this time off and not feel guilty for it and um know that I'm fully supported because that's what we want to feel supported to feel acknowledged for the work that we've done not for the output but I'm a valuable uh asset to this company for being me for my creativity for how I see things.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Absolutely because that goes back to the the three core you know that's connection isn't it that's your outlook you get praise and you go oh okay I might be I might actually be good then I just said I'm good I might be good reframes the whole way you get that connection someone notices you it's amazing it builds you up. Dopamine hit right there and then absolutely there's nothing like it is there so you want a bit more of that then yeah but that's actually the it's kind of the meaning of life isn't it that that feeling of validation of being here of of of being worthwhile and and being seen it's completely the reason for it so yeah if you want to enforce that capacity if you want to get the best out of people if you want the productivity and the creativity then yeah you have to have to go in and and do that human bit.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Yeah absolutely and it's I think it is like you say it's human it's foundational to who we are we want that why why would and I say why would we not but then I'm also reminding myself that that's how we've worked for for decades.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

It's got to the it did get to the point and I don't know if it's moved on too much that actually being human is seen as a weakness. Yeah okay but actually we're humans the whole point of having a business is because of humans you know we sell to humans we make it by humans that the everything is human so to them go the core foundation of the business is just going to be put to one side as meaningless is an interesting place to be and it's kind of the whole thing was well we'll take all the productivity we want all the good stuff but the balancing side of it we don't want that so you're just gonna need to leave that somewhere else yeah it's an interesting concept because the whole person walks into the workplace the whole person turns up it's the whole person who delivers or not yeah and there is a huge benefit in employers changing the way they see things right wouldn't it be amazing that employees applied for a role as a candidate for any position that comes up and says you know I want to work for them because I know their mental health is really good.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

I know that they have these incredible benefits to working here. It's not just the money it's not just the the salary of the time off but it means that I get to be seen for who I am there and they value my my creativity they value who I am. Yeah right be one of those employers.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Absolutely well the cut and the cold hard bottom line statistics which businesses love already support that. We already know that attrition rises in companies that don't look after their employees and we know that attrition's not particular levels good but a high level is not good. Yeah and we know that productivity's low and we know that loads of surveys show that it's the person's manager that makes the biggest difference in their life you know I've worked for good bad and indifferent over the years and the good ones you've got that little bit of extra fire you've got that little bit of I want to get a really good job because when I turn up they're gonna see me. Yeah and and I'm gonna feel good that I did a really good job and then they've seen that I've done a really good job you get that extra push don't you?

SPEAKER_02 34:50

Whereas a manager who's just gonna come down on you good bad or otherwise why bother exactly yeah and in fact you don't want to do a good job then because you know the next time you do they're just gonna throw a stack of papers at your way and say all right here's another boof here's another workload of stuff to do and slam it down your desk and they go.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Yeah no about time you should have I expected you to finish that yesterday let's move on yeah no one's gonna keep coming back for that aren't they so then you get people turning up and just going through the motions and then the productivity goes you've got zero chance of creativity at that point. I had a client a few months ago and she went for a new job and she was really excited for it and the first day there was no induction process she just got chucked in the deep end um she was clear there was one day we she couldn't work because she was volunteering and she made that really clear in the interview they were like yeah yeah don't worry about it's fine like great volunteer um they had it nowhere on their records that she volunteered so when she didn't turn up on that day they were sent her a barrage of awful messages and voicemails why are you not here you should be working and when she reminded them and they said oh okay fine um but you need to make up your hours in at night then and expected her to work from like eight to the early hours and and we had a a a conversation about it and ultimately she she left right within the week because she didn't want that for herself and then I was thinking about the the values of that company but nobody employees don't want that for themselves we people are waking up to being able to pick and choose what they want to do for work their creativity their output um and there aren't going to be people left to do those in those roles employers can't fill those places if nobody wants to be in there things have to change yeah yeah things have to change they have to change because it's been two generations and we've removed everything we've tried to take humanity out of the workplace we're trying to pretend AI is going to be able to produce replace the human brain the human soul the human gut the human everything that we bring to the workplace and actually this new AI layer of faster quicker you know more efficient that's coming in is hitting a workforce which is critical to holding up these AI systems. You can't have AI running a business sat there in entirety on its own doing its own thing we still need the workforce around it but this workforce now is at breaking point we've got a design crisis in the workplace that literally more and more people are at breaking point and some of them are being quiet some of them are having to pull their hands up but it's there everywhere you look you can see it in people's faces because actually it's not just the workplace is it outside of work has also accelerated and the foundations have been removed so we've got people who are now on the edge and we're gonna ask them to be faster and quicker and remove even more of those things those bricks in that Jenga thing and it's gonna fall and we're at a critical point now where it's sort of that last that generation if you like we need to pull things back because if it keeps going that way as a society people are going to be more you know this work from home home culture is wonderful but it's also very isolating we cannot keep heading down that road people aren't going to have any kind of connection they're not going to know how to I know some young people who don't know how to hold a conversation because they grew up in an era where everything was smartphone this smartphone and that and we need to as a society pull this back for the longevity of um community of understanding each other of being human. Yes right yeah now I can no question I don't think there's any question at all and I think you're right you know we we still remember what it was like to work in walk into a workplace and sit and chat and converse and you know team meetings were seen as a really important part of the day you know I'm of the ilk and era of Friday afternoons in the pub with the team which was frowned upon and and that was outlawed but actually that Friday afternoon was a really important part of the week where we'd all take a big sigh of relief and we'd breathe and we'd connect and we'd rip each other apart and laugh at each other and we'd do all of that good stuff and finish the week off and we'd be ready from under eight and we'd then work really hard because we were in the right space and yeah we'd we'd been fulfilled and seen and recognised and and that thing got saw as a bad thing it was bad for productivity you should be sitting producing work all the time so what you end up with was lower product productivity but over a longer period of time instead of very high productivity with a recovery period. Yes these like interval sprints if you like is the way it should be absolutely and that matches our biological way you know let's be serious deep down we're still cavemen we're still actually designed to hunt for food eat and rest yeah and our body works on nice predictable cycles like that where we step up we get the reward we rest and we do it again so it it it wrongly got seen as reducing productivity instead of actually for the thing that it was which was increasing productivity yes over shorter period of time but actually you still got more out.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Yeah yeah so the World Health Organization The Who did a study and they estimate that for every one pound just a pound invested in mental health support at work employers will see a four pound improved productivity in health outcomes one for four. Yep. That's an incredibly low ratio but it's also a very simple one and it begs the question why is this not being implemented more and more and more why do we need one mental health day a year? What would that look like if we implemented even like the working week which is a whole different other conversation but if we did like a three or four day working week it would change things I remember when the I think the paper came out a few years ago the um the bill about whether this should be um considered yes everybody was so happy across the nation everybody could not oh my gosh yeah we get a forward that alone there was so much hype there was so much excitement about it you don't need a vote to see whether that's going to be accepted or not you could tell by the reaction of people you know what this is what is needed give the people what they need because it is important if it's going to make us happier we're gonna be more productive we look at countries um like is it Denmark Norway they the Scandinavian countries they have a I think four day working week some of them their productivity is incredible yeah right and and more and more countries are doing this but it needs to be implemented across the board and I think this is my plea from small business owner to small business owner try something like that.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Why not see what happens that's okay sorry gonna have to wait an emergency try it see what happens yes right be the company be the business owner that gets to say no we do a four day working week that's it you get a three day weekend as standard that's pretty awesome I would work for that company yeah but it's back to putting your big boy pants on isn't it or big girl pants big girl pants yeah well you know I don't know why I go boy I always do yeah it's about to be your big grown-up pants on then isn't it it's about taking a risk yeah and and seeing what happens being it might go wrong is the thing and they're sitting there thinking that it might go wrong because it's the we always go after the tangibles don't they I remember going through a period of time where they needed to reduce costs so you could only get a new pencil if you took the stub of your current pencil to the stationary office and showed them how small it was because it's tangible and you can sit and go look I made cost savings. We're not wasting money on stationery anymore because people are bringing they always go after the low hanging fruit don't they? The problem is the low hanging fruit doesn't necessarily get you the foundation of the fruit it's not the best quality it also doesn't set you up for next season it doesn't see you through the winter it's a low-hanging fruit and I I see time and time again when it comes to people humans they go after the low hanging fruit and the stuff that's very visible and very they can stand and go look fruit we've got it we've done it ticked box exactly yeah and it's it's exactly the same reason comms was my last role before I left corporate role that everyone sent emails I tried my hardest to go oh actually you might want to go and talk to people because you want them to action this yeah we don't do that anymore. No or go you know revolutionary we're still in offices at this time so it's like just go and pop in and say to them or could I could I join your team meeting for five minutes and just talk you through because I'd really like you to do X. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

I don't know I'll just send an email or not we'll just do a teams a quick teams um nudge Whatever it is, but there's that over there rather than getting up. I'm just gonna sometimes fine, I I get it, but um, like you say, but there's a risk, sure. But take that risk. There's a fear, what if it fails? But what if it doesn't? What if you get to be that change in the industry and it starts off small?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

But I think it kind of circles back to it's about being able to prove and ask covering, if I'm perfectly honest. So the reason why everyone wanted to send an email was because they could say when the thing didn't happen that they wanted people to do and it all went wrong, that person went sent an email. The system said it went to 3,000 people. Yeah, only a thousand people read it. That's not my problem. If they choose to not read the information I've sent them, yeah, literally we're walking away. And and that's kind of the thing with well-being, isn't it? We're back to tick boxing, we're back to we're just gonna tick box, yeah. Because we've tick boxed and we can show it. We can put a lovely LinkedIn post up going, look what we've done, and isn't it amazing? We've just all had a well-being day. Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

It's funny because the amount of other corporates I used to meet when I worked in corporate, and I'd say, Oh, you had this like amazing retreat day, or this this new thing came out, and they're like, Oh, we didn't know about it, and vice versa. I'd be told, like, oh wow, like you know, this London borough of wherever is doing this incredible thing. I'm like, I have no idea. I'm too busy in court hearings trying to get cases done to know actually what's going on in the ground, right? Um, but you can't, I'm gonna just say you can't swap analysis, you'll weigh out of emotions. You can look at the risk, you can look at the finances, blah blah blah. But the most important thing is that if your employees are happy and they want to work in this company, that gives you all the information that you need. You just need one survey that says, yeah, 100%, we're happy to do our 30 hours in four days rather than the five. Yes. Right? Ultimately, that's the culture that we want to breed. That is the um that's a direction that we want to head into.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Yeah. Right? Yeah, would make bi more sense, wouldn't it? You do the 30, you've got lots of rest, lots of recovery.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Reduce turnover, you can increase costs, and you know, it's always better to retain than recruit, we know this. Absolutely. Um higher performance, more innovation, more creativity, like we say, happier workload, happier staff.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yep. Able to spend that time outside of those 30 hours getting that connection established with the right people.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Yeah, you attract more talent because you've got a company that people want to work for.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

You're not just having to um employ anybody, even if you know that they don't want the role. You get to pick and choose the the best minds in the industry for this. Even if you're a small business, you get to um it opens up doors. Yeah, just because you're a small business doesn't mean that you can't go for for bigger people. They might want to be, you know, these these um experts in the industry, they might want to go back to start working for a small business because it means they can expand and grow and it fills their cup as well. But if we don't have these conversations, if we don't open up these spaces, it's not gonna work. No one's gonna see what needs to be uncovered.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

No. No, and and I wonder whether part of the problem is they don't have the time because they're overcapacitated themselves. Yeah, yeah. So how do we how do we release the leaders in some of these companies to have the time to sit down and look at what's going on without their phones going on every two minutes without it beeping with emails because everyone wants to send them to get the read receipt? Um, the phone calls, the text messages, the how do we give them that space so that they can actually sit and look and work out well what would that look like?

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Well, something I'm I've started doing and working on is a project where by working with small businesses, going in and seeing what needs to be changed here, what do your employees, employees, what do your employees want? How can we ex um how can we expand that capacity, like you say, that that internal capacity? Yeah, how can we make them happier? Because it's difficult. I understand when you're in the midst of it all, you might need a fresh pair of ice to come in and say what's working, what's not, what do the people need?

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Well, just like every everything's got its own skill, doesn't it? So, you know, if you're running your car, I don't know how to run my car, I take it to a mechanic because I could open that bonnet and stand there and stare and scratch my head all day. I'm not actually gonna fix anything in there because I don't know anything about it. And yet somehow we all think that just knowing how humans work, even though we don't most people don't even understand how they work, let loan anyone else, interesting, isn't it? That that we'll just be able to manage it. So of course it makes sense to get in external people who know who know what they're doing and and have you know models. I use my three by three framework as a diagnostic tool, yeah, and run surveys off it so that instead of splattering well-being initiatives over the top of a crappy framework, yeah. Actually, what we do is identify the first place to start. You only need the first place. Yeah, start with the first place, put a couple of things in, watch this capacity rise. Brilliant, let's go again. Put it in, watch the capacity rise. You need someone who knows what they're doing instead of people who sit around and go, Right, I've got ten minutes, we've got to do something in this well-being space quickly, mental health. We stick one of those in, but we'll get let's go. Yeah, about seven emails and three phone calls. I need to go.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Rather than employees opening that email thing and oh, flipping it.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

Not another well-being email, but instead of oh my gosh, Friday, we get to take have you heard? We get Friday off. Amazing. Or we're actually we're gonna do this this group thing together, yeah, and we still get paid for it, and our workload isn't gonna increase, right? We get support. Yep. Get an expert in to support with this. Yeah. Because it's difficult being in the trenches, I totally get it. But it's gonna change, you've got to be the change that you want to see in.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

Absolutely, and we all we actually all know this because your social media feed will be full of adverts, just like mine. We do love them, do love those algorithms. Um, and there'll be people on there going, I've done this and it's changed my life. So, you know, say say I don't know, meditation. So someone's done meditation and it's absolutely changed their life. And you go, I want to change my life because you've seen the outcome, you go, Well, I really want the outcome. They've used that to get the outcome. Well, I'm gonna try meditation. Okay, brilliant, and it doesn't work for you. So then you get really grumpy at the meditation and go, meditation doesn't work. Well, actually, it does work because we all know anyone who's tried it knows how amazing you feel at the end of it. Um, and obviously it worked for her friends, so so we know it's not the meditation that's the problem. Using my diagnostic thing, if I found that actually what this person was suffering from was isolation, because they've just not got that connectivity out there, their meditation was never gonna work. What they need is they need some struct, they need to go and find that friend, that friend that's gonna listen to them, that friend that's gonna give them that connection. So for them, meditation's not the right answer. It's connection, it's connection. But unless you can sit and diagnose the issue, and you can, you can diagnose it in the same way you can look at anything else once you know what you're looking for, or you can diagnose it, you can then look for the right initiative to put in its place. It doesn't have to be life-changing, it doesn't have to be the most miraculous thing. If you right now your connection is low because you're suffering from loneliness, what you need is a really good night out with a friend, and that will instantly lift you and bring you back in a way that journaling and all the other good, well-being things we know about just won't do.

SPEAKER_02 51:31

Yeah, it's finding the right thing that needs to fill that gap. Yes, right, because being seen, being valued, it will increase employee loyalty. Of course it will. Of course it will. People will say, Oh, yeah, I'm happy to work here because I know that if I have a problem, it's gonna get solved. Someone's gonna help me through this. I'm not gonna be seen as a liability, I'm not gonna be seen as um oh god, that person who's got another sick day or she's got another problem. Right? We want to be valued and seen for um who we are, not just what we put out there.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Yeah, of course. And in the workplace, what's happening is D E and I is saying that it's the meditation that needs to be offered to everyone.

SPEAKER_02 52:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

And we've just talked about the fact that meditation will work for some but not for others. Yeah. But they're focusing on well, we'll just put I'm using meditation, it can be absolutely anything, in that space, and then we've ticked the well-being box. They need to take a step back and go, what we need to be offering to people is uh something that fits the issue that they're currently looking at. So they need to know the biggest issue they've got in their organisation right now. Yeah, is it that people's outlook? Is it they're not looking after themselves, are they just absolutely exhausted? What what's the thing? And then you look at that and then you can move because you can move really structured at that point, but you can tick box, you can tick boxes at that point and go, right, we've done something in that space and we've noticed a difference. But what's the next big space? Yeah, okay, let's go and do something in that space and then let's get the f right, okay. We seem to have got a bit more capacity back in that. Right, what's next? You can work through it in a really calm and logical way and pull in the right things, but at the moment, what they're doing is ticking boxes by putting the initiative in and assuming it'll fix everyone.

SPEAKER_02 53:10

Yeah, and that real having a real program will it will give a tangible impact, right? That's where your stats come in. Is oh we had no program before, employees were giving us 10, 15, 20% at the most, they weren't happy with this, that, and the other. We put this program in, we had somebody to come in, and it's not that everything has to be geared up um bespokely for every single employee. They don't need their own program. No, but it's enough that they're gonna feel valued and seen and it's gonna make that tangible difference. So then you can say, well, after three months, we tried this, productivity went up 98%. We got uh cle uh employee satisfaction went up 125%, we got this, this, and this, and we're hitting really high figures that are sustainable because we keep building on those practices. Going back to the beginning of the conversation, those foundations that we need they become a solid. We start building proper structures that are sustainable, that we carry through, and it will change everything. I've no doubt about it. Yeah, of course it will.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Or we have to start somewhere. Yes, we have to start somewhere, we absolutely have to start somewhere. And yes, when you start in the right place and when you put the right things in place, yes, we'll run the surveys. Of course, I always recommend you know, well-being is a shifting thing, isn't it? It changes, the environment changes, the world changes. You have to keep checking in and seeing where your weakness, where your thin spots are. But make the cleaning off my chain of thought.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

But make the outcomes measured, yeah. Don't just say we did it categorically, say we did it. This is the before, this was the after.

SPEAKER_01 54:49

This was the before, this was the after. I love it. But actually, do you know what you'll you won't even need the surveys because you'll walk in and you'll feel it. Feel the energy, you'll just feel it, yeah. You'll just know it's there, yeah. So definitely have the data to back it up because we love data and we need data, especially as business owners, accountants, take trainers. We we need to look and have that validation and know for sure, but it'll be more than that.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

Yeah, amazing, Joe. This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you. No, thank you for inviting me on. Of course, I have one last question for you. Your question can be a question itself, it can be a comment, something to leave our listeners with, something that is going to maybe give them a perspective shift, something that they can take away, think on, ponder.

SPEAKER_01 55:33

Yeah, so the thing that I think I'd love people to take away is that well-being is not a personal failure, it's not a personality trait, it's not something that can be fixed at that high, superficial, individual level. That businesses and people alike need to start really understanding that what's going on is the infrastructure, the systems, the processes, the flow that goes on, then that creates that well-being as an outcome. Once you can get your head around that, everything becomes really simple.

unknown 56:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

Amazing. And this is this is something that both Jo and I can assist with. We have our own frameworks. We are here for employees as individuals, we are also here for employers as well to help bring in that structure, that framework to be able to see where are you where are your employees not so happy, where are you perhaps leaking some of this energy, this vitality in the in the workforce that's required. I will leave our details in the show notes below. Jo, thank you once again for coming on. It's been lovely speaking with you. Thanks, thank you.