According to the national Mental Health Report 2018: “61% of employees have experienced mental health issues due to work or where work was a related factor.”
Mental health is a growing concern in this day and age, yet it is still thought of as taboo or too personal to discuss at work – or even with our closest friends!
Storm’s Mindfulness Initiative
At Storm, we are trialling a new Mindfulness initiative for the next six months to ensure our staff members receive any help they may need and to practise stress relieving behaviours.
Working with EcoWild and Mindfulness Bath, we are participating in a number of indoor and outdoor sessions to improve our wellbeing.
To kick things off, the team spent a (rather rainy) Tuesday morning in the great outdoors at Greyfield Woods. We were introduced to the idea of taking in the moment and not allowing our thoughts to stray from just appreciating where we were.
Emily from EcoWild explained how to rekindle our relationship with the natural world to further clarity of mind and purpose. Whereas, Huw from Mindfulness Bath, introduced us to techniques to help deliberately focus our minds to increase our abilities to have insight and awareness of ourselves. Something, we have to admit, is actually fairly difficult to do!
We also spent the morning exploring the beautiful woodlands and performing many fun team building exercises using nature itself! From building conceptual ‘artwork’ in the middle of a stream to interconnectivity games, it was great to spend time together outside of the office and relax.
Alleviating workplace stress and improving productivity
Stress apparently accounts for over 9 million sick days taken each year which can cost UK businesses between 33 to 41 billion pounds a year. Over half this cost is down to the loss of productivity.
Storm MD, David Kelly, commented: “We decided to introduce these sessions when we realised that, as an employer, we offer great health and medical cover for our staff but actually very little in terms of mental wellbeing. With mental health being such a hot topic nowadays, we really wanted to address this and ensure that our team receive the support they may need and encourage better coping strategies.
“We’re very excited to be trialling this, and the team from EcoWild and Mindfulness Bath offer some great unique methods.”
