Equating Working to Wellness

Recently, I have been invited by a few organisations to give talks on workplace culture, and especially on how to incorporate mental wellness into potentially stressful environments. I don’t want to spill the beans on the presentation content too much, but I think it’s important to publicly share a few of my preliminary thoughts.

I am now one month into my first full-time role (it’s so exciting to be able to say that!!) as a public policy analyst and one thing that struck me immediately was the mandatory mental health training that was a part of my virtual on-boarding in my first week at the new job. Being someone that cares so much about mental health awareness, just knowing that each person in my organisation has had to go through a basic mental health briefing about recognising symptoms, how to access resources, and helping each other to destress, was incredibly important to me.

As someone who has battled with mental health issues, I am aware that recovery is not linear. It can all come back at any time, but knowing that everyone in my office has the base level of vocabulary to speak about mental health is an extremely comforting feeling.

COVID-19 has chucked us into unprecedented work cultures between telecommuting, webinar sessions, and virtual conference rooms. But through this, it has also shown us that we are very able as communities in adapting to non-physical work environments. And while an extensive work-from-home setting is understandably not conducive to the most productive work environment, perhaps it is opportune for senior leaders to think about how a hybrid model will serve as a refreshing and more productivity-maximising method to go forward with.

Continuing with flexibility such as allowing work-from-home on one day a week may well be the trick for happier and healthier employees for most industries. With a little more freedom, we typically see happier employees, as they feel like they have slightly more authority over smaller lifestyle matters. I am so grateful that my office has this flexibility, a beautiful garden to take breaks in or even take my laptop out and work in, and united lunch breaks. Whether I regularly make use of all of these things or not, just knowing that I have these options takes off so much pressure and keeps me so much more refreshed.

For the incoming entry-level workforce, being graduates of a fresh pandemic was a rough enough experience as it is, and I strongly urge us all to continue to prioritise sustainable mental wellbeing practices from the start and take up conversations in workplaces with our employers and colleagues on how to best incorporate wellness resources.

My goal: to make sure that working adds to rather than detracts from my wellbeing.