Winning an award for creating a happy team and making the working environment better, was something I didn’t see the value in as a young adult finding her way in the world.  Now, as an experienced Humanistic Therapist and Wellbeing Practitioner, I fully understand the importance and value of building and working with a team, who are pulling together in all their different roles and personalities.

So here are my key tips for building a resilient and engaged team in the workplace.

1.) Formalise a Wellbeing plan.

Make wellbeing a priority. Find out from the staff, what they think wellbeing in the workplace looks like. Create a vision board and ask them to add what their ideal workplace and experience would be – then work with the results, to develop what would be realistic for your environment and business.

2.) Create a happy and healthy environment. 

Most people have to work to earn a living or make money, so why not make where they have to come to, a place they want to be.

Travel has taught me one really good lesson: Go by the vibe of a place when you walk in. It tells you loads. What does it feel like when you walk into the workplace – anxious, happy? It’s much better to have a staff base who are delivering their best efforts. Something as simple as acknowledging the staff. Making eye contact with them and smiling can lift an employees wellbeing. Genuinely caring about your staff can make a huge difference in their wellbeing.

3.) Encourage Self Care.

Working as an Addiction Therapist, I have seen first hand the damaging effects that stress and burnout can have in peoples life. One initiative a work place can offer is training in self care. Train your employees to recognise their own stress levels, how to manage stress. What to do and who to speak to if it begins to develop. Nip it in the bud!

4.) Approachability & Empowerment.

Develop the emotional intelligence of your management team, to enable them to feel fully competent in not having to ‘control’ employees, but instead, create an environment and culture where they feel empowered to approach you because of your attitude and style. It encourages them to take personal responsibility and helps you understand what is going on in the lives of your staff and manage the work flow. Ultimately it builds trust. Which makes being within the workplace a darn sight easier for everybody.

5.) Fun

This for me is an important element. How do you create bonds and build a sense of wellbeing – I believe by having fun. Having lived abroad and travelled across the globe, when I come back I’ve noticed that some team building still seems to be done in the pub. I’d like to take it out of that environment and encourage companies to find different ways to bring together the diverse and eclectic groups of people, they employ. Find ways to have fun together and then consciously build on that bond, once back within the workplace.

When I worked at DARA in Thailand, we celebrated Songkran together as a facility. It brought us all together clients and staff. One thing I know that within a work place, if you don’t make the effort to continue to build on each step. Like snakes and ladders it will all slide back down to where it was before.

To create healthy mental wellbeing in the workplace is a gift to the staff, yourself and the company and in turn it will benefit the customer because that vibe, that feeling, it’ll make its way through and everyone, at all levels, will be better for it.