Big, Bold Mental Health Event:
COVID-19 Global Workforce 2021

The world is battling the COVID-19 pandemic, frontline health care workers (HCWs) are among the most vulnerable groups at risk of mental health problems. During this session, we share perspectives from key workers from NHS to Retail and Hospitality.

• Understanding the increased risk of acquiring trauma or stress-related disorders, depression and anxiety from those at the frontline
• Understanding what specific support is needed for key workers and frontline staff fighting COVID
• Examining the stigma of being closely connected with COVID: family members and society and negative social implications externally
• Coping strategies: Warning signs and the challenge of intervening/starting a conversation with frontline heroes – what steps can you take?

We’ve all been there – feeling snubbed, ignored, silenced, ostracized, or humiliated – or even worse – bullied or shamed? In all of its forms, fear activates the pain centre of the brain and triggers our survival self-censoring instinct – paralyzing performance and smothering innovation.  This inhibits company growth and makes mental health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion and other positive initiatives almost impossible to implement or succeed.  Find out how to create more psychological safety in your workplace:

• What is psychological safety and how does it differ to wellbeing workplace initiatives
• Examining the different phases of safety ie inclusions, learning & experimenting, contributing and challenging
• Who should ‘own’ the responsibility for building PS: leaders, teams, HR and HSE
• How to start, create or continue to build PS in your workplace.

Dating back to earliest times, mankind has experienced the psychological impact of a wide range of catastrophes, famines, floods, earthquakes, wars, and outbreaks of potentially deadly infectious diseases. Today we are still figuring out how to cope—and help others cope—with the grief, stress, and anxiety caused by biggest health challenge of our time: the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. What can we learn from those who are been at the edge of life and death:

• PTSD: Trauma and stress-related disorders
• Looking at first responders and frontline workers heroic efforts: mental exhaustion & PSTD
• Depleting our reservoir of ‘adaptive energy’
• Supporting staff in high stress working environments
• Although well-intended how can support alone be misdirected: balancing challenge with support
• Lessons of recovery from the maelstrom of trauma

COVID-19 has presented a test to everyone and as a line manager it now even more important to get to know your team and understand when they may need a little extra support. Recognising some of the signs of poor mental health does not mean you should make assumptions about what mental health problems your employees may have. Instead, noticing changes in behaviour and signals can be vital to show when you should check in and start a conversation. Hear more about how to recognise how your employee is coping:

• Spotting more subtle signs of change, distress and how to get the best help to your employee at the right time
• Invisible working: What are the psychological effects of working from home during COVID-19?
• The roles of gatekeepers and line managers
• Recognising those in need of extra support whilst working remotely: Differences of benign vs urgent – and how to tell the difference
• Helping staff to help themselves and be more self aware and self-reliant
• Understanding different types and signs of mental health challenges: self-harm, ADHD, alcohol & drug abuse, depression and anxiety

As the vaccine heralds hope, the questions on top-of-mind for all businesses are ‘how do we respond to and help employees to recover from COVID-19 stress and experiences during lockdown?’ One of the key ways is to support and train line managers and leaders to respond to the inevitable increasing need for mental health and wellbeing resources. This session has been designed to focus on the role of line managers as mental health champions. Topics include:

• Resources, skills and training line managers and all MH champions – providing access to wellbeing
• How are managers and HR professionals responding to staff working remotely
• What will the new normal workplace look like: future predictions & harnessing existing policies and bringing new COVID-19 initiatives to the fore
• How will Covid-19 be affecting those already experiencing mental health conditions such as stress, anxiety and depression
• Gaining board and senior management support

Gaining support for new ideas and policies is difficult – and those relating to mental health can be especially challenging. When you add to this with communicating to a diverse range of employees and stakeholders, engagement and adoption can become seen an almost impossible task. This spotlight session looks at using the process of storytelling in two parts:

• The Science of Story, creating emotional investment, and 3 common challenges to creating clear narratives
• Insights and Ideas for Narrative Change

This session will set out storytelling methods and approaches to help you engage with your audiences so that your message lands more effectively

ACT ONE: SETTING THE SCENE: Friction on Site
This part of the day will feature the dramatic production of a frontline construction site manager called Rob and his project manager Kate. Rob is struggling in many ways, Kate fails to pick up on Rob’s struggles and all goes horribly wrong!

ACT TWO: DELEGATE SUGGESTIONS:
Following on from Act One, our facilitator Michael will work with online delegates and the actors playing Rob and Kate, to initially speak to both characters and then to get involved creating a different outcome to the conversation by coaching Kate to approach it differently and to behave differently.

The learning outcomes from this session will be:

• How to better identify, normalise and deal with stress and possible menta; health issues in a traditionally male-oriented environment
• Highlight how the pandemic has brought increasing numbers and intensity of mental health issues for
  all employees people – even if they don’t realise it
• Examine different perspectives and how stress and mental health can alienate both teams and managers
• What you can do in your own organisation to take a more proactive stance and manage increased stress and mental health in this time of COVID-19

Our facilitated theatre group who will run through an example of poor line management: our audience will then have the chance to join a ‘role directed and facilitated’ theatre feedback this afternoon to help to find the possible solutions by directing outcomes. There is another session on day two which will break out into working groups. This session is your chance to enhance your management style and mental health understanding by powerful role play.

• Creating a vision for mental health at your organisation
• What can you do to really communicate better across departments
• Signposting and branding
• Launching new initiatives: Top tips, tools, moments, gifts and rolling it out
• Combining MH with existing resources: EAP, safety programmes and wellness outreach

• New parameters and reacting to shifting goals: Hitting the ground running!
• Managing with new concerns about job security: short-term contracts, furlough and the future
• Mental health in a predominately male industry: Stigmas, frontline working and evidence of MH
• Getting quicker and more reactive: How to get support to those who need it quickly
• Using the lessons from COVID to re-target mental health interventions and build new policies and strategies over the next 4 years

• How to take the next steps to extend your mental health strategy and champions into new areas
• How to promote and engage your whole organisation with your mental health champions and network
• Achieving better engagement with wellbeing and mental health champions: Helping all staff to better understand the role of your nominated and volunteer MH champions
• Setting up team-building sessions focused on mental health – promoting early detection and support
• Signposting and directing to the appropriate help

Now is the time to re-approach how we care for employees going forwards and to find new ways to work which prioritises good workforce mental health and emotional wellbeing. Find out how to better engage your whole organisation with a sense of individual empowerment and responsibility: Practical tips to:

• Set up line management groups and engage all staff across the business with good mental health
• Balance the performance vs support challenge: How can line managers ensure profitable work and respond to mental health issues from their staff
• Creating a kinder workplace as a positive community – remotely and together
• Extending the role of wellbeing initiatives to line managers: integration and communication
• Better signposting both internal and external links & partnerships

No industry or sector has been unaffected by the outbreak of COVID-19. Tough economic decisions and a renewed focus on productivity must be balanced against many factors for companies. This session will help you to better plan for staged return to work and discuss what principles should drive us as staff will be concerned and anxious about being in workplace again. Should we embrace virtual or remote. Find out more practical tips on how to get your staff back to work safely:

• How are organisations changing their thinking about flexible and remote working
• How can we still retain support for mental health and wellbeing
• Presentism & HSE concerns: Risk assessments
• Building engagement and a more dynamic dialogue with employees is crucial
• The role of leaders and managers: compassion and support

Mental health conditions are still sometimes seen to be something unnerving, unsafe even dangerous.  We have a long way to go to move away from stigma and discrimination.  Mental health and wellbeing is not just one part of your business, tucked away in an office.  This session demonstrates how to bring mental health out into the open … and across your organisation:

• Why still the stigma?
• Finding out where stigma exists: Where it touches other policies, roles and departments
• Balancing the promotion of workplace wellbeing with culture and employee engagement tactics
• Using existing HSE, occupational health and employee benefits as a solid basis for development
• Removing stigma and taking it to the next level

The Burning Man event is based on radical self-expression and radical self-reliance. Attendees, known as “Burners,” gather at a barren desert in northern Nevada and collectively construct a temporary city. Burners often wear elaborate costumes and participate in a wholly gift-based economy. The social and cultural environment of Burning Man is unique and often served as a networking hub for researchers
and thinkers in sociology, anthropology, art, economics, spirituality and many other disciplines. What can we learn from this unique community from those who work there: What are the lessons in self-expression, self-reliance and inclusion? In discussion we asked could it be possible for companies to access some of the considerable psychological benefits of the Burning Man experience within a more
formal organisation constrict?