Our top 5 tips for better mental wellbeing
Mental health problems can affect anyone, at any time. At Kura, we believe that mental health is everyone’s business. For too long, mental health has been a private issue that each person dealt with alone. However, we strongly believe that when our people are thriving, we all thrive. Mental health and wellbeing continue to be a big part of the conversation with our Leadership Team, and we are proud that at Kura, we have many resources for our employees to help them be at their best each and every day, and to support each other, our clients, and our communities. We run weekly mindfulness sessions for our employees, we have mental health first aiders and an employee assistance programme that supports our employees though online resources, telephone support and counselling sessions.
We encourage everyone to use Mental Illness Awareness Day as an opportunity to continue to drive this important conversation!
World Mental Health Day is held on October 10th every year to raise awareness of mental health issues, and to mobilise efforts to support the one in four of us who suffer from poor mental health at some time in our lives. It couldn’t be more relevant than now as this has been a big year and many of us have had to make huge changes to our daily routines.
In response to COVID we have taken the steps to ensure the majority of our people can work from home while still delivering an exceptional service to our clients. While working from home does have its privileges (no commute to work, dress down, just to name a few), we recognise it can also cause isolation and loneliness. The realities of COVID, in some cases home-schooling of children, and lack of physical contact with other family members and friends takes some getting used to. Adapting to lifestyle changes such as these, and managing the continued uncertainty, can be challenging.
In response to this, we’ve put together our top 5 tips to help you to focus on your mental wellbeing and to thrive:
- Keep up a daily routine
- Focus on self-care activities such as exercising regularly, sleeping well, eating healthy meals, getting fresh air.
- Make time for doing things you enjoy and keep up your social contacts.
- Stay positive and be kind to yourself and others, as no one else knows what struggles we are each going through.
- Focus on your mental wellbeing – There are a lot of free mindfulness apps out there that are worthy of a look. A recent staff survey indicated that 82% of our staff would benefit from weekly wellbeing sessions and our Head of Recruitment and resident wellbeing champion, Clare Cameron is currently running mindfulness sessions for some of our staff.