Mental Health Awareness Week 2022

The wellbeing of our team is always at the forefront of everything we do. We truly believe that ‘We can only achieve our best if we feel our best’.

Mental Health Awareness week 2022 focussed on raising awareness of the impact of loneliness on our mental health.  As a team of 4 remote workers, it was the perfect opportunity for us to learn about how this may affect us in terms of loneliness and the practical steps we can take to address it.

During MHAW we also took time to focus on Mental Health as a whole, and what additional strategies we can embrace both personally and as a business to ensure that we are taking care of ourselves and each other.

Throughout the week we decided to share the ways in which we currently support our team, and also the new things we learnt as we took some time to focus more on Mental Health, Mental Health in the workplace and the new approaches we look forward to adopting.

Loneliness and working from home

To ensure that we could elevate the loneliness of home working, last year, the Midollo team began working a day a month together at a co-working space in Manchester. We absolutely love Colony Cowork. We also love to use this time to head out for a catch up, food and a few drinks!

Upon focusing on this topic specifically during the week, we learned that there are other ways in which we could get out to work even if it isn’t together, something which we hadn’t really considered before. Heading out to a coffee shop to get out of the house and perhaps feel a part of something would be a great idea. A change of scenery is always refreshing and working from home doesn’t mean that we should stay in the house the whole time. We will be encouraging the whole team to do this every week and treat themselves to a coffee on us!

Mental Health First Aid

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a training course which teaches people how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue.

We are so fortunate at Midollo to have such an amazing Mental Health First Aider, Aga.

Having heard Aga’s thoughts on her Mental Health First Aid training and as part of our commitment to our team and their wellbeing, we have decided to make Mental Health First Aid training available to everyone in our team, in order to support each other and ourselves. To improve self-awareness and to reflect on how powerful it can be to simply listen without interruption or judgement.

31 day Mindfulness challenge

A daily dose of mindfulness is said to enhance creativity, productivity, peace of mind and reduce stress. Developing a mindful lifestyle takes practise, time and patience. Old habits must be softened and replaced with new ways of thinking.

Neuro research has shown us our brain needs about 30 days to adjust to a habit change. This is the goal behind doing a 31 Day Mindfulness Challenge.

We have sent the team 31 Mindfulness exercises to complete for the next 31 days, we are really looking forward to taking part and sharing our experience.

Promoting Wellbeing

We pride ourselves on our Wellbeing initiatives, but, we are by no means ‘experts’ there is always room for improvement and we are always on the look out for new ideas. 

Mental Health Awareness Week has really helped us to channel our focus, to revisit our current strategies to see what works and what doesn’t, but also to look at new ways in which we can support the team going forward. We are really looking forward to the next steps.

Our current initiatives include;

• 3 x wellbeing days a year.
• Unlimited holidays.
• 0 Time sheets.
• Health cover.
• Regular social gatherings and celebrations.
• Team ‘Wellbeing day’ to learn more about Mindfulness.
• Leadership coaching with the amazing @martinroberthall.
• 31 day Mindfulness challenge.
• Midollo Family days.

Research during Mental Health Awareness Week has inspired us to consider the following initiatives;

• Fitness / wellbeing App memberships.
• Team fundraising.
• Mental health first aid training.
• Team exercise challenges.
• Including mental health in diversity and inclusion strategies.
• Resilience training.
• Inspirational quote of the day.