Let’s start with your background. You’ve worked for many years in HR and have plenty of wellness experience as well.
That’s right. I’ve been in HR nearly twenty years, and during that time some of the people that I've worked alongside really struggled with their mental health. One in particular had severe anxiety and was off for a significant period of time. I think what struck me and the MD at that time most is that some of that was preventable.
If we'd seen the signs, if we'd known what to do, if we'd supported in a different way, it could've been a different outcome. As it was, she did come back, she did recover, everything was good. But during that period, we knew that we could have had an impact. We just didn't know what to do.
I did a counselling qualification initially and was starting to lean into that supportive space. Then I went on the one-day Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) course, which was aimed at managers and HR professionals, and realised that I wanted to be in the preventative space instead. So I wanted to raise awareness and help people to understand what mental illness was and how to support it if somebody was unwell.
I went on to become a MHFA instructor and completed that in 2019. Then, of course, we had COVID and there was no digital suite of products, but I already had some clients I was working with who were then coming to me saying, "We've got people who are struggling with lots of different conditions.
That made me develop my own training suite and I ended up in a situation where I could deliver Mental Health First Aid, but also I had a much broader range of tools and techniques and support and knowledge at my fingertips.
Why do you think it can be so hard for learning to translate into behaviour change in a wellness training sense?
Lots of studies have been done that prove we don't retain what we're taught in a classroom much beyond the first day in a lot of cases. I think we don't pay enough attention to learning styles. I don't think there's enough follow-up support in terms of “you've walked away from that course or programme but what are you going to do next? How do you follow up?”
So I lean more into coaching beyond the training where I can. It doesn't always go that way, but it’s to keep the engagement going. It's really important that it's not a one and done tick box exercise.
I’m interested in the idea of wellbeing washing. How do you think organisations can be more aware of not falling into the trap of wellbeing washing and what does a holistic wellbeing programme look like to you that’s being implemented in an organisation?
It comes down to knowing what your team needs. What management thinks is going to do the job isn't necessarily what's going to land with the people on the ground. So it's important that surveys are done, that you're checking in with people and listening to what they say.
There's so many surveys done and then it's the attitude of "Okay, we've done that. We've heard you, but there's nothing we can do," or, "We don't know what to do." Action needs to be taken. The programme needs to be broader. It’s not just the training. It's what you're going to do about your managers, what you're going to do about the workload, what you're going to do about the stress that people face outside work and challenges.
There are lots of tools available but it can sometimes be hard to figure out what will work. So it requires a constant review.
How would you communicate to a CEO about the ROI of a wellbeing programme and show tangible results?
The Deloitte study is my go-to, which is anything between £4.10 and £5.20, I think. But ultimately it's the recognition that what you put in is going to depend on what you get out. When you really listen to your team and when you have a benchmark that is where you can start.
That might be an engagement study or an eNPS. It might be looking at retention and sickness absence figures. When you have those figures and benchmarks you are in a much better position to know the extent of the ROI.
You've mentioned a few feedback mechanisms. Have you found any particular mechanisms are better than others for gathering mental health training or workshop feedback?
From a training perspective, I think the anonymous approach works best. I generally use Mentimeter at the end of training. MHFA collects their own and that's anonymised anyway, so we don't get to see who's given that.
I think on a day-to-day basis, anonymity doesn't work because if somebody's got a concern, you need to know who it is to address it. I think that's why when you're dealing with managers and staff, it needs to be that you know your staff, you recognise when they're unwell and they're able to come to you.
Then there’s having conversations in the room during training, picking up when somebody's been affected and going and speaking to them quietly, and being a support in the breaks. That's where the breakthrough can come, where somebody's been vulnerable with you in that moment.
In terms of how technology tends to come into learning now, e-learning has proliferated post-pandemic because it seems to be accessible.
But then some people would say that you don't need it because there's so much of it now that learners get fatigued with it. From a mental health point of view specifically, do you still think e-learning has its value, or is it depending on the kind of person who needs that versus something more in person?
It depends what you're trying to get out of it. E-learning's got its place, but for me it's a starting point. The value of the questions in the room, the honesty of the people with lived experience that share in the room, you just don't get even when we're doing training through Teams or Zoom. Yes, it's a private space and it's a small cohort, but they don't share in the same way they do when we're in a room, and you can look in the whites of somebody's eyes.
So I think there are definitely times where it needs to be face-to-face, or even one-to-one in some cases.
Another thing that interests me is the debate between quantitative and qualitative data. Do you think there needs to be a balance of both to prove the impact of training programmes?
If you're talking to an FD, they're always going to want the quantitative, the numbers arm of the stats. I think if you're talking to somebody that's people-led, they want to know what people are actually saying, because the numbers will only tell you the questions that you've asked.
So I think both are needed. It depends what the business wants to get out of it will depend how much they give in terms of freedom to make suggestions and give honest feedback, as opposed to a score of one to ten, or a yes or no.
With AI, what are your thoughts on it from both a wellness and training point of view?
I was at an HR conference recently with a barrister, and he was saying that the paid version is more accurate than the free version of AI. And that really concerns me, because so many people lean on it now. People are going to it for diagnoses, they're going to it to understand what's going on. They're also going to it for support in what to do in the organisation and what they are entitled to. I think there's a risk there.
I think it definitely has its place. When it's used well it's very productive, but we do know that it's having a knock-on effect in terms of various job roles.
From a training perspective, I think it can be useful to gather data to back up what you know. I think the risk for me is that companies might think that they can put together their own training because that information is so readily available, but it will only give out what you tell it and there is no knowledge to back up that training if any questions are asked.
In terms of how you continue learning beyond your qualifications, what are some of your favourite learning mechanisms?
I'm a kinesthetic learner. I've just got into podcasting probably the last six weeks or so because previously I always zoned out. I love face-to-face. I love being in a training room or networking event and taking on what other people have got to say. That’s valuable to me.
I've got a Kindle Scribe that's absolutely full of notes from all kinds of things over the last few years. For me, I always go back to a structured approach of moving from A to Z and checking and analysing to make sure that what I learn is really and can serve me better in what I do.