Eileen Donnelly
Employee wellbeing – corporate responsibility or business imperative
Businesses often believe that if they implement a mental health programme in the workplace, they’ve addressed employee wellbeing.
That’s not true. Why? Well, two reasons.
- Our mental health is only one driver of our wellbeing. There are many others which can make it complicated but also present numerous opportunities for improvement and,
- Tackling mental health tends to be a reactive measure rather than proactive.
I’ll share with you what best practise looks like and the myriad of benefits to the business when wellbeing is a real and authentic element of your business culture. We’ll also look at the emerging conversation about the costs and the legal implications of getting it wrong.
During the session we’ll discuss how this impacts and possibly changes the role of a leader who now needs to carefully balance empathy, ego and emotional intelligence in both themselves and their teams.
When and where?
Wednesday 21st October via Zoom (Invitation Only)
Eileen Donnelly
Eileen’s 20-year career has focused on supporting companies to build purpose-driven business strategies and workplace cultures, by responding to, and investing in, the most relevant issues, from climate change to mental health. She understands a diverse range of issues across many sectors and is now focused on the growing recognition of a company’s responsibility to maintain and improve wellbeing in the workplace.
She believes that investing in employee’s resilience and positive mental health is critical to successfully achieving bottom-line productivity. It is a company’s investment in its human capital that ensures an effective bridge between strategy development and strategy implementation.
Eileen currently works with organisations who want to proactively build healthy, productive and motivated workforces through a holistic approach to developing wellbeing programmes, with an emphasis on mental health. As well as developing bespoke mental health awareness courses, she is a licensed instructor for Mental Health First Aid. Through her programmes Eileen reduces the stigma of mental health by increasing awareness and training employees to be a critical point of intervention for those experiencing poor mental health in the workplace. The result is an open, supportive work environment where employees can bring their whole self to work, thereby creating a healthier and happier workforce.
With strong influencing skills Eileen has worked successfully with people from all levels within an organisation and has experience working alongside management board, C-suite and board committees.
Eileen has highly tuned interpersonal skills, an ability to adapt to different organisational cultures and a natural ability to create strong and trusted relationships. She is using these attributes and her career experience to work with companies who are ready to demonstrate their commitment to creating both a thriving and resilient workplace as well as enhancing the wellbeing of the communities in which they operate.
Key skills:
Evidence-based wellbeing strategy development
Bespoke training development and delivery:
⦁ Mental Health awareness courses for all employees, managers or leaders.
⦁ Wellbeing workshops covering subjects such as sleep, resilience, stress management, nutrition, exercise and general personal wellbeing.
Mindfulness instructor
Mental Health First Aid licensed instructor – Half day, one day, two-day courses (on-site and virtual).
Award winning public speaker
Comments from Members who attended this workshop:
- I think the session was useful in highlighting the various components that contribute to mental health. Also the insight that very few leaders will admit to being challenged from a mental health perspective themselves.
- It was great to hear that empowering middle management is actually the key to success – this is something that I have identified and to actually have stats for this was great.
- The importance of taking a strategic approach to wellbeing and not just reactive actions.
- Middle Manager wellbeing has a big impact on the wellbeing of others.
- This was a very helpful session. The most important insight was the overall end to end approach to wellbeing. Specifically, that no one intervention or programme was the answer.
- Leaders need to look after themselves too. Practising energy management rather than time management.
- Such a wide and diverse area to discuss and lots of ideas so thank you, Eileen. I think my insight is it starts at the top with clear guidance and ‘Role Model it’ for the behaviours we’re looking for.
- Understanding why staff stay motivated and focused and better understanding of the drivers of wellbeing.
- Demonstrate it’s ok not to be ok, (we think we are very good at spotting problems with others but hide it in ourselves).
Nice mix of discussion and presentation, some good reminders of what we do well and things we should do more often. I found the break out session very useful.
Eileen Donnelly Online
Articles: Money can’t buy happiness and Safeguard – Workplace Health and Safety