We’ve been going since 1994, and we’ve learnt that the more you give your staff, the more you get from them. I think you get more out of people if you treat them as humans, but until now there hasn’t been  enough for employers or employees in terms of supporting them as people, their work/life balance and mental wellbeing – typically it’s all very corporate: you support your employees by paying them well.

 

Forrest Health and Wellbeing’s packages plug that gap to enable businesses to support their staff to address these issues.

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We have seen the recent pandemic and lockdowns manifest in our staff in so many ways . 

People’s responses surprised us, and there was no pattern to how they responded, no way of predicting from their previous behaviours. One or two people were really afraid, and they got angry – someone at senior level was petrified of catching the virus – others had real fears about the situation that they had to work through. I found myself alone in the trenches in a way that I hadn’t anticipated, but it did make me aware that we had to widen the support net that we offered.

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Forrest Health & Wellbeing carried out a staff survey and delivered some of their presentations to our staff. The whole package was much better than I was expecting – so much thought and research that has gone into it.

 

The feedback from the staff survey was very good; we have lots of quality control systems in place, but they’re all very corporate and the staff had never had anything like this before, when the company was being examined in this dimension and they were being asked about themselves as people. The presentations, especially the mental health one, have gone down very well.

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The benefits to us as a business is that our employees know that we care about them as humans. The more staff you get, the more issues with mental health and wellbeing you are going to get, and not everyone is going to feel comfortable about being open about it.

 

Bringing in this outside support shows them that their employer is looking out for their mental health, which is going to foster a more open culture. And, as business owners, we know that the more we support our staff, the more they give to us.

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