Wellness at Work
Why Wellness in the Workplace Matters
Staff wellbeing, sickness rates and effective function at work are a concern for all businesses. The most common reasons for sickness absence are said to be minor illness, musculoskeletal disorders, stress, anxiety and other mental health conditions. A challenge for employers is sickness and decreased productivity related to chronic/persistent pain. Understanding persistent pain and how people can be supported when they are struggling, along with support to prevent the struggle in the first place is important.
Ann, at Unity Physiotherapy & Wellbeing, offers support with understanding persistent pain, and other long-term conditions including ME/CFS and long covid. Along with compassionate workplace wellness programmes for everyone and helping to develop a compassionate workplace culture. These programmes respect the unity of body & mind and can help in many ways, including to manage & reduce, such as, pain, stress & anxiety, and help people to thrive. Workplace wellness strategies & initiatives are important, however they are not effective in the long-term if the workplace culture is not considered, along with implementation of the necessary changes when indicated. Offering workplaces wellness programmes & addressing workplace culture can help in many ways, including to:
- Decrease sickness absence
- Decrease burnout risk
- Improve motivation and performance
- Improve teamwork
- People to thrive at work and home
Why Compassion in the Workplace Matters:
Compassion has been shown to have many benefits for our wellbeing. In the workplace compassion needs to be explored and practiced on all levels, this means each individual team member practicing self-compassion and everyone within each layer of the management structure, and as a collective (for example team meetings). This is part of creating a safe & compassionate workplace environment. Benefits of compassion at work include helping to:
- Decrease stress & self-criticism
- Increase overall wellbeing
- Decrease anxiety
- Decrease the risk of burnout
- Increase resilience
- Encourage supportive relationships
- Create a flexible, safe and supportive workplace environment
- Manage changes & uncertainty
- People to thrive
Compassion is a foundational part of Unity Physiotherapy & Wellbeing’s ‘Compassion, Wellness & Thriving’ tailored workplace packages. Compassion is one of Unity Physiotherapy & Wellbeing’s core values as it is really important, it supports our wellness, connection with others & impacts our ability thrive. Compassion is often misunderstood, it is not weak or soft and fluffy. It has two sides, gentleness or openness and strength, it often needs immense courage. For more information on the core values at Unity Physiotherapy & Wellbeing click the button below.
What Influences Wellness at Work?
Some would say it’s about creating a work-life balance, I don’t think this is a helpful view or aim because we cannot split work and home life. Our time at work and home have a bidirectional relationship and we cannot separate all aspects of life into neat little boxes, being human is more complicated than this. Instead we need to aim to create a balance or harmony in all aspects of life which is an ever changing flux, this is why embodied self-awareness and a toolbox of strategies can help us manage the ups and downs and the ever changing balance. Wellness at work requires us to create a lifestyle that helps us to look after our health & wellbeing and we need a safe and supportive workplace culture.
Many other factors affect wellness and productivity or function at work (these will also be impacting people outside of work as well). These include:
- Struggling with persistent pain, ME/CFS, long covid, perimenopause/menopause, chronic stress
- Self-criticism
- Anxiety
- Having sufficient breaks during the working day
- Feeling safe, supported, valued & understood at work (workplace culture)
- Mutual trust
- Relationship between business & personal values
- Recognition of all work & not only the big successes
Ann has specialised in working with people with pain, along with having a special interest in ME/CFS, long covid and PoTS within her physiotherapy work. Support for people with these conditions can be included in tailored workplace packages (both for the people themselves and to support managers & occupational health departments to understand these conditions better to facilitate effective support for people).
‘Compassion, Wellness & Thriving’ Workplace Wellness Programme
Unity Physiotherapy & Wellbeing’s ‘Compassion, Wellness & Thriving’ tailored workplace programmes can help people to thrive and look after their overall health & wellbeing. Workplace wellness packages are all trauma-informed and are tailored for individual business needs, they combine specialist physiotherapy, yoga & wellness coaching. These are examples of what can be offered:
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- Specialist physiotherapy & wellness coaching packages for people with persistent pain and/or long covid, ME/CFS, PoTS
- Creating A Healing Path: Using Compassion & Trauma-Informed Yoga 8 week online workshop series for people with pain/fatigue/anxiety
- Compassionate mind training group workshops and/or 1:1’s
- Stress management 1:1’s & group workshops
- Values, meaningful activity & wellness group workshop
- Other bespoke trauma-informed workshops
About Ann
Ann is the founder of Unity Physiotherapy & Wellbeing, she is a fully qualified physiotherapist who has specialised in the areas of persistent pain and neurology, she also has a special interest in helping people struggling with ME/CFS, long covid & PoTS. All of Ann’s offerings are trama-informed, she combines specialist physiotherapy, yoga, compassionate mind training, NLP, somatic and coaching. You can find out more about Ann here:
If you would like to explore how Ann can help you meet your teams needs and improve productivity & thriving in your workplace please get in touch to discuss this further. You can get in touch by calling or sending an email (details in the footer), or by sending a contact from via the contact us page.