How do I choose the right well-being support for my staff?
If you are a business owner, manager or someone who is tasked with the well-being of the staff and fellow humans within your team, finding the right support can feel like a minefield. Even those with the best intentions can fall foul of well-being offerings that are just not going to make the difference that they promise to or hope they will. So, if this sounds like you then we want to provide you with our top tips for making sure you are investing in the right well-being strategy for your business and for your team.
Where are you at now?
Firstly, it’s important to think about where you are at now in terms of your well-being strategy, maybe these are the first real steps into thinking about how to make this work or maybe you have an established culture of promoting well being that you are looking to improve or take it to the next level. Take some time to think about what it would look like if your team felt supported, safe to speak up and were thriving at work. How close are you to achieving that? You know your team, what are some of the barriers?
What experience does the provider have?
So, you’re thinking about getting someone external in to support your team’s mental health and help you with your well-being strategy, it’s important to consider what experience and training they have. Mental health and well-being can be tricky topics and if you want someone to support your team with this, you need someone who has a wealth of experience to be able to support your team and, ideally, someone who is able to navigate the mental health systems to help support and signpost people outside of the company if and when required. Additionally training is key when choosing your provider, bad support can unfortunately be more detrimental than no support so you want you provider to have the level of training required to truly support the needs of your team.
At The Core Collective we are trained Clinical Psychologists and this means we have undergone a minimum of 6 years of university training, including 3 years of an undergraduate psychology degree at a 2:1 or above and a 3 years doctoral training in clinical psychology, leading a psychologist to having a “doctor” title. It’s also usual to have completed 2-3 years working in clinical setting e.g. hospitals, clinics etc. before starting the doctorate course. Clinical Psychologists are trained by the NHS, and this involves academic work, research and clinical placements.
During training Clinical Psychologists work with people across the lifespan and with a variety of mental health presentations. This means they are well placed to support people within a business and the full spectrum of needs, from promoting well-being and resilience to managing crisis and burnout.
Clinical Psychologists are also skilled at completing audit and service evaluations and can use these skills to really help understand what your business needs to create a culture of psychological safety and promote well-being.
Is the provider regulated?
You’ve thought about what you want to offer to your team and how you want to impact the culture, you’ve considered whether they have the experience and expertise to do this and finally you want to know how can I be sure of this? You are not expected to know the ins and outs of mental health professionals but one way of knowing if they meet the standard you require is finding out if they are regulated. When dealing with something as important as mental health we need to trust that someone knows what they are doing. You would be really unlikely to go and get support for a physical health complaint from someone unregulated so why would mental health be any different?
A Clinical Psychologist is a legally protected title which means only those meeting the strict criteria set out by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) may use it. All Clinical Psychologists must be registered with the HCPC. You can check the HCPC website to ensure your Clinical Psychologist is registered.
https://www.hcpc-uk.org/check-the-register/
Core Questions:
· Where is our business at now in terms of wellbeing strategy?
· How do I want to support my staff?
· Does the mental health provider have the experience to deliver the support I need?
· Am I working with someone that is in a regulated profession?
If you want to find out more about how working with a Clinical Psychologist can provide meaningful support to you and your team, then please get in touch.
Written by Steph