Wellbeing and fundraising

The global coronavirus pandemic has caused immense distress and uncertainty, uprooting people’s professional and personal lives, inhibiting their ability to do their job well and making stress and burn out even more likely. This pushes health and wellbeing even higher up the agenda.

The impact of COVID-19 is varied and ongoing. For some fundraisers, a big issue will be working from home and the balancing or blurring of professional and personal life. Homeschooling, uncomfortable and cramped working conditions, or a feeling of isolation or dislocation from a lack of daily contact with colleagues could all be detrimental to wellbeing. At the same time, the need to fundraise and the pressing awareness of how vital fundraised income is, or worries and uncertainty of fundraising in new and unfamiliar ways, will all be likely to have an impact too.

Changes in fundraising teams, redundancies, new responsibilities, or furloughing, are all things that many fundraisers will have had to contend with as well. Some people might feel energised and motivated at ‘stepping up to the challenge’, others may be overwhelmed or need help at a time where their usual networks or support isn’t available.

The pressures of COVID-19 are not the same to all, but also will change over time for people. The impact on wellbeing is not one thing – it is fluid. Just because someone seems to be coping ok with immediate change doesn’t mean that 6 months on there hasn’t been a cumulative impact.

• Understand and be mindful of the personal situation and home-life of your team. If people have young children, they may be starting homeschooling or on a nursery run first thing, so perhaps avoid 9am or 5pm meetings or deadlines. Flexibility which works for the person, supports their wellbeing, and enables them to do their job in the best way should be adopted wherever possible.
• Equality, diversity and inclusion and wellbeing is hugely important. Not everyone’s idea of wellbeing, or the initiatives that support wellbeing, are the same. Avoid making assumptions about what supports wellbeing, ask your teams what they would value and welcome, and remember that this can change over time.
• Are you exhibiting and practising the behaviours that you promote? A stressed manager will often make for a stressed team, so supporting your wellbeing will help to support others’ too. Sometimes a leader needs to model the behaviours they want to see in others – and sometimes people need to see their manager walking the walk to give them the reassurance and confidence that it’s ok for them to do so as well.

• If you’ve been furloughed or been made redundant, there’s lots of support out there, from Chartered Institute support, as well as our national, regional and special interest groups through to informal networks on WhatsApp and Facebook. Your colleagues across the sector will support you and have lots of advice! Furloughing should never be taken as a slight to your skills or role – it’s a forced choice for charities in response to an unprecedented situation.
• Talk to your managers and colleagues. You are much more likely to find a way forward that can help support your wellbeing by talking it through. While not all charities have the same internal resource, everyone should be able to rely on an empathetic response and a proactive approach to help.
• How can you plan and manage your day in a way that works best for you? Fresh air, exercise, talking to a friend, or taking time away from the laptop or phone-screen can all help. Everyone has different rhythms during the day, some people work better in the morning, some later in the afternoon – think about how and what helps you feel more positive and speak to your colleagues about how you can incorporate that into your day.

There are many wonderful things about the fundraising profession, not least the passion that drives people to invest their time, energy and career in ensuring organisations with a social purpose have the funding they need to thrive and develop in new and exciting ways to raise money for vital causes. It can be extremely rewarding. But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy job, or one that others (even inside charities) automatically understand.

In fact, that commitment to a cause that fundraisers truly care about and a desire for their organisation to be able to provide the services and work that others rely on, may well add to a feeling of pressure, responsibility, or stress. Sometimes that pressure might come in the form of a CEO or trustee who wants to know if they’ll hit their targets. Or it might be as a result of a closeness with a service delivery team that they see every day, which means that fundraisers have a deep insight and know how much of a difference raising that extra money will make in the care they can give.

Fundraisers may have to deal with graphic, upsetting, and emotionally triggering issues and content on a daily basis – this could be from direct testimonies with clients/beneficiaries, or from research studies and news reports. Finding the most compelling stories to use in fundraising campaigns may well mean that fundraisers need to go through a range of visual, auditory, or written examples which could feel overwhelming.

In many cases, it is because as fundraising professionals for charities there is a deeply emotive cause at stake, one that we know will make a profound and lasting difference to people and communities. Fundraisers will have a professional outlook and approach, but that doesn’t mean that feelings and emotions aren’t part of a fundraiser’s daily work too. And so they should be – the emotion and connection is what so often makes a fundraising appeal inspirational and resonates with supporters, and means those conversations with supporters are real and authentic.

Understanding the link between a fundraiser’s role and wellbeing does in no way mean that we lose that emotional connection or that desire to succeed. But it does mean that it should be managed appropriately and nurtured with care. Often charities will have support, processes, or resources available for care and service delivery teams – it’s worth considering how this can be accessed by fundraisers too.

There are also aspects of a fundraiser’s job that inevitably don’t fit into a straightforward 9-5 day, or a Monday-Friday working week. Unexpected disasters or emergency appeals, weekend events, meetings with supporters in the evenings, or short funding deadlines can all mean that work plans have to be changed.

A positive and healthy working environment that champions wellbeing will have processes in place that directly and indirectly supports and prioritises people’s work/life balance, wellbeing and mental health. This might include a culture that encourages people to discuss concerns openly, training and support to equip people in their professional roles, an effective strategy and planning process, managerial training for those that guide others, and flexibility in relation to working hours and home-working.

• How well do you understand the day to day roles and activities of your fundraisers? Spend time with your fundraisers to get a better appreciation of their working day. Perhaps spend an hour on the phone responding to calls from supporters, or help out in preparing for a big fundraising event to get a sense of pressures they might be under.
• When new or unexpected things occur (an emergency appeal, for example), talk with your fundraisers about how it will impact their work, as well as any issues it might raise for their personal life and how these can be managed and mitigated as much as possible. Come to a plan together about how the new work can be managed in a way that does not make weeks or months of plans on other work redundant.
• Review your policies around flexible working, time off in lieu, and contracts. With ever-more increasing ability to communicate through multiple platforms and at different times, some working practices may need to be updated. Think about how this impacts different teams and roles – for example, digital/social media professionals who may be responding to notifications, responses, and questions at weekends or evenings.
• Fundraisers are often highly-organised individuals and work best when they know what the goal is, what the steps to success are and how their work is going to be reviewed and measured. As a manager, try to provide the appropriate planning process – ideally within an organisational strategy with a clear vision, mission and value-set – and a strong fundraising case for support which meets a need and a clear budget and a method of monitoring impact. Working without these basic foundations can be a really stressful environment for a fundraiser.
• Put wellbeing into your induction programmes for new starters – make clear what support they can access as well as setting out the importance of wellbeing for fundraisers and your organisation’s approach to supporting this.

• Your connection and commitment to the cause you are raising money for is something to be proud of and nurture. But you can’t carry the weight of the whole organisation’s survival and the delivery of services on your shoulders alone. Seek support and talk to colleagues about the ways of managing your emotional connection positively, and the behaviours you could adopt that can mitigate them turning into something detrimental to your work.
• Be honest with your colleagues and manager – they may struggle to understand any pressure you’re under if they don’t have the full picture. If you spent a whole evening working on a funding application, tell your manager (or preferably, talk to them in advance and agree how it can be managed!).
• Don’t think that you have to keep your personal or home life private. It’s part of who you are and we can’t (and shouldn’t) have to completely separate out what’s happening to us as people with what we do as a professional. Managers and colleagues will want to understand and respond to any personal issues, or adapt flexibly where they can around what works for you.

Research from Charity Well, produced in 2019, into fundraisers’ wellbeing showed that almost nine in ten fundraisers identified a great sense of pride in working with their charity and six in ten recommend their charity as a good employer. And yet, poor management and leadership was the over-riding issue impacting fundraiser wellbeing.

Most commonly, fundraisers felt that managers lacked management skills or experience. Little understanding of fundraising or advocacy for it at an organisational level were also cited, along with a sense of being alone in the role. While workloads, unrealistic targets and a lack of training were highlighted in the study, there were also worrying references to bullying, one-way flexibility, a blame culture, sexual harassment, racism and homophobia, all of which can be extremely damaging.

As a profession which has an under-representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic fundraisers, disabled people, people who are LGBTI+, and an unequal gender balance, it’s important to ensure that the wellbeing of everyone is taken into account, and important to recognise and respond to the fact that wellbeing (and the things that support, or impact on, wellbeing) are not the same for everyone. Some people may feel isolated within the organisation, whether that is due to their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, health, mental health or any other factor.

Be aware that some interventions, even if well-intended, could have a detrimental impact if they are felt by some to be inappropriate or reinforcing a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Through our Change Collective Strategy, we’re working hard to support the growth of a more equal, diverse and inclusive profession. You can find out more here.

Resilience is a useful and valuable trait that fundraisers may well want to develop to help them to respond positively to challenges in their work. But it is important – for both individual fundraisers and managers - to not fall into thinking that the answer to any issues of wellbeing is for an individual to be more resilient.

A focus only on building up the resilience of individual fundraisers puts too much emphasis on it being an individual’s problem that they need to overcome, rather than properly understanding the systemic, cultural or behavioural issues– that research tells us are bigger contributors that impact on wellbeing. If there is ongoing poor management, an expectation of working long hours, setting of unrealistic targets, and a debilitating culture within an organisation, these must be addressed.

Building up a fundraiser’s resilience and developing skills and approaches to responding to challenges or set-backs they experience is a valuable way to enable fundraisers to manage situations and respond to setbacks or challenges. But it should be one part of a whole approach within organisations which needs to go alongside ongoing review and emphasis on responding to the issues or causes that are directly impacting wellbeing for fundraisers, not just on how an individual should be coping with them.

People may well experience doubts or challenges at points through their careers and have times where they may need extra help or support to help their confidence and self-belief. This should never be thought of as a weakness or a flaw – everyone, in every career, will have moments of doubt or feel that they need some additional support. Normalising this, rather than it being a problem that requires a solution, or seeing it as something exceptional, can go a long way to demonstrating that wellbeing is relevant and important to everyone. Managers can talk about how they have progressed in their career and the support they have leant on or accessed – whether that’s through their workplace or more informal networks.

One common experience is imposter syndrome which can accompany a promotion or new job – and a focus on ‘fundraiser resilience’ could reinforce feelings of doubt or add extra pressure onto an individual at a stressful time. Reframing this as a positive – an opportunity of learning and development, or the prompt needed to talk to colleagues, a manager, peers, or a friend about your feelings and thoughts may help.

Like all employers, charities have a legal responsibility – a fundamental duty of care – to look after their people. This means doing all they reasonably can to support employees’ health, safety and wellbeing, including providing a safe working environment, protecting staff from discrimination and carrying out risk assessments. Boards of trustees have a key role here in ensuring organisations are safe places to work and that practices and behaviour are in line with the values of the organisation.  A key part of this is appropriate safeguarding (which you can read more about here).

Colleagues and managers should be mindful of how their actions and behaviour can impact on others. This includes a whole range of things – from ensuring that people aren’t being asked to do something that is way outside their job description and inappropriate for their role, through to the setting of realistic and fair targets or key performance indicators, as well as the language used in both verbal and written communications.

• Managing people and teams is not easy! Have you had the support or training that you need to help you? Many charities have internal programmes or resources, or can support you to seek external training.
• The management planning cycle is an essential operating tool for all fundraising managers, to ensure effective line-management and team delivery as well as alleviate workforce stress. Basic content for this includes annual appraisal, setting of key performance indicators and creating a personal development plan in partnership with each of your team members to ensure they are able to learn and grow in their roles to achieve their goals. This should be backed up with regular one-to-one meetings – which is the time to monitor and check on progress as well as raise any concerns as well as recognition of successes.
• Be mindful of your language and approach – especially when colleagues are working from home. An email saying ‘get me this as soon as possible’ can be read by the recipient as needing to respond immediately, or could be taken as ‘when it works for me’. And if you are an early riser and start work early, think about how one of your colleagues feels if they start the day with five emails at the top of their inbox from you.
• In fundraising, a factor impacting wellbeing may be your colleagues’ relationships and interactions with other partners, third parties, or supporters. Your philanthropy manager might have to juggle some demanding higher value givers, or your supporter care colleagues might have some hard or distressing calls to respond to. Your duty of care extends to more than your own immediate working relationship with a colleague, and might require you to step in to help out on difficult conversations or support fundraisers to manage complex relationships.

• Review your role, job description, and contract of employment if you are concerned about the nature of the tasks or interactions with your managers or colleagues.
• Optimise your own management support planning cycle. Are you prepared for your regular one-to-ones with your line-manager? Have you created a monthly report and outcomes tool to monitor your own progress – particularly important if you work in a small, new or under-resourced organisation whose systems are in infancy. You can most definitely be proactive, to help manage your own stress levels and ensure you are communicating well and flagging up issues of concerns (or even great stories or progress and positive results) during your supervision-support meetings. They are your meetings and your chance to communicate fully.
• Speak to your HR manager or team if you have any concerns at all, and if you need to, review or seek any further professional advice around employment law or mediation/support.
• Seek out opportunities to raise any issues in an appropriate way – this could include at a staff forum, an anonymous ‘whistleblowing’ procedure, or a one to one conversation with a director, CEO, or trustee.

Although fundraising is often a responsive and fast-moving profession, there are ways that organisations and individuals can approach unexpected work or managing key events that can help pressure on individuals.

Look ahead, regularly, at the coming weeks and months and any schedules for events, campaigns, and deadlines. Fundraisers can schedule offers of support and meetings around these key events, as well as building in flexibility where possible into working patterns. By building in opportunities for fundraisers to ask questions, give feedback, raise issues, and express themselves both in regular times and in particular at times where pressure may be more likely to be felt colleagues can feel reassured and supported. The absence of planning proactively for this can lead to increased anxiety, a feeling of isolation, or an apprehension about speaking out and raising issues of concern.

Part of the planning may well involve reviewing how fundraisers work across the organisation and with colleagues, trustees, volunteers, or with beneficiaries. For example, in a tight deadline for a funding application, a fundraiser could need to have direct access to information from the finance team, case studies and testimonials from service users, and involvement from senior management team. Enabling fundraisers, and ensuring that colleagues across the organisation are primed and able to support fundraising activity at the right times can really help – as well as creating a feeling of all being in it together. 

Stress (as a medical condition) becomes normalised after around 3 weeks (at 3 months it becomes ‘properly’ hardwired), at which point there can be seen a marked impact on wellbeing and performance. If there has been a highly pressured environment or event, then having a ‘check in’ within the 3 week point can help mitigate or reframe events to avoid stress being felt at high levels for a prolonged period. Behaviours adopted during times of high stress are much more likely to continue into the future and so this is a good opportunity to identify issues and put in place interventions or changes where needed.  

Be aware that pressure doesn’t become normalised – either across teams or for individuals – as well as the cumulative impact of continuing working at a high pace or on a number of projects. A continued or extended period of pressure can lead to an individual feeling they are being ground down, or that completing one project or piece of work will just lead to another one starting immediately. While a specific ‘event’ may not be able to be identified that had a particular impact on wellbeing, the continued experience of working under strain can have a progressive detrimental effect.

Having a culture that protects and prioritises wellbeing is not only good for staff and volunteers, strengthening their resilience and boosting performance, but it enables organisations to grow and flourish.

Bearing in mind that staff churn is one of the biggest challenges and costs in fundraising, wellbeing is an important opportunity to show fundraisers how much they are valued, to boost staff engagement and satisfaction, inspiring good people to stay and develop within the organisation.

According to the CIPD, promoting wellbeing helps prevent stress and creates positive working environments where individuals and organisations can thrive. When employers increase their focus on wellbeing, they see an uplift in employee morale and engagement, a healthier and more inclusive culture and lower levels of absence. Therefore, protecting health and wellbeing should be an organisational priority, as important as beneficiary care and financial planning when it comes to ensuring the long-term health and future of the charity.  

But wellbeing initiatives cannot stand in isolation. To be truly effective, employee wellbeing must be integrated throughout the organisation, embedded in its culture, leadership and people management. Creating a culture of openness, where staff feel they are encouraged to talk about their concerns, wellbeing and mental health is crucial. A joined-up approach, and a culture of supporting wellbeing, from the trustees through senior management, and across all staff and volunteers is vital.

• How do you promote an active and healthy lifestyle among your fundraisers?
• What is your approach to handling unexpected work, new fundraising appeals, or difficult conversations with partners and supporters?
• How much time off is available to staff and do you offer flexible working? Do your policies and ways of working change to respond to new ways of fundraising and expectations of supporters?
• Is fundraising widely understood and championed at all levels across the organisation?
• Are targets and key performance indicators agreed in a collaborative way with fundraising teams
• Is sufficient training and resource provided to support fundraisers?
• What more can be done to ensure a healthy work life balance and encourage wellbeing in your fundraisers?
• Have you considered the diversity of your fundraisers and put in place a range of measures to support wellbeing that all can access and benefit from?
• How much do you understand the causes of pressure or stress on fundraisers and what can you do to minimise stress or pressure for fundraisers?
• What can you do to instil and inspire the most positive leadership behaviour? Are you modelling and exhibiting the values and behaviours that you would like to see in your fundraisers?
• How do you respond to big changes and ways of working (such as during COVID-19)?
• Is this an ongoing and continual discussion which is regularly reviewed and improved where possible?

• Open inclusive culture – Having an open, inclusive culture that prioritises mental health and wellbeing; one where challenges can be raised and addressed, where success is celebrated, and where managers recognise the importance of their role in supporting fundraisers’ delivering the job to the best of their ability and of preserving a healthy work-life balance.
• Equipping leaders with management skills – Just as fundraisers must be supported with the skills and knowledge they need to raise funds, management training and guidance must be provided for line managers, enabling them to positive guide and influence fundraisers. This should include training on relevant wellbeing initiatives.
• Wellbeing policies and procedures - Implementation of policies and practices that support wellbeing – likely including a mental health strategy, policies for promoting health and wellbeing, fair pay, processes for tackling the cause of work-related mental health problems, and the inclusion of wellbeing initiatives in other relevant policies (ranging from health and safety, to sick leave and disciplinary procedures). 
• Two-way communication – Involving employees in decision-marking and dialogue around the strategic direction of the organisation deepens the connection with fundraisers, encourages them to feel a greater sense of ownership and to identify with these goals.
• Training and professional development – Professional development will be encouraged, with the provision of relevant training, resources, guidance and /or mentoring for fundraisers, with regular performance reviews.
• Fundraising as an organisational priority – It will be recognised that good fundraising is both an organisational priority and a collective responsibility, involving more than just one fundraiser or team. It will be understood and supported by everyone across the organisation.
• Protecting fundraisers from harm – Responsible employers will take action to prevent bullying / harassment or discrimination of any form, acting swiftly, strongly and decisively in response to accusations, line with organisational policies, (see Keeping Fundraising Safe.
• For more general tips and advice about supporting your people see: Wellbeing in the Workplace, CIPD

• Lead by example - Recognise that how the organisation treats its people (employees, volunteers, trustees, beneficiaries and donors alike) will shape the organisation’s culture and how it is perceived by all audiences – internally and externally. Demonstrating positive working habits will send a clear message to fundraisers that wellbeing matters and that you encourage healthy working habits (working sensible hours, taking lunch breaks and annual leave).
• Understand fundraising and the varied roles of fundraisers – and recognise that fundraising is a collective responsibility and organisational priority
• Celebrate success – Share news of fundraising success across the organisation, motivating the team by celebrating everyone’s role in meeting fundraising goals.
• Be available - Implement an open approach that will encourage your people to share good ideas, give feedback, raise concerns and help improve what the organisation is doing, and let them know their views are valued. Be available for regular one-to-one meetings, diarising sessions to discuss fundraisers’ wellbeing specifically and reviewing what improvements can be made at both ends of the table.
• Give feedback constructively – Think about lessons learned or what can be done differently if things don’t go well, and discuss with colleagues so learning can inform future activity.
• Treat fundraisers as individuals – Everyone has their own strengths, weaknesses and needs, so it’s important to treat fundraisers as individuals, listening to their take on what’s going on and adapting your management style to bring out the best in them.
• Make wellbeing a central and ongoing part of management – Don’t just wait until the last minutes of a one to one to ask how someone is once you’ve gone through all their objectives, and don’t leave it always to individual fundraisers to have to raise an issue around wellbeing. If that is the case, reflect on why or whether it was something that you could have picked up on or could have been more proactive on.
• Create opportunities for learning and development – To ensure fundraisers are confident and well equipped to do their job to the best of their ability, look out for opportunities to build and strengthen their learning and development.
• Working remotely means working differently – Not being together in an office or in physical meetings does impact and limit how you interact with colleagues. Some of the smaller things that would be positive and supportive in a workplace (a social chat while making a cup of tea, being near a colleague who is on a difficult telephone call, picking up on signs of stress) simply can’t happen when people are working remotely, so different approaches and strategies are needed:
  • Give your full attention: it’s easy to get distracted by emails and other pieces of work but when in a meeting with someone, offer them your full attention. Think about holding your hands visibly in-front of the camera to demonstrate this. If in a confidential conversation think about your background and using headphones. Listen with understanding and consider your tone of voice to reflect the type of conversation you might be having
  • Make sure to create spaces that don’t just talk about work, but offer the opportunity to talk about how people are feeling. Use open questions to encourage people to open up and be ready to share your own vulnerabilities or stories.
  • Recognition: it is easy to get whisked away by what we are doing in our day-to-day roles, but make the time to recognise each other and share a ‘thank you.’ This goes a long way and can easily be forgotten about. 
  • Ask what you can do to help make their work easier or support their performance.  Ask if they need additional flexibility and role model your own requests to demonstrate that these requests will be well received.

Further guidance is available from Mind’s How to promote wellbeing and tackle the causes of work-related mental health problems and Taking care of your staff, NCVO knowhow, and Health and Wellbeing at work, CIPD.

There will be challenges and stressful situations in almost every workplace at some stage or another, just as there are in our personal lives. While employers have a responsibility for their fundraisers and all their staff, having a level of self-awareness is also critical. For fundraisers, this means taking time to consider how the role impacts you and likely moments when your wellbeing could be at risk.

Look out for warning signs that your general wellbeing is suffering. By consciously identifying when you’re finding it difficult to cope and addressing such issues or discussing them with colleagues or managers at the front end, you may be able to prevent the situation from escalating. While the below may help individuals think about their situation and circumstance, wellbeing should not solely be left to individual fundraisers to have to identify and speak out – good management should be asking similar questions to fundraisers and raising issues or opening discussions proactively.

• When you think about work, do you worry about meeting your goals and/or about going into work?
• Do you feel the responsibility of keeping the organisation going, or the continued delivery of services, rests on your shoulders?
• Are you set targets or key performance indicators that you feel are unrealistic and without the opportunity to discuss?
• Are you regularly over-working or do your colleagues / manager expect you to do so?
• Do you find that you are struggling to keep up with your deadlines?
• On a day-to-day basis, do you find that you are you particularly anxious or nervous?
• Or are you feeling lethargic or having difficulty sleeping?
• Are you able to wind down out of work hours and at weekends?
• Have you noticed any physical signs of stress such as eczema, panic attacks, headaches, stomach problems a tight chest, throat or jaw?
• When you have concerns, can you identify the root of those worries?
• Do you feel overwhelmed with the pressures of your job?
• Is there someone at work that you feel you can talk with safely and in confidence?

Everybody reacts to stressful situations in different ways. Some thrive on deadlines and challenges, while others will find the same scenario overwhelming. If the workload, office culture or individuals within the work environment regularly make you feel uncomfortable or ‘down’, something needs to change. A healthy work environment will encourage you to talk through your concerns and support you in finding resolutions, offering training or support for handling such challenges.

Of course, it’s important to be aware that external factors, such as family problems, health or financial concerns, childcare issues and worries about loved ones, can all have a major part to play in your ability to cope at work. Again, the workplace culture, support and attitude of peers and managers can be instrumental in protecting your wellbeing and building resilience.

Just as we all have our own reaction to stress, we also have our own coping strategies; conscious or otherwise. They might include going out for a run or bike ride, playing music, going out with friends, spending time with family, watching a favourite TV show, reading a good book or learning something new.

While positive triggers differ from person to person, the NHS identifies 5 key factors for wellbeing, which are: connecting with others; being physically active; learning new skills; giving to others; and focusing on the moment (mindfulness).

By investing time in the things that make you feel good and increasing those positive behaviours, protecting your work-life balance, the chances are that you’ll be better equipped to deal with stressful situations, to support your colleagues and to excel at work.

• Think about the things that make you feel happy and well – your positive triggers. Establish good routines that enable you to fit these things into your daily lives, recognising that they are a priority that can help protect your wellbeing and make you even more productive in the workplace.
• Conversely, consider whether you have any unhealthy or negative habits that may be causing you harm or building stress and try to cut them back. These might include too much screen time or poor sleep patterns through to high levels of junk food or drink.
• Similarly, think about the positive and negative triggers within your role – what makes you feel good about your role and what doesn’t? Being aware of your own reactions can help you work to your strengths and identify the need for support or training to handle challenges.
• Make time to exercise mind and body regularly. Physical exercise will release endorphins that set you on a natural high, while practicing mindfulness or exploring the natural world can help you focus on the moment and deal with the pressures of a busy work and home life.
• Think about what you can do to make others feel good – being kind, thoughtful and thankful is not only beneficial for others, but can relieve your own stress levels.
• Be aware of how you are feeling and how that might influence your day. If you’re having a tough time in your personal life, it follows that you might find it harder to focus or to achieve at work. Consider what you can change about your day to help you relax. Can you call a friend, take a longer break, go for a walk or read a book?
• Open up about the way that you are feeling and tap into the support network in your workplace, whether that is your line manager, HR professional a peer, counsellor, mentor or other. A positive workplace will encourage you to discuss your concerns
• Carry out a Wellness Action Plan – these can be a practical way of helping you to support your own mental health at work. MIND have an example Wellness Action Plan and a range of examples and resources that can help.

If you are feeling overwhelmed or that you can’t cope, it’s important to seek professional help. A call can to the right charity or counsellor really can make all the difference.