Supporting Employees Emotional Fitness
Driven by her personal mission and commitment to the growth of others, Angelee Richards has been inspiring positive change for over 20 years in human resources, operations, and business development. She is intentional by incorporating her passion for people in personal and professional well-being to create a happy, healthy corporate culture.
As business leaders and human resource professionals, supporting our employees while recognizing the challenges they face, still entrenched in a pandemic, can be daunting. Both business and personal needs have changed dramatically from just a year ago. From remote working and home-schooling to financial concerns and family illness, managing stress has never been more critical. As our leader of people management, I seized the opportunity to utilize one of Alyfe’s Wellness Kits: Emotional Fitness.
Emotional fitness is essential in our organization because while we promote and encourage community, our consultants work independently within long term healthcare facilities. More so than any other time, the past year has left many of our employees feeling alone and needing connection. As an organization, we are passionate about supporting our employees and providing education with simple tools they can use every day. Handling and managing emotions in a safe environment where employees feel supported is a challenge not only we face, but almost every employer out there strives to do better.
During an all-employee meeting, I thought, what better way to provide a consistent message around the emotional support we want to give our staff. I utilized the Emotional Fitness Wellness Kit presentation and the interactive activity to provide education with tips and tricks to build and strengthen resiliency skills. This activity provided an opportunity for staff to speak freely about their stressors in a safe environment. As follow-up items, the handouts and articles from the kit were delivered to the team as a takeaway to help them continue to implement practices in their daily life to manage stress and work through difficult situations.
Our employees and leadership loved it, which was a huge win, especially when employee engagement has been waning. Employees provided positive feedback that not only was the Wellness Kit information helpful, but they appreciated that leadership took the time to acknowledge their emotional well-being and not just provide job-specific skill training.
The Wellness Kit had easy-to-follow guides and instructions; everything I needed was contained within. The information and additional resources were outstanding. Whether you’re just starting in wellness, or have a mature program, I feel this kit makes it easy to approach the not-so-easy subjects – it made me feel as if I was the expert and could handle the dialogue with employees.