Top 10 Tips To Improve Wellbeing In The Workplace

It’s often tricky not to get stressed in the workplace, but with these top wellbeing and mindfulness techniques you’ll soon improve your health and productivity levels, shares Gary Cattermole, Director of The Survey Initiative.

1. Set aside 15 minutes a day to rest and think about anything that’s given you anxiety over the past 24 hours.
2. Don’t worry about the future or the past – live in the moment. This may seem hard to do but by keeping the present as your focus really does stop any negative distractions.
3. Remain positive and try not to let things get you down. If you’re always dwelling on the negative, change will probably be harder for you to manage, but it is an increasing part of everyday life, so always search out the pluses to a situation.
4. Decide what you can control, and what you can’t and make positive strides to reach your end goal.
5. If your organisation is going through a period of change, although this sounds extreme, you will probably go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
6. Remember there’s always different perspectives so keep an open mind and consider ways how other people may approach the same task, you may learn something new!
7. Self-help books are also a good resource for reflection and learning. Take a look at ‘The Chimp Paradox’ by Professor Steven Peters, it explains the struggle that takes place within your mind and helps you develop to remove anxiety, have confidence and choose your emotions.
8. Meditation is ideal to calm the mind at the start and at the end of the day and really helps to cultivate contentment in the moment and escape the persistent striving to complete a task.
9. Practise mindful breathing – just breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose. Each cycle should take about six seconds and let your mind be free. Repeat this for about a minute and you should feel a lot more relaxed and rested.
10. Mindfulness gives your body the chance to lower cortisol levels that create stress. If there’s a lot of cortisol in your body over a long period of time this can be detrimental to your health. So, give your body the chance to free itself of worries and find time to relax.

For more information about wellbeing in the workplace and employee research, visit www.surveyinitiative.co.uk.

Gary is a partner at The Survey Initiative and has managed numerous employee research projects for a variety of organisations. Gary’s initial grounding was in the areas of sales and marketing, in the mid nineties he joined Longman Software Publishing to head up the business development of SURVEYkits (the worlds first employee opinion survey toolkit). After spearheading its growth over an 18 month period, Gary joined EMPLOYeSURVEYS, the original developers of SURVEYkits, helping to establish EMPLOYeSURVEYS as a leading provider of employee surveys. Following its successful growth, in 2006 employesurvey was bought by a leading consultancy group. Gary enjoys sports, in particular table tennis and football.