Encouraging employees to make time for themselves is key to good mental health - Heidi Merrin

Since returning to the office, this has continued. We all have paid time out every week for developing ourselves, whether that involves going for a walk or reading business related texts or watching podcasts.

As a company with our silent auctions, we have raised over £3m now for charities across the UK, but we do our own charity work too. I have previously done the three peaks in support of Macmillan Cancer Support, and our MD James did the PCA Paris to London, cycling 331km in three days.

We also share our activities as a team, so that we can encourage others to try something different. We are encouraged to do anything we want, and activities have ranged from listening to a podcast to enrolling on a course.

Anything that will help you develop as a person, and even better if it can contribute to your role and success at work.

Earlier this year we took an even more proactive role in supporting everyone within the company to look after their mental health as our team is growing significantly now, and we felt the need to take even more action.

We wanted to educate members of the team to be able to recognise poor mental health in the workplace, actively support people and remove any stigma that may be associated with poor mental health.

With hybrid working, and people now being based in both the office and working from home, it is even more important to look out for staff and ensure they know who to turn to at work if they are struggling.

The World Health Organization defines health as: ‘Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’

Therefore some of our management team attended and completed a two day Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England course, to ensure that a number of us have formal training in how to identify problems people are going through, and provide the appropriate support.

We were taught how to preserve life where a person may be at risk of harm to themselves or others and provide help to prevent poor mental health from becoming more serious. How to promote recovery from poor mental health and provide comfort to a person with poor mental health.

What we do best as an event company though, in addition to attending events, is provide fun opportunities for all our staff. We now hold monthly team activity days, and these range from social events to days out. With our own expertise in providing bespoke corporate events, we make sure our own team is looked after. We have been for meals out together, joined a pottery evening and so much more.

As a company we can also see the importance more people are placing on their own mental health, ensuring they book events for their staff and prioritise days out. We have sell-out events for many sporting activities like Wimbledon, and Grand Prix’s. Corporates booking activities to support their staff. It is becoming more important across the board to collectively take care of each other and look out for people.

Last year we also launched ‘Employee of the Quarter’, whereby all staff members voted every quarter as to who they thought had been the shining star in the office.

Earlier this year the four winners were treated to a week’s skiing holiday together to celebrate. We don’t just talk about promoting mental health – we actively show how important it is.

Moving forwards I personally look forward to more of these opportunities and challenges. It isn’t always easy to make time for physical activities or time out, but having it built into your working week is genuinely a bonus.

Some weeks there is not always the time, but we still encourage everyone to make time for themselves and ensure that as a company we are always putting our staff first.

Heidi Merrin is marketing director at Impulse Decisions.