What a year 2020 was. One of the positives to take from the turmoil has been the focus that has been placed on wellbeing and mental health. 2020 was a year when I first noticed TV and radio ads mentioning the importance of looking after our mental health. It was also a year where many Irish organisations properly prioritised the wellbeing of their employees. If you don’t have healthy people, you can’t have a healthy business. Is the penny finally dropping?

I still see many “random acts of wellness” masquerading as wellness programmes in Irish workplaces but progress is being made. More and more organisations have identified wellbeing as a strategic priority and no longer a “nice to have”. In order for wellbeing to be strategic you must first have a framework. In 2020 I launched my Developing a Workplace Wellness Programme that Lasts online programme and it’s been really heartening to see so many people work through this 8 step framework and apply it to their own work environment.

I will continue to promote the importance of wellbeing in Irish workplaces but I can’t do it on my own. I’ve put together a list of people that I’ve met through my work that I believe will have a significant role to play in shaping the future of workplace wellness in Ireland over the coming years. I’ve also gathered some of their thoughts and expectations on what we can expect to see in this area in 2021.

THE 2021 LIST

Dr. Jennifer Hynes

Lecturer Economics, Workplace Wellness, HRM and Business

Dr. Hynes has several years’ experience lecturing, guest speaking and supervising master’s students in the areas of Workplace Wellness, Human Resource Management, Organisational Behaviour and Economics in Trinity Business School. Current master’s theses under her supervision include employee attitudes towards remote working in China and Ireland, applicability of flexible working practices in Hong Kong, company consideration of employee needs and Irish primary teacher experiences of digital teaching and learning during Covid-19. She holds a PhD in Organisational Psychology/Behaviour, a Master of Education, a Master of International Economics and a Bachelor of Business Studies.

‘2020, what a year! In the spirit of positive psychology, it brought us increased flexible working practices, greater autonomy, less commuting and less pollution. And with that, 2021 brings exciting opportunities and threats. Organisations and employees will need to consider and find ways to manage work-life balance, foster wellbeing and maintain motivation. This is not a one size fits all solution, every employee and organisation has their own context. The big winners of 2021 will be those who successfully navigate the choppy waters of the unknown by putting strategies in place to identify the factors influencing their employees’ wellbeing. This means asking the right questions, using data and making evidence-based decisions.

We know from research over the past 12 months that many employees are suffering from increased stress, isolation and finding it difficult to maintain work-life balance. They are working from home, sometimes in cramped, unergonomic situations. They are worrying about their family’s physical and mental health. They are trying to home-school and juggle a busy career. And for some, they may be worried about unemployment. In a time of social distancing, it can be hard to find a physical shoulder to cry on and this can sometimes feel overwhelming, but this is not a hopeless case! At an individual and organisational level, we can protect and build the resources we need to live a fulfilling happy life.

Make sure to check out Jennifer’s brand new evidence based course designed to empower people to take control of their stress: Managing Stress at Work to Improve Wellbeing.

Dr. Malie Coyne

Clinical Psychologist, Author, Adjunct Psychology Lecturer at NUIG, Mental Health Advisory Panel for ‘A Lust for Life’

With her considerable experience of working with children and families, Malie is fast becoming one of the leading voices in compassionate parenting in Ireland. Through her advocacy work, public speaking and print, radio and television contributions, Malie shines a light on mental health issues and promotes wellbeing throughout the lifespan. Malie lives in Galway with her husband and two little ladies. Malie released her first book ‘Love in, Love out: A compassionate approach to parenting your anxious child’ with Harper Collins Ireland in July 2020.

‘As we enter another year of uncertainty with continued changes in our work practices, workplace wellbeing is more important now than ever. As a full-time clinical psychologist and parent to two young children, I have found the demands of working and parenting a real juggle in the past year, one in which I have had to dig deep into my self-care toolbox to enable me to give to my job and to my family life. In 2021, I am delighted to announce that I will be partnering up with the Workplace Wellbeing Ireland for a "Supporting Working Parents" short course, where I will share some of my tried and tested psychological tools to help parents feel replenished and better able to give their 'good enough' selves to their working and parenting roles. Using a compassionate approach has been found to lower stress, anxiety and low mood, while improving self-worth and resilience. My hope for 2021 is that I can help working parents to experience a more fulfilled work-life balance.’

Check out my recent conversation with Malie for The Work Well Podcast.

Brian Pennie

Author, speaker, PhD candidate, university lecturer, life-change strategist

On October 8 2013, Brian Pennie experienced his first day clean after 15 years of chronic heroin addiction. Instead of perceiving his addiction as a failure, however, he embraced a second chance at life and went to university to study the intricacies of human behaviour. Since then, he has become a consultant to some to some of Ireland’s largest corporations, a final PhD student, a lecturer in Trinity College and University College Dublin, a life change-strategist, a radio presenter, and author of his recently published memoir, Bonus Time.

‘Workplace wellbeing in 2020: Uncertainty drove anxiety. And due to the unparalleled nature of the crisis, no one was prepared and no one knew what to do.

Expectations for 2021: I don't think we'll ever return to full capacity in the workplace. As such, long-term loneliness, disconnection and unworkable home conditions are the factors that need to be addressed most. Long terms strategies to address these issues and many others such as low motivation and anxiety, are critical going forward.’

Check out Brian’s self-paced online course How to Boost Energy, Increase Productivity and Eliminate Procrastination at The Work Well Institute.

Su Carty
Specialist in team dynamics and leadership; performance and wellness coach; speaker and thought leader

Voted Irish Woman of the Year 2018, Su works with business leaders to overcome stress, disconnect and conflict. Utilising her expertise as both a former psychiatric nurse and experience built through an acclaimed career as the first Women’s Development Manager for World Rugby, she supports the development of united teams who own their performance and produce outstanding results.

Alongside her working partnership with Trinity Sport amongst others, Su has been instrumental in the development of Ohana ZERO suicide’s ground-breaking online training in suicide awareness, which provides a succinct 20-minute module to businesses and employees in identifying signs that someone may be suicidal, employing the correct language when conversing with anyone at risk and how to signpost people effectively to the appropriate help.

Many of us thought or maybe hoped that saying goodbye to 2020 would be the start of a pandemic and lockdown free world again. Fresh start! And here we are in the midst of possibly the most challenging time of the pandemic to date. Looking out for each other and building that into systems of working in the workplace has never been so important. For those in management and leadership positions, it is crucial that you have a structure in place that supports you and your wellbeing so you are available and have the space for your people. And for everyone, do your best to put a few moments aside for you.

When we do come to the end of lockdown life and move on from the pandemic, there will be a period of readjustment and word of caution not to underestimate that. That too will be an anxiety-provoking time for many and an important consideration in the workplace. Getting through this crazy time that we could never be prepared for may be a win for you and celebrate that. There may also be a new opportunity in it for you. Take it!‘

Su joined me for a chat on The Work Well Podcast last year.

Elbha Purcell

Head of Dietetics and Wellness at Aramark, Northern Europe

Elbha joined Aramark in 2015, bringing over 18 years’ experience as a registered dietitian. Elbha holds memberships for the UK Health Professional Council; British Dietetic Association; the Irish Nutrition and Dietetic Institute; and CORU. As Head of Wellbeing for Northern Europe, Elbha and her team are responsible for the provision of dietetic support to all healthcare units across Ireland and the UK, along with the creation and delivery of health and wellness programmes across the region.

‘2021 will be a year in which our focus will be on creating holistic wellness supports and campaigns that have the ability to reach all our employees and customers regardless of their work environment or location. We need to be conscious of the resource load on our employees and customers and ensure our messaging is communicated simply and effectively.

Research, through a number of Aramark employee surveys in 2020, has shown that mental health support will be a key focus of 2021. I personally believe the WHO statistic that 1-4 of us will experience mental health issues in a year is now trending towards 1-1 of us. Is there anybody who can say that this pandemic hasn’t affected their mental health to some extent? As a result, there will be a big emphasis on employers to play a role in supporting their own staff’s mental wellbeing as part of their duty of care.

Our goal in Aramark is to continually adapt our mental health and wellbeing strategies to meet the changing circumstances and the evolving needs of our employees and customers. Some of which will focus on creating platforms to encourage and facilitate safe and open discussion of mental health issues and to create inviting spaces for social connection.’

Barbara Brennan

Programme Co-ordinator for See Change; the National Stigma Reduction Partnership,
Change Maker, Stigma Disruptor, Mental Health and Human Rights Advocate

An inspirational ‘thought leader’ in her field, Barbara has over 12 years’ experience in changing the culture of mental health at all levels of society. A regular contributor to national mainstream and social media, Barbara is at home speaking to local community groups, CEOs or senior leaders in the public and corporate world. She has lectured at Dublin City University, Trinity College Dublin and University College Cork, inspiring people to think differently about mental health and wellbeing.

‘Through the See Change workplace programme in 2020, I saw a huge shift in how organisations are talking about mental health; it’s now a necessity, not something that’s nice to have. Everyone is relating to it now because the reality of the pandemic has allowed people to really feel their emotions and not hide them. We are speaking more openly about anxiety, about feeling low, being lonely, being worried. This is inherently what mental health really is; how we think, feel and behave. With physically distancing and working from home being the new norm, it has brought a multitude of challenges for many people, which is having a direct effect on our mental health.

2021 is our opportunity to focus on the micro in a way we haven’t been afforded in many years; we have more time at home than we have had in decades. By making small changes we can use it to bring balance, health and wellness into our daily lives, regardless of what happens with the pandemic. While I know there are difficult times ahead, I’m hopeful of the opportunities we can find to bring new ways of working and lasting change to our workplaces’.

Revisit our 2020 webinar with Barbara where we discussed Mental Health in a Changed World.

David Gillick

Director at RemoteWellbeing.ie, Corporate Wellness Speaker and Facilitator

David is one of Ireland most successful sprint athletes, winning Ireland’s first sprint gold medal in 76 years at the European Indoor 400m championships in 2005. He retained his title in 2009 and became an Olympian in 2008. He still holds both the indoor and outdoor Irish 400m records. He’s written two bestselling books, David Gillick's Kitchen and Back On Track, where he talks openly about his struggles with mental health post a sporting career and the strategies he used in recovery. In 2020, alongside wellbeing experts and speakers, RemoteWellbeing.ie was born to engage and promote wellbeing within organisations, both remotely and in-person.

‘Workplace wellbeing has been brought to the forefront of many people's minds over the last 12 months, which is extremely positive. People are now really understanding the importance of, and the wide spectrum of the different wellbeing areas as a result of 2020. Traditionally, many wellbeing programmes were built around topics such as mental health, nutrition and exercise, however, on the back of 2020, I feel people are looking for these and more and regularly we have found many requesting for assistance around sleep, communication, time management and work/life/parenting as a result of remote working.

We have also found that due to the changes to flow of a working day and working week, how people engage is now different. Combining face to face, virtual webinars, 24/7 content and e-learning courses enables all employees to engage so office workers, remote workers and the often forgotten shift worker can all access the information available to them.The key is the journey - through education, engagement and empowerment.’

Listen back to our conversation with David on The Work Well Podcast.

Stacey Machesney

Head of Health and Wellbeing at Irish Life Health

Stacey Machesney currently works as the Head of Health & Wellbeing for Irish Life, leading out the strategy for corporates, individuals and the community. In her previous role, Stacey was the Head of Ireland at Spectrum Life, delivering wellness solutions to over 500,000 users across the UK and Ireland.

Stacey’s extensive experience in public health, HR leadership and health education drives her passion for creating robust, measurable employee wellbeing solutions based on credible research to achieve long-term success. To focus on her own health and wellbeing, Stacey enjoys developing new cooking techniques, competing with her mum, a food scientist, for the most nutritious recipes, sometimes sacrificing on taste.

To hear what Stacey is expecting this year, take a look at our webinar from December when Stacey joined us to discuss “Trends and Thoughts for 2021”.

Dr. Fiona Geaney

CEO & Founder, Food Choice

Dr Fiona Geaney is the Co-Founder and CEO of Food Choice and also holds an Adjunct Lectureship position with the School of Public Health in UCC. Dr Geaney holds a BSc in Nutritional Sciences, a Master of Public Health and a PhD in Public Health Nutrition, all from UCC. Dr Geaney was the Lead Investigator of the Food Choice at Work Study (2010-2015), where she developed, conducted and evaluated a large-scale dietary intervention study over a period of 24 months. Due to considerable interest from national enterprises, the study was successfully commercialised in 2015 as a spin-out company from UCC.

‘Workplace Wellbeing in 2020 was largely driven by the unprecedented adjustments made by workplaces across the globe to deal with the impact of Covid-19. For many of us, “workplace" wellbeing moved to "homeplace" wellbeing as employees adapted to working from home, new daily routines including eating patterns and exercise habits and fluctuating levels of stress and anxiety as the year unfolded. The challenge for most organisations was to adapt their Health and Wellbeing programme to support and engage with employees in a meaningful way while working from home. To reduce feelings of isolation, health and wellbeing programmes enabled organisations to maintain that sense of community among employees.

For 2021, much depends on the success of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout. Some workplace wellbeing programmes will concentrate on ensuring that there is a safe and smooth transition of staff back into their workplaces. This transition will hopefully be supported by emotional, physical and nutritional services for employees. For other organisations, workplace health and wellbeing initiatives will now be required to cater for a “hybrid" workplace as employees opt to continue to work from home either part-time or full-time.’

Listen in to our podcast conversation with Clare Kelly of Food Choice here.

Fania Stoney
Consultant & Public Speaker at Great Place to Work & Healthy Place to Work

Fania is an executive with Healthy Place to Work, brought to us by the people behind Great Place to Work. Fania works closely with organisations to guide them through the Healthy Place process and helps them understand their current investment, so they can move away from a tick-box style offering (woohoo!) towards implementing a wide-ranging and evidence-based health strategy.

Covid-19 has had an undeniable impact on organisations – notably from a wellbeing point of view on how people work, when they work and where they work. A national shift to remote working proved to have its pros and cons, from reduced commute times and flexible working arrangements to blurred boundaries between work and home and the inevitable zoom fatigue.

Our data shows us that organisations who focused on employee health and wellbeing, in a holistic sense and adapted their supports to the new lived reality of work, saw employees rate their experience of work in a more positive light than last year. This will be crucial when it comes to retaining and attracting talent into 2021, especially as the most asked question at interview is likely to be: “how did you support your people during Covid-19?” ‘.

Fania will be appearing on Season 3 of The Work Well Podcast so watch this space.

David Casey

Wellness and Health Promotion Manager at DeCare Dental

David Casey, RDN, works for DeCare as the Wellness Health Promotion manager for Ireland and Europe. He holds a M.A. in Health Promotion with specialist interest in Mental Health and Workplace Wellbeing from NUIG. David also guest lectures on the Outreach Specialist Certificate and Postgraduate Health Promotion programmes in Galway. In May 2020 David took on the role as Mental Health Ambassador with See Change Ireland, educating media, communities and workplaces on experiences with stigma and anxiety and the positive promotion of mental health in Ireland.

‘Workplace Wellness saw many challenges in 2020. Companies and wellness moved and adapted quickly to form a remote support network. Engagement faced its challenges with a sea of digital remote messages. Remote wellness is here to stay but a more blended work environment of remote and office will be the way forward, as wellness continues to play a huge role in our recovery. Mental health and the stigma around mental health was put centre stage during the pandemic. Covid-19 called out the elephant in the room in relation to talking about our mental health; our thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Organisational Change around stigma and self-stigma was made, as many companies engaged employees on the topic of mental health. Organisations were able to signpost a pathway of referral in the form of EAP programs, mental health first aiders and training line managers to have the conversation of “are you ok?”. Mental health difficulties affected 1in1 in 2020 as everyone was compromised by this pandemic. Resilience in teams and managers was demonstrated throughout 2020 as businesses had to adapt, change and innovate quickly’.

Sophie Moran
KeepWell Mark Programme Manager

Sophie manages the KeepWell Mark Programme in Ibec, which includes the KeepWell best practice framework, flagship events like The KeepWell Summit, best practice events and webinars. She has been involved in delivering and promoting Ibec’s expanding workplace wellbeing initiatives since 2017, when she joined the team delivering their highly successful National Workplace Wellbeing Day Campaign. Sophie holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Workplace Wellness from Trinity College Dublin, a BA in English with Drama (UCD) and a qualification in Writing for Digital (Irish Times Training).

‘The spotlight on corporate wellbeing has never been so bright. Research we carried out this year (Ibec Corporate Wellbeing Barometer 2020) gave a clear indication that while the support has never been stronger for wellbeing (61% of companies report senior leadership support), there is still a gap to bridge between this good intent and the action required to embed wellbeing into organisational culture. Only 27% of companies have a specific budget in place for wellbeing and only 31% have a defined wellbeing strategy.

The main advice I would give to organisations based on this information is to approach corporate wellbeing as a strategic objective. This means allocating resources and budget, recognising and reporting on wellbeing at a high level and setting clear, measurable objectives in place that align with the overall organisational strategy.

Dr. Mark Rowe

Family Practice Physician - Waterford Health Park

Dr. Mark Rowe has been a family physician for more than 25 years and is a thought leader in the areas of Lifestyle Medicine and Corporate Wellbeing. His practice is based at the Waterford Health Park, a primary care facility he founded as a new paradigm for community health and received the Global Health Improvement Award, ‘A Place to Flourish’ in 2013. He is among the first medical professionals globally to be certified as a Diplomate of the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. As a Corporate and TEDx speaker, he has made several notable presentations, including at the American House of Representatives.

‘Covid has been a great disruptor, with few individuals or workplaces unscathed. In terms of workplace wellness, it has in many cases reimagined the idea of “workplace” with more people than ever “working from home”. It has also refocused attention on just how important health and wellbeing are. 2021 is the year when I believe “wellness” moves to occupy an even more central plank of workplace culture and strategy.

As such it has never been more important to expose your people to those authentic voices who can leverage the evidence base from science to give a holistic view, appreciating that every aspect of your wellbeing is interconnected. One of my ideas is this power of thinking small - that small positive steps can make a real difference over time, for individuals and organisations, enabling you to become more of an active participant in your own wellbeing and live with more vitality, on purpose. Simply to never stop starting.’

Listen back to our conversation with Dr. Rowe at the height of the pandemic on The Work Well Podcast.

About the Author

Brian Crooke is a wellbeing educator, speaker and adviser, empowering Irish organisations to promote and sustain wellbeing within their workplaces.

He is the founder of The Work Well Institute and the Workplace Wellbeing Ireland community and is Course Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Workplace Wellness at Tangent, Trinity College Dublin. He is the host of The Work Well Podcast.

In his spare time, Brian is bringing free resistance training to every county and community in Ireland through his parkHIIT social enterprise.

Who to Watch in Workplace Wellness in Ireland in 2021