To the rest of the world, we are the UK’s first positive mental health gift card. Our mission is to empower employers and their employees to drive positive mental health by connecting them highly qualified, certified experts to work on warning signs which could become a problem in the future.
All sounds great doesn’t it, but as with any business, the story behind its foundation best explains our ‘why’ and our ‘reason for being’ and most importantly our mission to make a difference.
Our Story
It all started when our CEO became mentally ill whilst working in Financial Services. So ill she was signed off work for 3 months and physically couldn’t function or get out of bed and was diagnosed with clinical depression.
How did she get there? A mixture of things – bullying in the workplace which got worse as her mental health declined. A truck load of limiting beliefs which played into this and a genetic predisposition to mental health issues without any awareness or understanding to know what was happening to me.
Through this long period of recovery, she learned that this was not all her fault. Her line manager at the time played a significant part in the decline of her mental health as her outputs reduced, despite working 7am to 11pm was deemed as a performance issue. This led to the perfect storm of feeding her limiting beliefs evidence that she was not good enough, didn’t know enough and was a failure. As a consistent high performer across all aspects of her life this was soul destroying and she felt like she was falling down a hole I couldn’t get out of. She was eventually given a mediocre rating and soon after diagnosed clinically depressed and was off sick for 3 months. When she came back, this mediocre rating led to her displacement. When she challenged her ratings and the displacement, HR just told her that I had a case, but they don’t like a fuss and she would be asked to leave quietly with a compromise agreement regardless of whether the company being at fault or not.
Our Mission
As a result of this, our mission was born! A personal mission of our CEO to ensure that nobody would go through what she did that year and to lobby to drive change in the corporate space to drive a culture of positive mental health to prevent issues from happening in the first place.
Firstly, we set about doing lots of research around what makes up our mental health, along with all the possible services and resources and made use of them all to work on self-awareness & understanding – psychotherapy, counselling, hypnotherapy, life coaching (even completed a life coaching course), yoga, meditation, breathing & lots of mindfulness exercises. As we had map all the things that make up our mental health, we mapped how each of those experts could help to positive influence it/prevent issues and support the building of a personal resilience toolkit.
Post pandemic, this mission is more important than ever.
Problems we will solve
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A complex problem across a diverse workforce – one simple and effective way to solve the problem personalised to each individual
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Unclear how to source credible experts – Healthy Minds Club only offers screened, high quality, certified & insured Experts
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Lack of data & measurement – Healthy Minds Club can provide data on the wellbeing of the workforce, early warning signs and data on Experts being chosen to provide actionable conclusions on how to positively influence and drive continuous improvement of a Wellbeing strategy.
Top tips for success
Business leaders would also do well to formalise a wellbeing strategy going forwards by offering proactive support to prevent mental health issues by:
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Finding a credible Executive Sponsor with company values aligned to promoting positive mental health
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Internal customer focus is as important as being customer-focussed as employees are going to be the first brand, product and service ambassadors for your company. Keep you employees happy and the company will notice in the overall sales and bottom-line results.
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Incorporating Mental Health in the HR process with specific goals & objectives and regular measurement & check ins of mental health and wellbeing
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Creating a proactive approach to educate on what makes up our mental health and empower employees to create their own personal resilience toolkits:
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Teaching self-understanding & self-awareness to identify what makes up and influences an individual’s mental health
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Fostering a growth mindset across the organisation
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Educating and promoting the pillars of resilience
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Teaching stress management techniques including mindfulness, meditation
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Promoting and demonstrating a work/life balance, flexibility
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Educating on the importance of physical health on mental health (nutrition, exercise, sleep management)
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Offering support & education on financial management
Kathy Heath
CEO & Co-Founder
Healthy Minds Club