(Mental) Health is wealth with APSE's Wellbeing in the Workplace Training

'Wellbeing in the Workplace’ is one of APSE’s newest courses, developed by Senior Training Officer, Amy Caldow. Amy shares how vital this course is in the current climate, emphasising the importance of investing in your own and your colleague’s mental health and wellbeing.

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, and more unashamed conversation.” – Glenn Close
The COVID-19 pandemic taught many lessons, not the least of which was how important it is to prioritise our mental health and wellbeing. Mental Health is a universal experience and the statistics are staggering. Local government research identified deteriorations in mental health and wellbeing across this twenty-four month period, impacts ranging from anxiety over possible illness to grief as a result of bereavement. 

Whilst the pandemic has brought this issue to the global stage, mental health has always been a main character. Mind UK report that “1 in 4 will experience a mental health [condition] of some kind each year in England’ and ‘1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem (like anxiety and depression) in any given week.”

Given that we spend so much of our life in a working environment, this poses an important question; what are we doing to help ourselves and each other whilst at work?

The content for APSE’s newest course, Wellbeing in the Workplace, hopes to provide learners with the space to begin to answer this question. The training supports delegates to identify and mitigate workplace stressors, equipping them with a toolkit to start conversations about improving mental health and wellbeing in a local authority context. There are four key learning outcomes that underpin the content within the training, they are as follows:

• To examine the relationship between mental health and wellbeing.
• To develop strategies to proactively manage your own wellbeing.
• To understand the impact of a range of factors on job satisfaction and performance.
• To apply knowledge towards action(s) that will positively impact wellbeing for yourself and your colleagues.

On Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 June, we delivered the first open course for our local authority members over two morning sessions. As with all APSE services this was an excellent opportunity for attendees to share best practice and collaborate on effective solutions, working together to discuss how to best embed a wellbeing strategy and engage colleagues with this topic as a leadership issue. Following on from the conclusion of this course we received some positive feedback… 

“ The course will give an overview on mental health and makes you consider your own mental health as well as others. Poor Mental Health has been on the increase since COVID-19 so this course is a good starting point.

"A must as a foundation to tackling this subject.”

"Brilliantly presented and kept interesting and relevant.”

We know we have to continue to bring wellbeing initiatives into core operational strategy as investing in our people means investing in our future. As we move forward, we hope to provide a space for more of our members to engage in conversations with colleagues across the UK in how we can continue to support one another.   

Wellbeing in the Workplace

£178+VAT (APSE members) £289+VAT (Non-members) This course is also available as an in-house option

This highly interactive course will help you:

• Examine the relationship between mental health and wellbeing
• Develop strategies to proactively manage your own wellbeing
• Understand the impact of a range of factors on job satisfaction and performance
• Apply knowledge towards action(s) that will positively impact wellbeing for yourself & colleagues

This course is run online as a full day or as two half-days. This highly interactive training includes a mixture of presentations, video conferencing, group work, games, quizzes and video. For more information, please contact Senior Training Officer, Amy Caldow [email protected]

Click here to book your place