This week, we are taking a look at wellbeing in the workplace and some of the services that are available to support people when they are struggling.

According a report by St John Ambulance, one in four people have left their job due to mental health or wellbeing issues at some point in their career.

The charity Isle Listen runs a range of training sessions around mental wellbeing for the workplace. Their aim, they say, is to ’empower employers and their workforce to feel emotionally and effectively supported with their wellbeing’.

Gareth Nicholson, who runs the learning and development programme for the charity, says: ’We don’t want to create a culture where every single person needs to have a therapist or a counsellor. We want to provide a toolkit so somebody is able to look after their own wellbeing.

’Providing that information and education makes me smile and look forward to the day, every single day that I go to work.’

Isle Listen also works in most of the island’s schools, teaching children about relationships and giving them the skills to manage their mental health and develop resilience. For those people, children and adults, who need a bit more support, they have a team of therapists who can give one to one help.

The charity’s roots go back 35 years to when it was first formed to support patients with cancer and their families.

Gareth says: ’What we found quite often was that a person who was going through a really tricky time with a cancer diagnosis, they would have lots of family and friends around them, and going through the treatment part they had nurses and others: they had a lot of support.

’But then, once the treatment was over, life went back to normal for everybody else and the person was quite often left with the feeling of "where do I go now?". So that’s where our therapists have been so helpful to so many people on the Isle of Man, to be able to put in strategies with the person to be able to look after their own mental health. And that’s exactly the message we want to get across.’

One of Gareth’s most popular workplace based sessions is on stress management.

He says: ’The idea behind that is really understanding what that word "stress" is, and how there’s good stress as well as bad stress. We need that stretch and challenge to be able to get up out of bed in the morning, get alert for our jobs, and make the most of ourselves, which is good for our wellbeing.

’But then we need to be able to identify the type of events that could along that could make the stress go from a place of being good and manageable to a place where things are starting to get a little bit overloaded.’

As with many other organisations, Covid changed a lot of things and made them look at new ways to interact with their corporate clients.

Gareth says: ’Webinar has been a lovely addition for us, to be able to deliver our training online as well.’

And as he points out, the skills he is teaching, can help not just on the island but anywhere.

He says: ’Because we’re identifying early intervention and prevention, and it’s all based on psychological studies that are used in therapy and counselling around the world, these are tried and tested and accredited ways of doing things and they’re transferable no matter where you are in the world.’

This is especially useful to many Isle of Man companies who are either part of a global group, or who have offices in other jurisdictions, where staff can join in on a webinar.

Gareth says it’s quite common now for him to be delivering online training to a variety of different locations at once: ’Next week I’m doing a mental health and wellbeing first aid course and I’m delivering that to people on the Isle of Man via webinar but also in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai and Qatar as well so, yes, it’s transferable and I feel really lucky to be able to do it .

’So far this year I’ve travelled more across the world virtually than I think I’ve ever done before.

’We’ve been delivering training now for nearly four years, and on and off island, and we’ve reached well over 5,000 people in that time.’

And he adds: ’It really is a privileged position that I’m in.’

l Other workplace training sessions run by Isle Listen include ’Creating a Workplace Wellbeing Culture’ and ’Mental Health and Wellbeing First Aid’.

You can find more information on their website at www.islelisten.im/in-the-workplace.