Creative wellness: How to boost corporate mental wellbeing creatively

How much do you think about mental health in the workplace? The benefits of centering mental wellbeing amongst your employees are huge. Not only in terms of their personal interest but also in terms of your company overall. There are a number of ways to get creative about how you can increase employee wellness.

What is creative wellness?

Creative wellness is the practice of using creative arts – like painting, music or dance – to promote psychological, physical and emotional good health. By connecting with these activities we are able to find ways to express the everyday stresses or worries that so many of us face. Our growing struggles with work life balance coupled with how increasingly hard it is to switch off from the digital world means that stress, burnout and mental health issues have been steadily on the increase for years.

A lot of the rhetoric around self-care and mental wellbeing has tended to focus on things such as exercise and diet, but creative activities and the arts offer a unique way to tackle emotional issues both personally and in collaboration with others.

The benefits of different creative activities are diverse; writing is an excellent way to work through pain or difficult emotions; drumming has been shown to release stress, and visual arts have been shown to increase positive emotions.

The shift in consciousness that creative wellness opportunities and activities provide allows us to shift our perspective and re-engage with the world around us afresh.

Why should employee wellbeing opportunities be part of any company’s culture?

There are a huge number of reasons why it’s worth putting employee wellbeing and welfare at the center of your organization and its culture. An employer who offers wellbeing support sees the benefits. Your staff are at the center of what you do, without the right people your organization just won’t run. And whilst there’s a lot of talk about wellness it’s worth reflecting on how much you actually promote it. Do your employees take proper breaks? Is it acceptable to talk openly about wellbeing and mental health?

So what are the exact benefits of promoting an employee wellbeing program?

Improved work outputs  

• Increased productivity: The happier and healthier your staff are at work, the better they will be at it. Investing in your staff’s wellbeing at work means greater productivity and results.
• Heightened focus: Stress, anxiety or depression makes us all distracted and unable to focus. But by supporting staff emotionally they’ll be able to focus better at work and you’ll heighten employee engagement.
• Greater inspiration: Stress cripples creativity. A stressed mind can only focus on survival or the basic way to get through the day. But a relaxed, well mind is able to be innovative and inspired and find imaginative ways to solve problems or come up with ideas.

Happier, healthier staff

• Greater team morale: Putting time in place for creative wellness shows your staff that they’re both valued and cared for, which boosts employee morale and connection in the workplace.
• Stronger staff relationships: Happier, healthier staff build better working relationships and help build a stronger team ethos. When employees feel unhappy they’re likely to have fractious interactions, struggle to keep up and negatively impact on the team environment.
• Overall, holistic health: Engaging with arts and creative activities doesn’t just benefit employees’ mental health but can help alleviate some of the physical effects of stress or depression whilst simultaneously boosting immune function and cognitive strength.

Financial savings

• Lower absence rates: Staff who are happier, healthier, and see their wellbeing as valued by their employer are significantly less likely to take time off work for stress or being unwell (both mentally and physically). In the US, job stress is estimated to cost the economy $300 billion a year whilst depression is thought to contribute to 400 million lost work days annually.
• Return on investment: Investing in a workplace corporate wellness program has tangible financial results. The Harvard Business Review reports that Johnson & Johnson saw a return of $2.71 for every dollar invested in staff wellness over a number of years.
• Greater rate of retention: Investing in staff wellness can also improve employee retention; if people know their wellbeing is prioritized and that they personally are valued they’re much less likely to seek employment elsewhere. A survey by Mercer showed that companies who create a culture of health see 11% lower turnover than those who did little to prioritize it. Turnover costs US employers over $1 trillion a year – it interrupts operations and hurts company morale – so investing in staff is crucial to retain them.

Improved corporate reputation

• Better reputation as an employer: Discussion around health, wellness and corporate wellbeing is growing in prominence, so it’s only ever going to become a more important part of your brand and reputation as an employer. Employees will look for it more and more in their workplace. So keeping it front and center will enable you to attract and retain the best people.
• Stronger customer service: Staff who feel valued will value their work – and therefore your customers – all the more. It’s simple really; better looked after staff equals better looked after customers and customer service.

6 creative wellness ideas to use for employees

1. Have a breakfast picnic

   Start your day right by holding an employee wellbeing breakfast. A change from the office or usual working environment, fresh air and the outdoors are all a great way to kick off a day at work. So an outdoor event complete with a range of healthy foods, drinks and conversation can all serve to create a calm and engaging way to begin a working day.

   

2. Take a breath

   Sometimes it’s the simple things. Breathing may not sound like much to focus on but the benefits of good breathing techniques are well documented. Organizing a breathing workshop can teach employees how to challenge things like stress and anxiety, improve concentration and outlook, or restore energy. All of which benefit mental health and physical wellbeing.

   

3. Join a creative mental wellness workshop online

   Online workshops are a great way to connect your team; creative workshops allow them to express their own personal challenges whilst opening up and therefore building relationships with colleagues. Scribl offers a wide range of creative activities across a number of creative expressions including workshops focusing on drawing, crafting and poetry such as Mandala Poetry; visual art workshops like Dual Emotions, which focus on dealing with different feelings, and transformational workshops like Transformation Collage which tackle difficult change. Our workshops are run online, meaning anyone can attend them anywhere and at any time. This is perfect as we all continue to shift into a post Covid world, your team can all attend safely even if they’re not all in the same place.
   
   Explore our range of creative online workshops to find ways to promote wellbeing.

   

4. Healthy body, healthy mind

   Officially designated fitness days – such as National Fitness Day or World Fitness Day – offer a great opportunity to celebrate physical activity in the workplace. Offering on-site activities helps employees experience new ways to stay fit. Pilates, yoga, kickboxing, cycling or Zumba all make excellent options that can take place on-site or even virtually in some cases.

   

5. Pottery and art classes

   Setting up an art or pottery class for your employees is beneficial not only in terms of the restorative and stress relieving properties artistic activities bring but also because it has social value. Interacting with colleagues in an artistic class environment can help build new relationships and strengthen working ones.

   

6. You are what you eat

   Setting up a cooking class has both social and wellness benefits. Perhaps bring in an expert chef or a registered dietician, center it around a theme or particular type of cuisine. Use superfoods – things like kale, kimchi, chai tea and quinoa – and explain the key benefits of eating well for mental wellness. Once you’ve cooked up your feast you have the added benefit of the social time spent eating together.

   

How creative are you when it comes to your team’s wellness?

As you can see, bringing creative ideas about wellbeing into the workplace has lots of benefits. Share these ideas with your managers or colleagues and try out the ones that work best for your organization.

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