‘Self-Care, Managing Emotions, and Resilience' workshop

What is it?

An interactive wellness workshop facilitated via Zoom for your employees. The workshop can be facilitated as an "all staff" workshop, or a tailored workshop for leaders/managers. The leader's version includes the "all staff" content plus special content on how to support/manage teams during this time.

In addition to best practice content shared by Laura, participants have an opportunity for sharing and group brainstorming to implement strategies using Zoom virtual breakout rooms. It is recommended to reserve 2 -2.5 hours for this workshop to allow time for participant sharing. For groups larger than 30 participants, a general info-sharing format (1.5 hours) can be provided with time for open Q&A at the end of the presentation.

Desired Outcomes:

• Participants will build upon existing rapport, trust, and connection by discussing experiences and shared wisdom with colleagues.
• Participants will learn new information about self-care, managing emotions, and cultivating resilience to support personal mental health and effective job performance.
• Participants will make individual commitments to integrate at least one concept/strategy from the workshop.

Why is it Important?

The COVID-19 pandemic is considered a "critical incident" for employees in the workplace. A critical incident is an event that is out of the ordinary and involves some form of human suffering or anguish. Critical incidents can result in distress and strong emotional responses from those affected. Such events usually overwhelm normal coping strategies and are disruptive to the workplace.

The focus of critical incident response is on cultivating psychological resiliency that supports employees to return to their pre-incident functioning. Psychological resilience is the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly. Resilience exists when the person uses internal resources (like mindset and coping strategies) that they can pull on when things are tough.

Outside of it being just a right and good thing to do, supporting the mental health and wellness of your employees also has a strong business case. It's simple. Mentally healthy and resilient people are able to focus, be productive, and carry out their roles and responsibilities at work. Supporting employees' ability to learn about and cultivate resilience is a wise use of organizational resources.

Sample Workshop Agenda

• Welcome, context, outcomes, agenda, requests
• Check-in (small groups)
• What we already know  (small groups)
• Learning: Self-care, managing emotions, and cultivating resiliency
• Integration: Individual commitments + supporting others 
• Outstanding Q&A and resources needed
• Next Steps, Check out, close

What's Included? (all options are fully customizable)

• One pre-event planning call to align on session activities and desired outcomes of the event. Content will customized for your employee's specific needs
• Facilitation of one interactive virtual workshop session (up to 2.5 hours with break included). Session activities will include self-reflection, small group brainstorming and discussion, and action planning.
• Content slides + PDF resource guide with self-care action plan to be sent to all participants after the workshop session.
• Post-event 30-minute debrief coaching call with senior leader to make recommendations for continued support of staff members.

Excerpt from recent session: