Welcome back to The Work Well Podcast, season two is now live and we’re thrilled to share with you the first episode of the season with Su Carty, an international leader in performance. As a speaker consultant and coach, Su works with business owners who are struggling with disconnect and conflict, leaving them with a stress-free united team who own their performance and produce outstanding results.

Su began her career as a psychiatric nurse, specialised in child and adolescent mental health. She holds a master's degree in cognitive behavioural therapy. Su was, on another note, the first women's development manager for world rugby. In that role, she led the growth of the women's game globally from 4% of the population to 25%, and in 2018, became the first Irish female Male appointed to the world rugby council.

In this episode, we’ll discuss mental health throughout the new transition period that is to come soon from both the individual perspective and the organisation perspective. We’ll dive into what’s to expect regarding the workspaces when we move past the pandemic and a profound reflection to remember from today’s guest Su Carty.

You can also watch the full video of our conversation through this link.

You can connect with Sue on Twitter and LinkedIn or visit her website www.sucarty.com

Summer is almost over and we're getting back on track with season two of The Work Well Podcast. Take a listen to this short trailer to know more about what's coming. 

Stay tuned!

Workplace Wellbeing Ireland is a community of people working to promote health and wellbeing in Irish workplaces. It’s a place to connect, share ideas and best practice, talk about mistakes made, reach out for support and discuss future trends and innovations.

In May last year, we brought the community together at the wonderful Irish Aviation Authority conference centre where we discussed “the importance of committed leadership to workplace wellness” with a panel of guests from different industries. We recorded the audio from the event and I’m delighted to share it with you today as an extra special bonus podcast.

Our first panelist on the evening was Kate Moran, the Culture Program Manager at HubSpot. Kate believes wellness in tech and at HubSpot is very different from other organisations. Their primary focus is on listening to their employees to figure out what they want while also looking for new ideas and initiatives.

Also on the panel was Jennifer Grogan. Jennifer is the Organisational Psychologist for Health, Safety and Wellbeing at the ESB. A famous Irish institution, the ESB has a workforce of over six and a half thousand. As a high-risk industry that handles electricity generation and transmission, ESB takes pride in its history of supporting health and wellbeing. It is a relationship-based organisation, built on the idea of "looking out not just for myself but for each other".

Last but by no means least we also welcomed Jim Gavin to the panel. Jim is an Assistant Director with the Irish Aviation Authority. The IAA provides is responsible for all the traffic that crosses over Irish airspace, from hot air balloons to jumbo jets. This amounts to over 2 million flights every year. At the time of this recording and in addition to his role at the IAA, Jim was also the manager of the Dublin Senior Football Team and hoping to guide the Dubs to a historic “5 in a row”*.

*Spoiler alert. The Dubs went on to win their 5th All Ireland title in a row in September last year ;-)

The upcoming team steps challenge “the On Your Feet Challenge” kicks off in mid-July and as well as the benefits of the additional physical activity, the team element of this will no doubt help to increase the informal chat between you and your colleagues so do take part if you can. Full details on the Zone and Staying Connected.

Finally, on the topic of mental health and wellbeing, a reminder of a very important resource for all Ervia Employees and their families; the Ervia Employee Assistance Programme. If you are struggling and if you wish to talk confidentially to a professional counsellor, please call 1800 995 955.

The EAP covers a full spectrum of issues; from personal & family matters to work and money problems. Again, this is a free and confidential service, available to you and your family members at any time, providing immediate access to fully qualified, accredited counsellors and information specialists. While face to face counselling has been stopped for the time being, VHI have confirmed that Ervia employees will continue to have access to telephone and video counselling 24/7.

Listen to the entire podcast here.

Go to www.lifestyleawareness.ie to learn more about Peter Connolly’s work and feel free to reach out to him by email at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.

Our work environment has recently gone through a series of changes imposed by the restrictions and isolation period. That is why today on The Work Well Podcast we want to dive deeper into how we can build a healthy work environment during this pandemic and take a look at the essential elements we should include in our daily routines. In this conversation, former professional athlete David Gillick touches on topics such as physical exercise, the balance between work and family life during the pandemic and how to look at this new normal from a healthy perspective.

As an international track and field athlete, David dedicated himself to competition and built a life around the athletics season. When it was time to retire from the chase and move on with his life, he struggled with anxiety and stress over not knowing where to go next. David now looks back on that time as his opportunity to explore and understand what he wanted to do. David decided to follow his passion for mental health and physical wellbeing. He is now working with corporate organisations to help them develop wellness programs as well as speaking at several events and webinars focused on physical and mental wellbeing.

Reach out to David on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also find out more about him in the videos here or here.

On today’s episode, our host Brian Crooke talks to Gina London about the importance of communication during these difficult times and about the impact of a consistent and positive leadership communication structure.

Gina’s lifelong passion for storytelling led her to a career in journalism. She’s a former correspondent and anchor for CNN and has travelled the world working with organisations and people highlighting issues and campaigns. She was a strategist for the first immunisation awareness campaign in Cambodia and worked with the first women running for parliament in Iraq. She now works with corporate and emerging leaders on storytelling; on the delivery and the construction of purposeful communication.

Today on our quest to discover how businesses in Ireland are coping with remote work, we’re talking to Catherine O’Flynn. Catherine is Head of William Fry’s Employment & Benefits Department. She advises on all contentious and non-contentious employment matters with particular expertise on equality issues.

Remote work came as a necessity during this time for William Fry and the whole company has been working from their homes since the 13th of March, Catherine tells us. As a professional service law firm, remote work was not extremely popular, but they have been trying it out for a while now, and it has been an option for their employees even before the pandemic. They already had the infrastructure, the IT system and support which was put in place for anyone wanting to work from home.

The Work Well Podcast focuses on the development of healthy work environments, that is why today we want to take a closer look at the implications this pandemic has brought on our work and family lives. How does working from home impact our family dynamics, and how are our children coping with isolation?

We are joined by Dr Colman Noctor, an acting physician at St Patrick's Mental Health Hospital, to discuss the impact of social isolation over our well being and our children's well being.

While working in the adolescent unit, Dr Noctor noticed the impact the current restrictions have on his patients. From a mental health perspective, getting involved in activities, exercising, engaging with family and friends, having a structure to a day is very important. And they haven't been able to do much of that during isolation.

"We're looking at a physical pandemic at the moment; I think what we might be struggling with after this is a bit of a mental health pandemic in that sense. And I worry about that, to be honest. And the longer this goes on, the tougher it's going to be." Dr Noctor says.

On this episode of the Work Well Podcast, Brian Crooke opens the conversation with Shauna Moran, an accredited executive coach and owner of one of the top coaching businesses in Europe 2020. During her time working for a variety of technology and SaaS companies, Shauna started to interact with remote teams and to gain interest in the remote way of working. She then went back to university to study innovation management, where she based all of her research and thesis on remote teams. While studying and researching how remote teams can effectively scale and work together, Shauna also managed to apply this information in her day to day work. She realized people were experiencing the same things she was and needed support. That is how she came to the idea of her now established business, Remote Work.

She now focuses on the positive psychology around changing people's mindsets towards remote work and on coaching leaders to be effective long into the future as they continue to scale remotely.

Today on our mission to make workplaces a positive and healthy space, we are talking to a mental health expert about the effects the current state of events has on our well-being and how we can use this time in isolation to our best advantage.

Donal Scanlan works in a mental health hospital in Dublin as a qualified mental health nurse, and he is the manager of Mental Health First Aid Ireland. MHFA is a training and research program that has been using education to challenge the stigma surrounding mental health. To date, over 7,500 people in Ireland have joined a growing community of approximately 4 million worldwide trained in Mental Health First Aid.

Even if direct delivery of their training has been paused for the moment, Donal says they are very keen on encouraging their communities of instructors, corporate clients, and public community groups to use their skills during this time. The people they train have learned how to have a better conversation about mental health, how to support a person in an empathetic and compassionate way, and how to do so without needing to diagnose, without needing to take over. They can now apply their training to support their family, friends, neighbours and remote colleagues to get through these difficult times.