CharityComms podcast: An introduction to all things Wellbeing with Kirsty Marrins

3:25PM Mar 19, 2021

Speakers:

Lauren Obeng-Owusu, CharityComms

Lara Burns, Scouts

Kirsty Marrins, CharityComms

Kirsty Campbell, Blood Cancer UK

Robin Lanfear, Impetus

Keywords:

charity

pandemic

people

staff

organisation

wellbeing

mental health

support

sector

meetings

important

work

kirsty

absolutely

supporters

recognise

beneficiaries

terms

comms

team

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the CharityComms podcast. We are now back for season two, where we'll be focusing on all things wellbeing. We wanted to mix things up a little bit this season. So we'll be having a guest host takeover each episode and there'll be inviting three guests who will be interviewed about various topics surrounding well being. To kick things off, I want to introduce our very first guest host, who is not only one of our beloved trustees, but she's also a digital communication consultant, regular columnist in the third sector, where she writes about all things digital, and was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the charity sector. On top of all of that, she authored the CharityComms wellbeing guide for comms professionals. So without further ado, we welcome Kirsty Marrins.

Thank you so much, Lauren. I'm delighted to be here.

We're really, really, really happy to have you. I'm sure everyone can hear that you wear many hats. But we'd love to hear a little bit more about you and your journey, and writing and authoring the guide and why you're so passionate about wellbeing.

Sure well, I've worked in digital comms since 2007 and over those years, I've had lots of experiences of dealing with really difficult and emotional content, as well as sometimes, you know, horrible comments and trolling on social media. Some charities have processes in place to help help staff who are exposed to this emotive content, and some simply don't. So the wellbeing guide came about after I saw a number of charities dealing with sustained crises on social media. And it made me really question what support there was for those staff having to deal with it and I thought, you know, as a sector, we don't really talk about this aspect of our work enough. And there also at the time, wasn't really many free resources or guidance that was aimed specifically at charity comms professionals. So hence, the guide was born.

Wow, amazing. It sounds like it's in pandemic of its own and I just kind of wanted to touch upon that it's extremely timely, especially as so many people are experiencing burnout and seem fatigued and I wanted to ask your opinion on how the nature of modern work as a result of the pandemic poses a threat to mental health.

I think it's important to really acknowledge though that burnout happened way before COVID and the pandemic, in our sector, especially, but definitely, it's been exacerbated over the last year. I mean, there are so many factors contributing to that which we cover in this episode with the guests that I talked to. But I think one good thing to come out of the pandemic is that it's made a lot of organisations more conscious about their staffs mental health and wellbeing, and that they're actually starting to take it more seriously to.

I'm glad he talked about staff being aware of it now, because I'm a big fan of your Charity Club on Clubhouse. It's a great group of people that meet every Tuesday and talk about various topics. But I was fortunate enough to tune into the wellbeing panel and your speakers touched upon some great points, Elena from WWF, and Ben from Asthma UK, talking about resilience and wellbeing training and people struggling to strike the right balance between work and home life. So I wondered if you could share some tips about how people can create better boundaries for themselves to ensure they're able to cope?

Sure, I mean, to be honest, I'll guess cover this brilliantly. So I think I'm just going to share one tip. And that's rethink your meetings. So as you mentioned, we've all got Zoom fatigue, and I think what people maybe don't realise is that video meetings are particularly draining because of the constant eye contact. Think about when you're in a meeting face to face, it's not you know, always necessary to be looking at the person talking you know, you could be writing notes you could be looking out of the you know, window briefly looking around the table at your other colleagues. So I think you know, we need to ask ourselves is a video meeting really necessary, or could maybe just a good old fashioned telephone call do instead and if you do do a, you know, telephone call that way you can actually make it a walking meeting. So you know, you give people the opportunity to go outside and get some fresh air and actually, whilst we're on the subject of meetings, please please please ban them over lunchtime. My guest Robin, he says that they have done this at impetus they have banned at lunchtime meetings to give staff the opportunity to go outside and also to have a well deserved lunch break. So I think that would be my absolute top tip.

Do you know it's so funny? I even think sometimes, oh my gosh, I'm looking at myself so much, which is something that is so weird and I'm so conscious. And I'm trying to listen as well. So definitely think that's something to think about for various reasons.

But you do know that you can turn the you can turn yourself off, though.There...

Oh, yes!

To turn, turn off your videos, you don't see yourself. So I recommend that aswell"

In my next meeting, I'm going to do that for sure because I need to stop looking at myself! Lastly, he touched upon and Robin's top tip about meetings, etc. And I want to wrap this up, because this is not my interview, Kirsty is taking over and I know everybody's excited to hear about these insights. But what else can we expect from this episode?

So if you're wondering how your charity can improve staff wellbeing and support staff with their mental health, then you're going to hear some inspiring ways that you can do that in this episode and the good news is it doesn't matter what your budget is, any charity can improve on this area. When speaking to my guests, the common theme was that there needs to be an open culture around mental health and wellbeing and that this will only be achieved with the leadership team who drives it from the top down.

Oh my gosh, I'm very, very, very excited to listen to the full version of this podcast. So that's it from me and Kirsty, and I'm going to hand it over to Kirsty to introduce her best guest.

I'm absolutely delighted today to have as my guest Kirsty Campbell. Kirsty is a senior fundraising manager with nearly 10 years experience of working across corporate and community fundraising. She is currently the senior regional relationship manager at Blood Cancer UK, and leads a team of seven regional fundraisers to support and grow their network of regional supporters and community groups. So welcome, Kirsty to the podcast on wellbeing.

Thanks, Kirsty. That was quite a flattering introduction and thanks very much for having me along to speak with you today.

It's my absolute pleasure. So my first question for you Kirsty is do you feel that working from home and not being able to see your colleagues in person has had a negative effect on your wellbeing?

That's a really interesting question. And the fact that I've worked from home for eight years, though, so I've become quite used to remote working, I would say if anything, the pandemic has helped level the playing field in terms of managing my well being as No, everyone who works from home is experienced in the same working environment. So for example, all communications are tailored for remote workers and all meetings are virtual. So remote colleagues dial in or attend and virtually aren't considered an afterthought. I also used to travel quite regularly to London and across the UK, and always in a bid to get the cheapest flights to minimise the costs for whatever charity I was working for. This would usually involve getting the earliest earliest possible flight home. So I think what the pandemic has actually highlighted to me is how detrimental that approach was to my ability to manage my wellbeing. So I hope that some elements of virtual working will continue post pandemic.

I've heard that from a few charity staff who work remotely who's who have always work remotely, they say the same thing that actually they feel like a pandemic has helped them feel more like part of the team because as you say, there's that like level playing field. Now everybody's in the same situation and I think it's interesting, because on the flip side, it has probably given those colleagues who do go into the office every day, that sort of, I guess, understanding and almost empathy in a way for you know, colleagues who do work from home. So I think it has had some benefits and and hopefully some of those will stay.

Absolutely I would hope so and I think it will be quite an interesting transition as a manager and second a post pandemic working environment, there will be a further adjustment and adjustment that we'll need to make across the sector in terms of managing a blended approach of office working on virtual working from experience, it seems to be quite easy to manage meetings or manage communications when either everyone is based in an office or when everybody's based remotely. Where it can get difficult is when you're trying to take a blended approach and I think consented in that making plans for that it's gonna be really important for the third stage was any any working environment just now?

Yeah, absolutely. 100% So I did a call out on Twitter to find examples of charities that were doing amazing things in terms of helping staff with the well being and you were one of the people that replied and said about all the wonderful things that Blood Cancer UK are doing and I thought it was really interesting because you described yourself as a former stoical wellbeing sceptic dnd you said that now you feel fully supported to manage both your own and your team's well being. So I'm just wondering how you've sort of moved from that sceptic to now an advocate.

I think it's important to say that I still believe in stoicism in the true philosophical sense of the word. So when you experience challenges or setbacks, and trying to compare that against the wider perspective, looking at the bigger picture, and also understanding that there's elements that you will never be able to control. But I think over the last few years, what I've recognised is that you can only really take that balanced approach, when you have a good solid grounding in terms of your well being. I suppose what changed my perspective slightly was a period of our night back in 2017, I was working and high profile partnership at that time, it was quite a fast paced, dynamic working environment and there was a number of setbacks and major issues and curveballs that came came my way in quite short succession. And these individually, these were all things that I would quite happily manage and take ownership of and deal with. But I quickly recognised that my ability to take things in my stride was largely dependent on how many things I was trying to take in my stride. And I, I find it helpful to picture well being as reserves that can be drained by things that take up your energy, so those challenges and setbacks, but can be replenished by doing things that that benefit you will that be things outside of work in terms of engaging with friends and family, doing things that you enjoy, or things and say that works and I think that if that bounces off, and your reserves drain faster than you can talk them up, then you have less capacity to manage any challenges coming your way. Yeah, and I think the pandemic has, has taken a lot out of our all of our reserves, some more than others, but it's undoubtedly impacted all of us in one way or another. And ultimately, that means that our resilience and facing whatever work in life throws at us is ultimately just overall.

Absolutely and you know, I think it's an interesting view of sort of well being and I think it's one that we always have to remember well being is both upon us ourselves to manage our own well being but equally, our organisation needs to support us as well and recognise when staff are feeling sort of close to burnout. So I just wondered Blood Cancer UK, you shared with me that they have a whole host of mental health and wellbeing sort of tools, I think you've got a couple of strategies do you just want to quickly talk us through how they are supporting staff wellbeing.

It was identified as a priority by blood cancer, your key key pandemic. So in 2019, we put in some some groundwork in order to manage employees wellbeing, ensure that staff and managers were empowered with the tools and we've also adopted some practices that are common in a healthcare setting. So we've introduced external supervisions for our support line team, which allow them to reflect on any challenging conversations that they've had with supporters and we've also introduced short strands, where people can come and share experiences relating to a specific framework of a place, it meant we could quite quickly start considering the additional tools and resources which would be helpful for employees to manage their well being. We've also got a really strong leadership team and a really strong HR team who prioritise staff wellbeing and we launched the staff wellbeing strategy in April 2020, which has a number of different strands. So under the mental health strands, we have a number of tools including an employee assistance programme, which is an external source of support, we have our Mental Health First Aiders, which is an internal source of support and to help get a little bit more insight from from other members across the organisation.

I'm so impressed that your leadership team takes mental health and wellbeing so seriously and I think, you know, it is so important that staff see that from the top down and obviously Blood Cancer UK, you know, recognised this and took took action before the pandemic even started. But I wonder do you feel that maybe the pandemic has forced the sector into acknowledging that wellbeing is actually an issue?

Yes, absolutely. I think in two ways. The first way is particularly relevant for regional or community fundraisers, and the struggles that come along with working from home for your pandemic. I used to get a lot of comments so it must be nice to sit in your jammies all day and watch Jeremy Kyle. But I think as we've been working, people have realised that that's absolutely not the reality of working from home day to day. But there is a recognition though that there are some major challenges in terms of achieving a work life balance when working from home that need to be addressed. I also hope that many managers will no understand why asked a national team of fundraisers to come together on a regular basis, maybe once a month is now, maybe not the best use of everybody's time and it's not it's not necessary, we can have productive meetings virtually. I really hope that we can take forward the benefits of pandemic working in post pandemic environment that we emerge into. The second way I think the pandemic has forced the sector and to acknowledging that well being as an issue for us, as the supporters are becoming more willing to share their own well being struggles as the conversation around mental health kind of grows across our society. And I think it's important to recognise the impact on staff well being as a result of that. So for example, blood cancer UK, we've launched a new virtual walking event called walk away, and we've had over 2000 participants sign up to that event, which is absolutely fantastic. Many of those are new supporters, to Blood Cancer UK, and as a result, my team are prioritise and welcome calls to those supporters. And because they're their new supporters, they are shedding their connection to us as a cause their reason for support and taking part and as a result, these are leading to what can be sometimes quite emotional calls, as many supporters are taking par. And maybe you're someone who they've lost a blood cancer or follow in colleague friend or family members diagnosis, and actually had a discussion with my team teams, how we can manage the knock on impact of that on on my team and we put some kind of practical plan in place in terms of making sure that we are recognising that taking some time out after a difficult call is part and parcel of our roles and ensuring that everybody across the team knows that they can reach out to each other and formally for global support or access our mental health, our state or our employee assistance programme, after those calls to provide additional support and we're also looking to bookend some formal reflection sessions similar to the supervision sessions that are run for our support services team. I think it's important for charities to recognise that we are often managing highly emotive conversations with supporters. We're managing highly emotive causes day in and day out and I think we need to recognise as a sector that we need to make sure that that safe garden is in place, especially for frontline workers and staff that are having those conversations with either supporters, our beneficiaries.

100% and that's actually one of the reasons why I co- authored the well being guide for comms professionals for CharityComms. We kind of internalise it, and it can be really hard hitting stuff and you know, on the flip side, you've got, you know, potentially you might be dealing with, like trolls on social media, or all of that sort of thing. And I know, for people who work remotely anyway, like your regional fundraisers or, you know, regional prs, you know, that's something that is really, really key to address. And that's obviously been highlighted now even more with people working from home that sort of need to be able to maybe have a debrief after with someone in your team to just say, had this chat, it's made me feel, you know, X Y, Z, I just need to talk about it. I just need a bit of support is so important. And so I'm really glad that you addressed that. And you've sort of segwayed brilliantly on to my last question. So you've mentioned you know, that kind of work life balance and everybody now working from home and those who have never had to work from home before, I wondered if you had any sort of practical tips for how people can ensure that they separate that work and that home life?

Absolutely. First thing that I would say before I give any advice is that this is the kind of ideal work in scenario, it's not necessarily the reality. But I think just having certain approaches in the back of your mind when you are feeling rundown or feeling the impact of working from home, tapping into any of these resources or approaches. So the first thing that I would like to stress is do not access your work, email or teams or any other communication channels on your personal phone. I'll be honest, this is only something that I've adopted in the last 12 months, but it really has made a significant difference. It means that I'm not interrupted outside of work and also no ruminating over any conversations or replies with any email chains that have gone on that day. I used to find myself sometimes in a really bad cycle sitting on the couch at 10 o'clock at night. And once I've checked Instagram once I've checked Facebook once I check the news and then go back on and check my email is that do you know I should have worded that email a little bit better? What exactly did that person mean? So I've removed that from my personal phone and the difference has been remarkable. Also getting outside at least once a day. Again, it took me years to actually put this into practice and my husband's actually quite good at nagging me and it pains me to see it. But he's right, it does even 15 - 20 minutes, it just takes the edge off and just have an update from the screen means.

Yeah, yeah, just having some headspace.

If you can, I would say having a designated space for working and actually taking the time not just to close your laptop or physically powered it down, shut your laptop down and put it out of sight at the end of the day, it just stops that temptation to walk back on just to finish that one last thing and then also during the day with try to avoid back to back meetings. And I would say broadcast and on Zoom/Teams takes much more energy than having a telephone conversation or providing an update in person. And I think it's important to recognise that you need to ringfence time to be able to have the headspace to go in with with your day job not just be present or update meetings.

Absolutely. And also not not everything has to be a video call.

Exactly. Exactly.

Meetings is a big issue in the sector. There are too many meetings, like you say to the point of when do you actually action, any of the things you're meant to have action from the meetings. So I'm really hoping that, you know, we have sort of less meetings going forward and I 100% agree with all of your tips. I think they brilliant, I think that you're a senior leader yourself. It is also about practising what you preach, you know, if you're telling your team which off at five o'clock or six o'clock or whatever it is, don't be answering emails at ten o'clock, but then you're firing one off at ten o'clock at night. It then sort of gives them that like, oh my goodness, am I meant to be checking my emails at 10 o'clock at night? Am I meant to be, you know, replying to this. So I think sort of setting those boundaries, but then also practising what you preach and making sure that senior leaders are not kind of going against the advice that they're giving?

Yeah, absolutely. The importance of modelling that behaviour has become really clear. And I hope my team would agree that that's something that they're they're seeing more and also there's there's things that you can do even if you do choose to work late. We we've got agile principles in place and work, which means that we can, if we want to take more than often working even because assets is better that day, then we can.

Yeah.

But I think it's also recognising that even if you're sending emails at 81,0, 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night, that might make you feel good, because you've got that off your to do list. However, the impact of that is someone logging in the next morning to a long list of emails.

Yes.

So I think it's also recognising and respecting other people's boundaries and thinking about it in that way.

Yeah, that's such a good point. It is interesting, like you said, I think flexibility is sort of the big keyword now. You know, I get your point, you know, in the past, if you were travelling and you know, you're standing in the queue, and it's 8pm and you might as well send off an email, like, what's the harm? I guess it's just more, you know, the person that is the recipient of that email, knowing that that's why you're doing that, and that there's no need to action at all that they don't need to be logging in to check if you sent an email at 8pm.

Yeah, absolutely. setting those boundaries for yourself in terms of work works for your well being, and also respecting other people's boundaries that they're set to maintain their well being is so important.

Absolutely. Kirsty, thank you so much for your time, it's been absolutely brilliant talk to you and to find out how Blood Cancer UK is really taking such a good approach to mental health and well being and and yourself with you and your team and thank you so much for sharing all your practical tips.

So my next guest has worked within charity comms for seven years. They are currently the communications manager at Impetus, which is a charity that transforms the lives of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds by ensuring that they get the right support to succeed in school, in work and in life. If that's not busy enough, Robin is also a comms lead for the youth employment group, which brings together key leaders and experts around the youth employment sector to help drive the UK response to the COVID 19 crisis. So a huge welcome to Robin Lanfear.

Thanks, Kirsty pleased to be here.

So Robin, could you talk us through why you feel Impetus is a shining example of an organisation who takes mental health and well being so seriously?

Sure. So I think before getting into that, I would say that we wouldn't consider ourselves to be a shining example just yet. We think we've done some great work on this and we're certainly getting there. But we want to acknowledge we're not we're not actually. So we've remained flexible in terms of working hours but we've we've brought in things like we have what we call RCT's, which is a terrible pattern on randomised control trials, which is a part of our work, but they are randomised coffee time. Terrible term, but it's a half an hour slot that you have a random colleague every week. And it's a time where you can talk to them about something other than work, which is really important for something that's really missing from working from the office. And it's quite awkward to do, but you can't just wander over to someone's desk, or you can't just call them because it feels oddly intrusive. We've had after work, virtual drinks on and off a book club, a yoga club, once one catch ups. And we've maintained that sort of culture of honest and open feedback. So I think we've we've weave those in and outs when when they felt appropriate, appropriate that that hour every day, when we have time to go out in the sun, that's obviously something new for the winter months. So we've changed up our offer.

I love that those are all such good examples and also, what I'm so impressed about is it's one thing to have, you know, a sort of mental health strategy and it's another thing to actually live and breathe it. And I'm really encouraged to hear that your your leadership team is really driving it and that they're really invested. Because I think that's so important.

Absolutely. I think it's really important to know that there's somebody within the organization's leadership that cares about you.

So do you think, you know, obviously, you've been doing work in this area within the organisation prior to the pandemic, but there are lots of charities who perhaps haven't really thought about wellbeing that much do you think that maybe the pandemic has forced a sector as a whole into acknowledging that wellbeing is actually an issue?

I think so I think the impetus, we fund a number of charity partners, and we work in coalition with a lot of other charities. So we have quite a good sense of what other charities thing, I think it's definitely the case that the pandemic has forced a number of charities into acknowledging this. It's a really tricky time, I think if you if you consider that this sort of typical perceptions of the third sector versus the private sector, the perception that the third sector is easier or more more welcoming, or the hours are shorter and I think that was never the case in the first place. And then you fold in knockdown were beneficiaries, for a lot of organisations now need more support than they needed beforehand. And at the same time, charities capacity and resources down. So I think charities and charity workers are having to work a lot harder. And I think there's a natural sort of capacity for people to want to do that work, because people would work within charities have such passion for the cause that their organisation exists to address. So yeah, well, whilst at the same time, charity workers are potentially working harder, it's much harder to keep an eye out on people, you can't see how long someone is staying in the office for you can't be if they physically look stressed. So I think I think it's just a huge a huge challenge. And I mean, yeah, I think I think charities for charities are starting to realise that, as I say, a number of charities we speak to, you're starting to realise that. And yeah, fingers crossed more charities start to take notice and start to do some work on this because otherwise it can, it can become a real a really big problem.

Absolutely. I think we as a sector are really good at probably looking out for the the well being of our beneficiaries, or our service users or our volunteers or our supporters. But perhaps we don't always, you know, do that internally and equally, I think we really did as a sector of speaking out about mental health. So, you know, most charities will probably get involved in like mental health awareness week or time to talk day. But do you think that we should maybe be doing more to speak publicly about mental health in the sector and if so, how do you think we should do that?

Good question. I mean, in many, in many ways, this isn't just a set of thing that I mean, the country and other sectors as a whole need to get better. But yes, I do think the third sector needs to get better at this and it's struck me as quite hard, really, because a lot of third sector organisations to your point, are very good at talking about difficult and nuanced issues, but but in terms of their beneficiaries, and that they struggle a little bit talking about the issues that they have internally, and the issues that the employees have. I would say that from the conversations I've had, and from what I've seen, it's not due to a lack of desire or passion from organisations to talk about this issue. I think it's a mix of priorities and a little bit of fear rarely is I think, from a priorities point of view. I mean, a lot of charities, resource and capacity are always very low. And it's seen as in order to talk about the issues that our employees are facing, we have to in some way drop at something that our beneficiaries are experiencing and so I think, I think in order for these sector to talk more about that they need to address the priorities thing. And from from from a fear point of view, there are a number of things apply it there, I think from our point of view, where a funder as well as the charity, and our big thing is about talking from a place of data, anything we do from our policy research to investing in charities, we make sure it's data driven. So there's always this desire to get our ducks in a row before we talk about anything and then for other charity organisations, it might be that they simply just don't want to get it wrong, especially for charities where they feel like we have our issue and mental health isn't our issue, and say, we're not comfortable talking about it. I think my response to all of that really would be one a very basic point that as well as having responsibility to beneficiaries, you are an employer, you have a responsibility to employees and it's important that your staff know that you take that responsibility seriously. But also, I'd like i'd liken it to some of the things we've seen within Black Lives Matter and, you know, the tragic sort of recent Sarah Everard case and some of the stuff we've seen on Twitter about not all men in that how important it is to be an ally with certain certain movements. You need to be talking out if you want to be a part of positive change. It's not good. I don't think it's good enough, frankly, anymore to just be silent on mental health. I think I think by staying silent, you're, you're potentially damaging that movement.

Well, I mean, so many great points there, Robin, I almost feel like we could, you know, chat for hours and I think it is interesting, that whole you made around lots of charities, whether you're really big or really small, are always stretched in terms of time and resource. So sometimes things like a mental health strategy is just not a priority, because as you said, it means having to then drop something else. But I feel like it should be a priority because it's sort of happy, well supported staff that are encouraged to be open and honest, and have that really open culture just seem to thrive and they're more productive. There's there's just so many positive reasons around it. So thank you for sharing that you. So the last question that I have for you is you know, obviously, we've all been for the last year working and living in the same environment. And it can be really difficult switch off after work and to kind of have those different aspects of our lives as separate. So do you have any practical tips that you could share?

To my point earlier, it's important to find a time during the day where consistently you get your lunch break and ideally, you find some time to get out of the house get out in the sunlight. If you can agree that with your manager with your employees at time during the day where all of you agree you won't have meetings, I think that's been incredibly beneficial for us and has made the day feel less like a constant slog. I think it's when we're back in the office, people were working more standardised hours, I think it's been great that we've moved to flexible hours and people are able to make their home life work for them. But what that has meant is there's less standardised lunch times less standardised times when people start and finish. So it's difficult to have that time of the day when nobody's having meetings. I think by having that, yeah, it's been a time where we can get out of the house, see, your house is less of a solid eight hours of work every day. There's this sort of very, very, very basic stuff about having work, work mobile phones, if you can encourage your employees to do that. It's it's a difficult sort of initial step of having to carry this extra black box around with you. But really great to stop having work Whatsapps and Teams messages. And my excellent tip, I guess would be about finding, finding a way of not having that section of your house. So your flat at only exists for work and the thing I did is we had a little budget for a desk and a chair and I made sure that my desk and chair were foldable, so I can move it around the house. And that stops me from having to think this is the section of the house, that means work and then it also means at the end of the day, I can fold away my desk in my chair and that signals this is me finishing work and I think it depends on people's personal experience of the company they're in at the moment. But I think it can be very difficult if you're working eight hours a day and you're not finding any time for social activity whatsoever. I think in office spaces people would get naturally get to know the people that they work with. That can be very difficult working from home because as I said it's it's less natural to give someone a Teams call give someone a zoom call than it is to wander over to their desk. So if you can work that into your diary is working time for you to get to know a colleague, your team a little bit better. That doesn't have to be so focused on work. I think that can make your workday a little less heavy.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm currently doing an interim role at media trust, and we had a weekly social that everybody attends and we're not allowed to talk about work, which I think is really nice, but we've also had some new staff joining during the pandemic and it's always a great way for them to then the kind of introduced that then makes it easier to kind of, you know, reach out and say, oh, well, let's have a cup of virtual coffee in the next week or so. I think you're right. It's so difficult now when we're not in that physical environment where, you know, you'd walk over to make yourself a cup of tea, and there'd be somebody that you don't recognise. And you're like, Oh, hi, those kinds of spontaneous conversations.

Sure.

Robin, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you so much. I feel like I've learnt loads talking to you and I really hope everyone who's listening has taken down loads of notes, or you know, maybe are going to share this podcast with their senior leaders, or if they are senior leader hope they're going to implement some of the great work that you're doing at Impetus in terms of wellbeing and mental health because I think it's brilliant.

Thanks, Kirsty and if you if anyone wants to reach out to me reach out, I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has.

I am thrilled to introduce my next guest, Lara Burns, who has worked in the charity sector for the last 10 years, but has been working in digital throughout her career. Just 18 months ago, she joined the Scouts as Chief Digital Officer, where she leads the digital transformation of 100 year old charity, working with over 150,000 volunteers across the UK, who deliver skills for life to around 400,000 young people, as well as her digital work. Lara has also been working with other senior leaders in the charity, to help focus on the well being of staff during the pandemic. So welcome, Lara to the podcast. We are delighted to have you.

Hi. Nice to be here.

So Lara, as the leader of the Scouts, how important is it that wellbeing and mental health is really embedded in the culture of the charity? And how would you say that you're doing this?

I think it's absolutely essential, and definitely something that we have taken seriously, always, but particularly, as a result of the pandemic and really understanding the impact that it's had on staff. How are we doing it? Well, I think, first of all, we're talking about it and I would say, that's probably the most important thing, right from the start of the pandemic. Our CEO, Matt and other leaders have always talked about how much we are thinking about our staffs mental health and well being, I think we're pretty open as leaders about our own mental health and well being. And obviously, kind of trying to model the fact that it's actually okay to talk about whether you're feeling bad, or how you're, how you're finding things. So, so that's really important. And that was part of our initial tactics was really about encouraging people to talk about it at senior levels, talking about how people were finding things in their own teams, we provided lots of resources with links to other places, like, you know, the information that Samaritans have, like mind have, and those are things that are really important that we provided to people amazing. It's really interesting, I think there's a common theme with all of the guests that I've spoken to. And that is, I think in order for sort of well being and mental health to work within their charity, it really has to come from the top down. And also it has there has to be an open culture around talking about mental health. So I'm really pleased to hear that and I think you you told me on Twitter about and I've seen your tweets actually, about hashtag your time. So could you talk us through what that is? Yeah, I mean, it's actually something that we've done relatively recently, I'm part of a group of kind of senior managers that we've we actually call it business operations, which sounds really boring. And some of it has been really about fairly logistical things that we've had to deal with through the pandemic. But a lot of the stuff that we've talked about is really about well being and how we can support staff. And, you know, we've been through some really tough times, we've had, we had up to 50% of our staff on furlough kind of over the summer, we've had to make quite a significant amount of redundancies, unfortunately, last year, and also the staff that are left now left around now, you know, those people have been working really hard. Lots of people have been working really long hours, they've been turning their, you know, their minds to doing things that aren't probably typical part of their normal job. So we think it's really important that we kind of give back a little bit to people, you know, and as we're in the charity sector, we can't just give, we can't give people extra pay rises always we can't, you know, necessarily do things from a financial point of view. But what we thought is, well, let's give some people some time back. And so your time is, is it's two hours a week on a Tuesday and a Thursday, one hour on Tuesday, one of those day where we block it out of people's diary. So that's done globally across the company, and it's blocked out so people can't put meetings in and the intention is, is that we're giving people back time, your time to do what they want. So so some people are choosing to take that time. And you know, I guess while parents were at home with their kids, whether that's spending a bit of time with their kids, it's whether they want to go and walk their dog, go do some exercise, just sit and read the paper, whatever it is. But we've also put some stuff on the we've organised centrally. So for instance, I do a yoga class once a week, during that time, that's organised through teams. From the company, or there's also been some mindfulness classes, we have a quiz, we have a book club. So again, it's kind of trying to give people back some time out of the day, in order to make sure that they're looking after themselves taking a bit of time, away from the kind of nonstop work, but I think a lot of us have found fairly relatedness over the last year.

Yeah, no, I love that idea and actually, oh, Robin, one of the other guests that we speaking to on the podcast, at their charity, they've decided every day to block out lunchtime, just so that there are never meetings scheduled over lunchtime, so that people get the opportunity to go outside, you know, if they're not able to guard before work, or after work, or over the winter. Obviously, Mark when you woke up and it was dark at you know, 3:30pm. So I love that idea of you know, making it sort of mandatory this to give people time to spend, as you say, in any way that they choose.

Yeah and I think it's a trust thing. We know that most people have been working way longer hours, and they're, well, they they're contracted to do even that they normally do you know, people people work into the evening, because I guess there's not much else to do for some of us. You know, it's it's kind of recognising that and recognising that, yeah, we need to give people some time back, really, and make sure that they're okay.

Absolutely. And I think it's interesting, because you touched on, you know that 50% of your staff had to go on furlough, and that you've also had to, unfortunately, make redundancies and I know that you're, you know, certainly not the only charity. But I think it's also important to acknowledge that burnout has also happened, you know, prior to the pandemic. I think our sector is made up of people who are passionate about making the world a better place. You know, sometimes we work with limited resources and budgets, which means people work longer hours or, you know, even over weekends, but I feel like the pandemic has probably exacerbated that. So, you know, for those organisations who maybe didn't do anything in terms of staff wellbeing prior to the pandemic, do you think that this has maybe been a bit of a wake up call for them?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, like you said, it is it is fairly common in the sector. And I actually really hope that those organisations who maybe didn't take it quite so seriously, or who didn't really focus on it have now really focused on it. And they've seen it sort of pushed up the agenda a bit more. Now, I think, again, you know, when we compare ourselves in the commercial sector, you know, commercial sector tend to give people I don't know, extra health support packages, or whatever else it is that we can't necessarily afford to do. But you know, like we've just talked about with your time, we can give people time back, and we can give them a bit more flexibility some ways. And I think there are other things that we can do, you know, and we work in a sector where ultimately we're here about caring, caring for other people and caring for the community that we live in. And if we can't do that, for our staff, I think I think is a bit sad, really. So I really do hope it is a massive wake up call for those organisations that haven't prioritised it. And I hope it's a wake up call for staff who, who go well, actually, if that organisation doesn't prioritise this, then I'm going to go somewhere else, because there are lots of organisations that have really, really looked off their staff through this pandemic. And I think they're the ones that people will look back and go, yeah, those are the kinds of people that I want to work for.

Absolutely couldn't agree more and I think it's interesting because there are charities, big and small, there's so many things that they could be doing in terms of, you know, wellbeing and mental health. Some of them unfortunately, cost money, you know, as you say, giving staff you know, access potentially to like counsellors or putting staff on Mental Health First Aider courses, that sort of thing. I guess. Do you have any tips for charities who maybe don't have those sorts of resources to pay for that sort of support or to send staff and training? You know, what could they be doing with limited budgets to improve staff wellbeing?

Well, I think both of them are linked to giving people time so there are a lot of free resources out there. You don't have to pay for courses. There's a lot of stuff you know, even Samaritans have got some really great basic stuff, you know, some basic videos to help people understand how they could support colleagues with mental health issues or how to sort of get people to just just talk and that stuff's all there for free. So anyone that says, oh, I have to pay for the training on either I don't have more sympathy. And, you know, it's just that would be about giving people a bit of time during the day to go, Okay, go and watch a video go and do a bit more learning go and do a bit more reading, you know, come come and share what you found. I don't think that's that complicated and again, this is about being human right. You know, I don't think that's something that's exclusive to anyone that happens to have gone on a mental health wellbeing costs, I think we can all learn how to be a bit more human and be supportive to colleagues, I do think the time thing is important, then the examples that we've talked about here have given people maybe an extra hour at lunch, you know, we've had, we had, we had some extra days off that we were given again, globally, last year, where we had two extra days, one in the summer and one near Christmas that we gave across the organisation. I do think there's something there about obviously, as much as you can, giving everyone it at the same time. So it means that no one's on email. So it's all very well saying, well, you take an hour, and then I'll take an hour, you know, one of you comes back, and then there's a whole load of emails or a whole load of tasks. Whereas if we're all taking at the same time, we're not generating more work for each other, I do think there's something really valuable about that and that was why we all took a day off in the summer at the same time, because we knew that it meant you know, we weren't going to come back to the whole load of stuff that someone else had generated for us. So, so I think there's just something there about giving people time, whether that's a little bit of time, because you know, you're a really small charity, and you can only give someone an extra hour on a Friday, but whether it's sometimes giving people a day, I think people really, really appreciate it.

Absolutely. I know what CharityComms, you know, in my role as trustee, we gave staff time off for Christmas, also staff are taking time off altogether in August. And it's exactly for the reasons that you said, you know, has benefited everybody is taking time off at the same time. You know, and of course, I don't mean two weeks, but you know, a few days here and there because as you say, it just means that when you do come back, you don't have you know, 400 emails that suddenly need answering or loads of work to do because everybody's been off.

Yeah. And I think it also that sort of ethos of we're all in this together, you know, which obviously, is really something that's come through this pandemic, and kind of, you know, really built those feelings of community, I think people joining together to help each other and how do you generate that feeling is actually as important as anything.

Definitely. So lastly, what would you say has been the one thing that really helped you personally, in terms of your well being and your mental health during this period?

Well, I've turned into a walker.

Are you a rambler now?

I'm not quite a rambler, but I walk every day, I usually try and go for a walk before work. I found it really important to get out of the house again, no matter what the weather, I don't have a dog. So sometimes people look at me crazilyl ike why are you walking in this way that you don't even have a dog that's making you go out. But I find even if it's 10 minutes, sometimes I go for longer. You know, sometimes I walk and talk to someone on the phone, sometimes I listen to a podcast, sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I sort of march because I'm frustrated. Sometimes I amble, sometimes I cry, to be honest, you know, sometimes I really have been overwhelmed and it kind of helps. But for me just getting out having some space away from the house away from the screen, I tend to look at the sky. And I'm lucky because I don't live in the middle of the city. But looking at the sky and having that sense of something bigger. And looking outside of myself really, really makes a difference. Even if I've had a really rubbish day that somehow sort of helps ground me. And it does. It has really helped me look after my mental health absolutely.

Exactly the same as you I go out for a walk in the morning before starting work because I feel like it sets you up for the day as well. It's a little bit like going on a commute even though you know it's sort of just giving you that physical space to step outside, you know, you've just woken up and then the next thing you sit down and you start working. So I feel it's been really helpful for me as well to you know, just kind of break to you know, get dressed, walk around the block. I like to get a takeout coffee that almost replicating that kind of commute. I also do the same as you listen to a podcast or make a telephone call and yeah, it's definitely helped me as well. I think it just clears my mind before my desk and have to start work.

And it kind of reminds you how you are somehow I think, you know, what, what I'm going to work for, you know, why am I doing this? What's my purpose? What am I going to get through today? You know, sometimes those are big thoughts. Sometimes they're quite specific thoughts, and it just helps you to focus and I think, you know, it's that classic thing, isn't it of somehow walking, putting one foot in front of the other just helps you move onwards and move forwards.

I love that analogy. That's brilliant. Lara, it has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your expertise. Thank you for your honesty. It's been brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast to chat with us about wellbeing.

Wow, what an amazing first episode and thank you to our guest host Kirsty, who you can find on twitter @LondonKirsty. A massive thank you to Kirsty, Robin and Laura for some great takeaways. As Kirsty mentioned, she authored our wellbeing guide for comms professionals and I wanted to stress that well being is a responsibility that we all have and this guide is for everyone. Whether you're a sole communicator, or you work in a team of twenty every article in that is written to help anyone at any stage of their career, and with every organisation in mind, it's also a living guide, meaning that it can be added to you every time. If you're a charity leading the way when it comes to staff wellbeing, or your mental health professional, get in touch and share your tips. So that's it for the first episode. Keep an eye out on our socials for the next guest hosts. Till then, if there's anything that you want to hear about. We have any questions for us and I'm @LaurenHaizel on Twitter, or you can head over to the charity comms Twitter page at @CharityComms. Alternatively, you can reach out to me at my child's comms email, which is in the episode description. Make sure you subscribe and if you'd like to be notified when we upload and if you enjoyed the episode we really appreciate review or rating. See you soon. Bye for now.