Highlighting colleague wellbeing on ‘Time to Talk Day’
Asda's Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Katie Wynn, explains why mental health is as important as physical health and how we're supporting our colleagues.
We have always been passionate about the wellbeing of our colleagues and have worked hard with our Wellbeing network over a number of years to help promote wellbeing and tackle stigma in relation to mental ill health.
Ever since the start of the pandemic the wellbeing of our colleagues has been at the forefront of our minds, and we are doing all we can to help in what are extremely difficult times.
We always say that mental health is as important as physical health and using ‘Time to Talk Day’ on February 4th is a great way to highlight this to our colleagues.
The theme for this year is the ‘Power of the Small’, meaning that even small conversations about mental health have the power to make a big difference. One in four people experience mental ill health each year and nine in ten say they’ve experienced negative treatment by others as a result. At Asda we believe it is really important that we share how we feel and help break down the stigma associated with mental ill health, making it easier for those struggling to open up and see how much support they have around them.
We are working with experts so our colleagues are getting the best advice and training when it comes to mental health.
We have been working with the charity Rethink Mental illness since 2018, to help upskill line managers and teams on mental health and how best to support personal wellbeing and the wellbeing of others.
The training has been delivered across Home Offices and our logistics service and they have also helped upskill our in house trainers, which will enable them to reach all 12,000 salaried managers in our business.
This is all supported by our wellbeing network at Asda, which involves colleagues from across our business coming together with our Diversity and Inclusion team to support our Wellbeing agenda. From the launch of our internal wellbeing site in 2020 which has had over 70,000 visits and includes information to support various aspects of Wellbeing, to the launch of our wellbeing toolkit to support our colleagues in having the conversation, to our colleagues coming together to share their stories to help us in normalise conversations around mental health. Our wellbeing network is committed to making a difference and support colleagues across Asda.