The wellbeing wheel – Wellbeing at work is forging its way onto agendas across businesses, and we are pleased to say that it’s firmly on ours thanks to the wellbeing wheel.
We’ve created a space within our CPD portfolio dedicated to individual wellbeing, encouraging our members to actively focus on this area of their lives, recognising the huge importance this plays on their career and ongoing professional development.
Introducing our wellbeing wheel
The wellbeing wheel provides a holistic view of eight important areas of wellbeing. Each of these areas is supported with information and activities to encourage our members to focus on these in simple and sustainable ways.
With an initial personal audit, a visual snapshot of the wellbeing wheel shows areas in which individuals can feel confident, and areas that may benefit from more conscious effort. We recognise that these eight areas are important to overall wellbeing, and typically, we will naturally focus on some more than others. The support provided in this part of the portfolio gives members the opportunity to reflect on where improvements can be made and encourages simple steps towards positive change, without being overwhelming.
Why is our wellbeing so important?
Wellbeing feels more important than ever – many of us are working from home, at least for some of the time, and our personal and professional lives are merging together which can have a range of positive and also negative outcomes. In addition to this, we can all recognise an increase in pressure and potential stress from the many unknowns of the current Covid situation. Many of us are finding that our usual ‘go-to’ activities for counteracting this are more difficult to undertake, with a reduction in social interaction, many activities restricted and underlying worries and concerns about our future career growth.
Lauren Seward, our inhouse wellbeing expert, looks at why wellbeing is so important:
“Using this wellbeing wheel gives us a kind of permission to ‘regroup’ and identify a current picture for ourselves. Very simply it helps us recognise what we are doing well for ourselves, and what perhaps we are not doing so well with. In a positive and encouraging way, we can then coax ourselves to add some simple changes in the areas that will make a big difference.”
Lauren also sets out some important links to our CPD:
1. Learning is dependent on our state of mind and if we are feeling stress and anxiety we are less likely to fit in time for formal, structured learning, and also less likely to learn from our everyday experiences – we become functional and our ability to reflect and refine reduces considerably.
2. Development is one of the sections of the wellbeing wheel. If we are able to feel progressive in our activity we get a sense of achievement. Recognising this helps us to include it in our wellbeing priorities, rather than seeing it as an activity that we earn, or can only do when we have achieved our other priorities.
3. Structuring and prioritising our learning and development gives many of us a real sense of control and progress. It’s one of those activities that can so easily fall off when life gets busy, but actually, investing time thinking about this and recognising that our learning and development priorities might need to change, helps us understand what’s really important for us right now. Build time and focus on this, let go of the goals and objectives that are not serving us anymore, or even just at the moment.
4. Wellbeing can and should be integral to our professional development. The wellbeing wheel allows us to identify some actions and objectives that might benefit us and can and should form part of our CPD as the benefits to us professionally are huge when we recognise and take action on our wellbeing.
You can hear more about this in our recent podcast ‘Wellbeing on the Leap Like a Salmon agenda’.
We are excited about this new benefit for our members and look forward to hearing about the positive impact it has. If you would like to know more or have a demonstration of the system please get in touch.
Thanks for reading and please do share and let us know what you think of the wellbeing wheel. Should you have anything you want to ask us, please do get in touch here.
Check out our Knowledge Base for further resources and support with our Ask The Experts or stay informed with our social Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Keep positive and curious
