5 insights from last year’s Kaleidoscope

Before the workplace wellbeing community unites on 4-5 October to ‘shape tomorrow, together’, here’s your chance to learn last year’s key lessons.

Kaleidoscope is Unmind’s annual get-together. This year, we’re meeting IRL (on 4 October, at Fora Soho in London) and online (beamed to the Americas and APAC, on 5 October), to learn, connect and drive forward the workplace wellbeing agenda. 

We’ll be joined by illustrious leaders from Ocado, John Lewis Partnership and Culture Amp, plus the ex VP of Twitter in Europe, Bruce Daisley, who is so well-versed on the joy of work, he wrote a bestselling book on the topic called – you’ll kick yourselves – The Joy of Work. 

Hopefully we’ll see you too, whether in-person or in cyberspace.

Before we reunite, let’s rewind to 2021’s global Kaleidoscope gathering, geared around driving cultural change in workplace wellbeing. And, to kickstart your interest, here are five main highlights.

1. Employees (and companies) can only flourish with the right culture

Just as A+ soil helps seeds flourish, companies that nurture their cultures will create an environment their people to thrive. 

Listening, caring and wellbeing are the ingredients that produce the conditions for employee happiness and productivity. But you can’t simply flick a switch – HR and People leaders must first build meaningful relationships, and forge strategic partnerships to get there. 

2. Wellbeing champions make for winning mental health strategies

From the ground up, wellbeing champions are the drivers, influencers and agents of cultural change around mental health within organisations. They can lobby, promote and advocate better mental health and wellbeing practices that will permeate the entire organisation; acting at once as a support network for employees and a catalyst for better performance. A crack team of dedicated and passionate wellbeing champions is becoming a must-have for any proactive mental health strategy.

2. Without good leadership, you can't drive change

Good leadership starts with self-awareness, openness and transparency. Only then can managers inspire trust and loyalty from their teams. 

If you're serious about supporting employee mental health (and driving company-wide cultural change), you have to ensure these values exist across the entire employee experience. Done right, this clears a path for a psychologically safe workplace.

3. Mental health doesn’t belong to HR, People, and Reward functions alone

Small teams can’t simultaneously manage and support the mental health of hundreds of staff. It’s neither sensible or sustainable.

Managers – and entire companies, for that matter – need to understand how to better look after their own mental health, while supporting others. To raise awareness, education and insight at scale, we need whole company mental health training to become the norm. 

4. How we feel (and act) is a product of our environment

According to sports coach Owen Eastwood, around 70% of human behaviour is determined by our environment. 

Remember that fertile soil metaphor from earlier? Well, in remote and hybrid workplaces, your culture – your soil – needs to so rich that it pours out of employees’ laptops, and fills their living rooms.

Ask yourself: what can your organisation do to make the employee experience – at HQ and at home – even better?

5. To do all this, we need the right data

HR and wellbeing leaders get the human and economic need to nurture employee mental health. But to win the confidence and secure the buy-in of the wider company, data matters. 

Of course, data without insight is often pointless. A key part of making a real difference – a lasting one – in employee mental health is pairing metrics with meaning. Once you do that, you can shape a wellbeing strategy around what your people truly need.

Secure your spot

To find out more about Kaleidoscope 2022 – and book your place at the event on 4-5 October – click here.