Ongoing wellbeing programmes
One good afternoon in Septemberis not a wellbeing strategy.
A rolling programme instead: seasonal cycles across departments, a registered clinician behind your in-house offer, and something at the end of the year you can actually put in front of a board.
Why one session is not enough
Everyone leaves a good session with a plan. Six weeks later, the rota won.
That is not a failure of the session and it is not a failure of the people in it. It is what happens to any new habit that meets an unchanged week with nothing behind it.
Ran something last year that nobody followed up?
Talk about a programme ›What a year looks like
Four cycles, tied to the year your organisation actually has.
The shape below is the common one rather than a fixed product. A practice with a winter pressure peak and a business with a year-end crunch get the cycles arranged differently, and that is agreed before anything is booked.
Leadership first
The managers, before the wider workforce. They set the conditions the rest of the programme lands in, and running it the other way round is the most common way a programme underperforms.
The whole team
A taster or a half day across the departments in scope. The 5 Bodies Model, the biology behind it, and a personal plan for each participant.
Return and deepen
Back to the same teams after the point at which a new practice normally lapses. What stuck, what did not, and the layers a first session did not reach.
Hand it over
The in-house version: what your own people can run without Leah in the room, and what genuinely needs a clinician. The aim is a programme that survives the contract ending.
Individual coaching runs alongside a programme, for the people a group session cannot reach.
1:1 coaching ›What a programme adds
Four things a one-off cannot give you.
A clinical name on your in-house offer
A Registered Nurse (NMC) with over two decades in healthcare, fronting the work. That is evidence for an internal wellbeing programme which is otherwise hard to buy, and it changes how the programme is received internally.
Continuity across departments
The same framework and the same language in every room, rather than four teams who each had a different well-meant session from a different supplier and share no vocabulary for any of it.
Somebody who returns
The single largest difference between a programme and a session. A practice that is asked about again is a practice that survives, and nobody in the team has to be the one who chases it.
Something to show at the end
Attendance, coverage, what was delivered to whom and when, and the participant feedback gathered on the day.
Is a programme more than you need?
Quite possibly, and Leah will say so on the call rather than in month four. If nothing like this has been run before, a single taster tells you more about your teams than a year of planning will.
The business case
Two numbers a finance team will already recognise.
Returned for every £1 employers spend supporting staff mental health.
Deloitte, Mental health and employers, May 2024Annual cost of poor mental health to UK employers.
Deloitte, Mental health and employers, May 2024The business case is the straightforward part. Building something that survives the year is not.
The corporate case in full ›How a programme is built
Nothing is proposed before the first two steps.
A discovery call
What the organisation is carrying, what has already been tried, and who is actually in scope.
Scope and sequence
Which departments, in what order, and where in your year each cycle sits. This is where a programme is won or lost.
A written proposal
Cycles, dates, numbers and cost. One page, and it will say plainly if a programme is more than the situation needs.
Delivery, then review
Each cycle is reviewed against the last before the next is confirmed, so the shape can change if the organisation does.
Worth saying plainly
A programme is not always the right answer.
If nothing like this has been run before, a single taster session tells you more about how your teams will take it than any amount of planning will, at a fraction of the cost.
Programmes suit organisations that have already decided wellbeing is a standing commitment rather than a response to a bad quarter. If that decision has not been made yet, start smaller.
Start with ninety minutes and decide afterwards.
See the workshop formats ›Get in touch
A standing commitment, rather than a good afternoon.
A short conversation about your organisation, your year, and whether a programme is more than you currently need.