MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING CHAMPIONS AND ALLIES
Mental health and wellbeing Allies and Champions are in a privileged position to make a real difference to people’s lives.
They are the eyes and ears on the ground, an empathetic and compassionate ear. They are in a great position to signpost people towards the support they may need and promote individual and team wellbeing. They use their platform to raise awareness, challenge stigma, and promote positive attitudes towards mental health, which is especially important in the workplace.
With this empowering training programme, your Champions and Allies will understand the challenges individuals face, so they can provide effective support and promote a positive workplace culture around mental health. Though they are not counsellors or therapists (a message that is reinforced throughout our programmes), they play a vital role in promoting an open and supportive culture around mental health and wellbeing.
Flexible delivery and content
We specialise in supporting global brands who need a consistent yet flexible mental health and wellbeing Champions and Allies programme for their people in different countries.
Delivered in-person or as a live virtual programme led by 2 of our expert instructors, this empowering training typically runs for 1 or 2 days, depending on the needs and preferences of your organisation.
Suitable for a global audience, the flexible content, ongoing support and resources are tailored to your organisation’s needs, ensuring a consistent message. Available in up to 15 different languages, our diverse team from around the world ensure that no matter where you are, our courses make sense and connect in the context and culture of the home language in which they are delivered.
Example Training for Allies & Champions​
Here is an example of a typical 2-day in-person or live virtual Mental Health & Wellbeing Allies and Champions training course. Your input would be most welcome to make it truly meaningful and bespoke to your organisation.
Session 1 – Understanding Mental Health
- The role of the Ally/Champion (including boundaries, confidentiality and self care)
- What is mental health? (including a continuum approach)
- Understanding mental illness in your local context
- What causes mental ill health?
- Mental health and stress in the workplace (including presenteeism)
- Building a mentally healthy workplace
- How to promote a culture of wellbeing to challenge myth and stigma
- The impact of change on wellbeing
- The link between performance and wellbeing
Session 2 – Common Disorders
Recognising the early signs and symptoms of the most common workplace mental health issues. Content may vary depending on location and your specific needs, but typically includes stress, anxiety and depression. We can also include:
- Suicidal crisis
- Self-harm
- Eating disorders
- Personality disorders (including psychosis and bipolar)
- The effect of alcohol and drugs on mental health
Session 3 – How to talk to somebody
- How to support someone showing signs of poor wellbeing
- How to have a supportive conversation about mental health (exploring best practice around listening skills and communication skills and looking at common concerns, like ‘saying the wrong thing’)
- Providing support and information (internal/external resources)
- Signposting towards professional support
- Wellbeing considerations in a world of flexible working and remote workers
Session 4 – Looking after yourself
- Understanding burnout, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma
- How we respond to pressure and stress
- The impact of mindset
- Effective stress management strategies
- How to build personal resilience with specific, practical tools
- Developing your own wellbeing plan
A Wellbeing Partnership
Hear from our clients
The partnership with Oakwood has helped us to transform our approach globally to Wellbeing. Huge thanks to Oakwood and our teams at LKQ!
Genevieve Dombrowski
Senior Vice President Human Resources, LKQ Europe
The bespoke Mental Health Allies training that Oakwood developed and delivered for Amazon was the best training I have had in the last 15 years!
Ayhan Demir
Program Manager, Amazon
Oakwood are incredibly amazing to work with and are really customer-focused. They have helped us truly deliver our mental health and wellbeing strategy as an organisation as well as equipping our Mental Health Champions with the right tools and resources to support our colleagues.They always take the time to understand our needs for each of the mental health and wellbeing workshops, delivering sessions that truly meet the needs whilst keeping the audience in mind at all times. Oakwood are truly the experts in their field and continue to help us on our journey to help drive change with mental health and wellbeing.
Priyanka Patel
Senior HR Business Partner at Colgate-Palmolive
My experience with Oakwood has been positive and refreshing. I appreciate the way that they really got to know our business and respected our culture and global landscape. The authentic perspectives and in-depth knowledge of the subjects we tackled with their support has been a huge asset to our Wellbeing campaigns and our global strategy and initiatives.We now have one true Global Wellbeing initiative that is accessible to all colleagues across our Global footprint. This wouldn’t have been possible without Oakwood’s training sessions and qualified expertise. This has had a brilliant impact on colleague engagement and can be seen via the positive trend in our global engagement survey scores year on year around the themes of Wellbeing and colleague satisfaction.
Sophie Bond
European HR Director, LKQ Europe
Oakwood as a team are fantastic at really understanding what you need and how to support your journey to get there. The whole team from administration to delivery are a class act! I’ve worked with Terry and the team at Oakwood for the past 8 years at two different businesses and they got better and better! A class delivery and follow up.
Shani Walker
HR Business Partner at Hydro
Advice & Guidance
Oakwood can provide support and direction on all aspects of implementing your in-house wellbeing Allies and Champions programme.
Advice on how to select and support your Champions/Allies and how to implement the approach into the workplace
Help to set up an internal support group/forum to provide peer support and guidance
Introduce you to other companies who have successfully embedded their allies into their organisations
Offer a programme of ongoing support which will be tailored around your specific needs
On-going support for Mental Health Champions, Allies or First Aiders
Our post-training support programme is tailored specifically to your organisation. A typical timeline might include bi-monthly follow-up sessions that concentrate on sharing best practices, exchanging experiences, and tackling challenges, to maximise the use and impact of your champions, allies or first aiders.
Additional Post-Training Support
Meaningful change doesn’t happen as a result of one session. On completion of the live training, your people will receive free additional practical resources to enhance their learning and share with their teams.
We also offer a range of additional options that can be blended into an optional package of post-training support.
Practical Resources We will share free bite sized videos, ‘activations’, downloads and more - including country and language-specific resources and signposting.
'Upskill' Sessions:A chance for individuals and teams to join our interactive live sessions and webinars to enhance their skillset and deepen their understanding of vital topics.
'Get Togethers': Connect, share strategies, and review progress in an informal virtual setting. Led by a member of the Oakwood team, this is a chance learn from one another, boost motivation and encourage proactive steps.
Reflective Practice: A chance for individuals and teams to connect with an Oakwood trainer after a period of implementing their learning to reflect on their experience.
Wellbeing Support Calls: Access confidential, non-judgmental support for self-care and resilience from one of our experienced team members.
Ongoing Support: Create a tailored post-training programme, including 'Upskill' sessions and virtual 'Get Togethers', to support your newly trained mental health first aiders, allies, champions and ambassadors.
Ready to invest in the mental wellbeing of your team?
We’d love to find out more about you and your organisation, and how we can help.
Contact us to discuss your training needs.
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The training was engaging, accessible, informative, important and mind-broadening. We came away with a much clearer picture of how mental health issues affect people at work. The training helped to dispel the stigma and fear of mental health - giving delegates the confidence to recognise some of the symptoms and a desire to do what we can to help people through periods of mental ill-health.
Lord Simon Wolfson
CEO, Next
Oakwood's approach is highly professional and bespoke. The training I attended with them, along with the top 25 senior leaders at Barnardo's was one of the most profound learning experiences I have had in a while. High quality, fast paced, deep, challenging, thought provoking and humorous. Brilliant!
Javed Khan
CEO, Barnados
The session was a great opportunity to reflect on how and why we should always talk about Mental Health, and how we can support one another.
Nick Mackenzie
CEO, Greene King
I’ve worked with the Oakwood team on multiple projects. It’s a sad fact that violence and aggression is on the rise in the retail sector and AS Watson wanted to be proactive and give our colleagues the knowledge and tools to diffuse a potentially intense situation that could put our teams, colleagues, or visitors at risk.
Claire Reeves
People Development Content & Design Manager, Superdrug / AS Watson Group
Oakwood have completed many sessions for us since engaging with them in 2019. All course delegates praise the trainers for their professionalism, experience, and informative style; making the course easy to digest and changing their outlook on mental health. They have commenced some conflict management training, which we know will be delivered to the same standard.
Tommy Kelly
Group Health and Safety Manager, Matalan
The Oakwood team offer amazing support and guidance when needed. Oakwood were the expert friend that helped us springboard to where we are today, introducing wellbeing champions, Mental Health awareness modules, resilience content and listening groups. We have seen much stronger engagement in wellbeing content specifically and expect that to continue to grow.
Chris Britton
Head of Learning and Development, Carpetright
We were seeking a training partner with experience in delivering services to large complex retailers and one able to deliver the right level of impact across our workforce. We see great potential in using Oakwood’s services to enhance the wellbeing and care of our colleagues; making them feel more confident and able to raise issues they have in the workplace.
