Mike is the Director of his own business that provides training and follow up consultancy for businesses. His training specialising in the areas of Mental Health, Wellbeing and Inclusion & Diversity.
He comes from a varied and successful career within the manufacturing sector where his final role was that of managing organisational change for environmental, quality and health & safety ISO system implementation. While introducing a new Wellbeing Programme, he was able to see how both large and small organisations could benefit their bottom line more by focussing on looking after their employees’ mental health.
Determined to investigate how organisations could benefit further from a focus on their employees’ whole self, while understanding his own mental health more, Mike took a career break to study mental health more widely, culminating in undertaking the adult mental health first aid course. This led to him enrolling and passing the nationally accredited Mental Health First Aid England programme to become an approved Instructor Trainer. Mike was signed off in early February 2020 to deliver the Adult 2-day course.
Mike has delivered the face-to-face, and the online version of this course to a variety of organisations, ranging from private sector organisations in the City, large and small Trusts, through to smaller homeless organisations.
Mike also offers consultancy to organisations who want to develop their wellbeing programme beyond ‘free fruit Friday’ and into an active tool that allows all employees to give of their best, regardless of individual health issues. His training style is facilitative, allowing delegates the opportunity to discover knowledge rather than simply presenting information.
How have you taken care of your own mental health and wellbeing since the start of the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic?
Overcoming my own lived mental health experience has stood me well during this period of relative isolation. Though at times it has been more of a challenge than on other days, the positive coping methods taught on the mental health first aid course has helped immensely – I’ve gotten out into the fresh air, had ago at gardening and used abdominal breathing exercises when I feel some anxiety is rising within.
I have also found that more of my clients are asking genuinely searching questions of their existing wellbeing programmes, and so I have developed training modules for individual work groups to study wellbeing in further depth so as to capture poorer mental health as early as possible. Helping others is another one of the ways to wellbeing that we teach on the mental health first aid course.
How do you want to change the world?
For me, I’m looking for organisations to see the real worth of their employees – which includes senior and line managers – regardless of how an individuals’ health is at one particular point in time.
People who have overcome mental health experiences are, in my opinion, far stronger than your average employee, and that needs to be actively celebrated and supported in every workplace.
So – a government, a charity, a workplace that has a high proportion of its’ leaders with lived mental health experiences – that would be a great thing to see. And I hope to play my part in seeing that come to fruition.