Mental health is really important both inside and outside of work.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve put a much larger focus on mental health first aid and well-being training, ensuring colleagues are given the tools to help them recognise mental health warning signs, and importantly, how best to support colleagues in need. We caught up with Claire, our People Business Partner who explained “Wellbeing and valuing our colleagues has always been at our core at Lakeland. However, following the pandemic, we recognised the huge impact the previous two years had on all our colleagues and their families. “
“We didn’t just want to run a few sessions here and there… we wanted to make sure the training programmes we put in place to start our mental health journey were supported in our everyday working, becoming an important part of our culture at Lakeland.”
Claire, our People Business Partner
Getting started – Partnering with MHFA England
We chose to work with MHFA England who are the largest provider of Mental Health First Aid training in the UK and Europe. They have over ten years of experience supporting businesses to create and sustain healthier workplaces.
Their training programmes are grounded in proven techniques and developed with clinical practitioners to ensure they provide the best course content possible.
But where to start… the first step on our mental health and well-being journey began by inviting all our managers and supervisors to attend awareness training to ensure we were all mentally health aware, explaining why it is such an important focus for us. An amazing 85% of managers and supervisors have now attended this training have gained valuable listening skills and the confidence to signpost to colleagues the best route to get help.
To go hand in hand with our awareness training, we invested further and through MHFA England trained up a group of dedicated Mental Health First Aiders® This training is the mental health equivalent of physical first aid training and provides participants with the skills, knowledge and confidence to recognise the signs and symptoms of common mental health issues and effectively guide a person towards the right support, be that self-help or professional services.
Our next step was to ensure everyone had access to get help when they need it. So, in 2023 we also partnered with the Retail Trust, who now provide our Employee Assistance Programme, along with a wealth of easy-to-access mental health and wellbeing resources. We have also developed our own well-being community on our e-learning platform. Through this, we are able to connect with our colleagues across the business sharing valuable information, and ensuring we keep talking regularly about mental health.
How we are doing so far
In 2023, as part of our monthly listening survey, we asked colleagues to let us know their well-being priorities and their response was clear. Mental Health was top of the list.
Having this information from our teams across the business helped to inform our plans and priorities for the year and gave us the clear direction of the team’s support to roll out more Mental Health First Aiders® (MHFAiders®) right across the organisation.
As of 2024, we now have an amazing 50 MHFAiders®, spread across our head office and our national retail stores and have more training planned throughout the year. Our MHFAider’s® have even created their own small community, where they too can reach out to each other for support as they deliver this very important role for us.
Aaron, our Mental Health First Aider
Meet one of our Mental Health First Aiders®
We caught up with Aaron, one of our Mental Health First Aiders®, to get to know him a little more and what the role means to him.
“My initial reason for wanting to become a mental health first aider is that I lost three friends to mental health. When I heard about the course I thought, what an amazing thing Lakeland are providing. I thought about my friends and wishing I, or someone else had these skills to help them and I also thought that it was a great way to help others, be that, strangers, colleagues or friends.”
As our Retail Marketing & Visual Merchandising Manager, Aaron’s is on the road a lot, going to all our stores across the country, supporting our in-store teams to ensure our shops always look their very best. It’s a rewarding, but very demanding job. We asked Aaron if he was happy to share with us what he does to relax and look after his own mental health and well-being.
“Whatever the weather, I have to get out for a walk each day. I frequently take my dogs down for a run on the beach and I love to see them having so much fun. I’ve always found the sea has a really calming influence on me.”
“I also practice Yoga. It’s something I have done for years, and it helps me decompress and be more present in the moment.“
“I’m so proud to be a Lakeland Mental Health First Aider and have found the training extremely valuable.”
Aaron explained that he thinks the course is so important because “Sometimes it’s easier for people to reach out to strangers, especially where they know it’s confidential and the course is a great way to be that person for someone, while learning how to direct people to someone close to them and reinforcing that struggling with your mental health is a normal thing and not something to be ashamed of.”
Aaron’s top mental health wellness tips
Need Further Support?
It is essential to look after your own mental health. If you or anyone you know needs further support, call the Samaritans on 116 123 or Shout Text 85258.
