#SameHere Safe Corporate Office Programs help organizations ensure that their culture is one that champions a safe mental health environment where all employees feel comfortable and confident, with the tools and skills necessary to handle any stressful situation, and actually grow and learn from any challenges they encounter. By helping change an office’s culture, together, we see healthier and happier employees, fewer absences, a decrease in office conflicts, greater collaboration, and an increase in productivity.  With our employees, we so often don’t know what is happening “beneath the surface,” that is taking a toll on their health, and taking a toll on your company’s overall productivity.  Our #SameHereSafe Programs:

Let your employees know you have their best interests in mind.  Getting the “message out there” is the first step towards letting your employees know they can feel safe and prosper, despite what they may be dealing with – at the office, at home, or both. Simply acknowledging that this initiative is important and endorsed by the office and senior management, removes a level of stress that shouldn’t exist in any office environment. Through research and focus groups, we have found that employees fear that they will lose opportunities for promotions, or worse, their existing jobs, if they open up in the office about their challenges.  We provide promotional materials for you to disseminate prior to our visit, to let your entire office know how important this initiative, and their overall mental health, is to you – and how your organization wants to help each employee thrive amidst any challenges they are encountering.  The credibility of partnering with the #SameHere brand, and the endorsers who stand behind that brand (celebrities, influencers, expert practitioners, and advocates), lets your employees know how important this initiative is to your organization.

Together with your senior management team, we design a Culture-Setting “Launch” Meeting. This meeting includes all employees (we have even coordinated this session via video conference so that employees in satellite offices can participate). This session runs roughly two hours, and sets the tone in looking at mental health from a new angle – one where we acknowledge that life experiences we ALL face, affect everyone in (and out of) the office, to varying levels, at different points in our lives.  The session is structured as a collaboration between office senior management, HR, and the #SameHere group.  Beyond this culture-setting meeting, we offer sessions to:

A) Teach your employees various “STARR” (Stress & Trauma, Active Release & Rewiring) Exercises so they have coping skills and strategies to deal with stress. There are many exercises that employees can perform at their desks, in their offices, or in a separate room that your office designates, to allow them to “rest and digest.”  The time taken to perform these exercises is more than made-up for, in the health and greater productivity of your employees and the overall organization.  We teach your employees various techniques that they can “own” and make part of their daily routines.  Some companies choose to have their leaders take our STARR Exercise Courses, to learn directly, in a self-paced format from the top experts in mind/body science and modalities so that they become in-office supports, to help other employees. We have also helped companies design “Gym for the Brain” rooms, with STARR exercises that employees can participate in, at structured times throughout the day, or when they feel necessary.

B) Equip your managers with programs and activities to ensure they are taking the mental health of their staffs into consideration, in the most efficient way possible. The cat and mouse game between a manager and their staffers is not healthy.  By engaging in open dialogue and acknowledging that employees need short periods throughout each day to “exhaust” and release stress and anxiety, you establish policy and make it clear that you are taking your employees’ mental and overall health, and company’s productivity, all into consideration.  We equip managers with group/team activities they can use with their staffs to accomplish these goals.

C) Establish mental health and wellness policies for your current and prospective employees: We help you establish parameters that can be communicated to the whole office and are endorsed by your organization’s top decision-makers around topics such as: acceptable time in and out of the office for weekly therapy sessions, mental health days off counting against the standard allotment of days off, where to turn and who to turn to in the office when uncomfortable feelings arise, letting employees know they can be open about their mental health bumps or complications without fear of termination or lost opportunities, etc.

D) Discuss the 10 factors that most affect employees’ mental health in aggregate.  While all our research and programs have confirmed that all 10 can be influenced by changes made by senior management, five of the 10, specifically, can be positively influenced by employees themselves.  We do sessions with senior management to discuss any possible changes they may want to make to all 10, as well as sessions with employees to discuss how they can take the initiative in positively affecting the five they have influence over.

E) #SameHere Mental Health Scale implemented in your offices. Mental Health lives on a “continuum,” or in simpler words, a “scale” that stretches from “Thriving” to “Sinking.” It’s a fluid scale that everyone in the world lives and moves on, at different points in their lives (or even their days, weeks, months, etc.).  By understanding mental health in this broader context (broader than what we traditionally hear about: “1 in 5 with mental illness,” specifically), we can better educate every employee we speak with about how mental health does in fact apply to them, their life experience, lifestyle, and even genetics. It also allows us to bring groups of employees together around basic concepts and common language that can apply to everyone. Join thousands of other companies around the world and access options for the #SameHere Scale Apps for managers and their team members.

F) Communicate to your existing and prospective employees that your office is #SameHereSafe. What you will gain in the productivity of your existing employee base, as well as the pool of new candidates being more comfortable and excited about coming to join you, are good enough reasons on their own to make this type of office program a priority.

Your organization may choose to coordinate the Culture-Setting Launch Meeting alone, or any one, some, or all of the programs above (as well as others not listed here).  We have worked with companies all over the country, big and small, from Smart Design to CNBC. We look forward to the possibility of working with your company.