Kelly’s Cause Workshop X Code Hospitality Wellness Week

Last week, our trainer David delivered a Kelly’s Cause workshop on self care as part of Code Hospitality’s Wellness Week at Pantechnicon. We are always passionate about delivering our message and to be here for hospitality, so we jumped at the chance to reach more hospitality professionals outside of our half day awareness and signature 2 day training courses. To our deep joy, the room was full - which was impressive given it was 0930 on a Thursday!

So why is our workshop necessary? Rather worryingly, a recent survey of managers by Mental Health First Aid England, showed that over 74% are concerned about their team’s mental health due to the cost-of-living crisis. With nearly 1 in 4 people with management responsibilities stating they are ‘very worried’ about the impact of the squeeze on living standards on employee wellbeing. Naturally, given the demands of the hospitality industry - including long and unsociable working hours, high pressure situations and lack of support structures and policies. All of these contributing factors can be a perfect recipe for colleagues to experience poor mental health and self care of to fall by the wayside.

Stress is often an important feeling to tackle, which is why we focus on it in our workshop. We all know stress is necessary in healthy doses. But what can we do when it feels as though we are constantly living in fight-or-flight mode? A great tool is to use the concept of a Stress Container. It can help us understand how we experience stress and how to address our stress levels.

The size of your Stress Container reflects how vulnerable you are to stress (which varies from person to person - particularly as genes, environment and unique life experiences are all contributors). Then we need to identify common sources of stress, anything from big life changes to money or health. Stress fills our container and the more stress we’re under the faster it fills. When it builds up uncontrollably, this is when the container overflows and issues develop. People have different ‘stress signatures’ which show when their container is overflowing. This can include, irritability, tearfulness, indecision, consuming alcohol to frequent tiredness or stomach upsets. A great way of managing your stress is to understand what that stress signature looks like for you and sharing it with a friend so they can identify it. By scheduling in helpful coping methods, we can alleviate some of the stress and turn on the tap to empty our container. Helpful coping methods could include, speaking to a friend or taking time for exercise.

You can access an interactive stress container here to actively manage your stress here if you missed the workshop! If you think a workshop could be helpful for your hospitality business, feel free to contact hello@kellyscause.com and we can tailor a session specifically to meet your needs.