I’m a teacher by trade - a teacher who realised very early in my career that no child or young person could achieve to their potential if their learning wasn’t underpinned by good health and wellbeing. Advocating for this, as the route to improved outcomes, quickly became my raison d’etre.

Once I made the move into management and leadership positions I worked increasingly in a multi-agency context and saw that the same was universally true for employees: a thriving workforce is a high performing workforce. All too often, however, what I witnessed was hard-working professionals burning out, left unsupported in systems that had failed to put in place the wellbeing strategies needed to effectively protect their most valuable assets - their people.

My insights into workplace wellbeing, and the system behaviours which support or undermine it, were deepened during my time working for a Scottish Government agency. In this role I supported professionals across the country to triangulate research, policy and practice in order to drive forward system wide, wellbeing - centered improvements. Much of my work focused on developing the organisational culture and values-based approaches needed to achieve and sustain those improvements, consulting with colleagues nationally and internationally to identify and share best practice. Once again a clear universal truth emerged: when you put wellbeing at the heart of any organisational strategy outcomes change for the better, for everyone.

In 2018 I hit my own burnout and some important lessons were learned. I left education at that time to go into business and my reason for doing so was clear - I wanted to use everything I’d learned, including my own lived experience, to support people to prioritise health and wellbeing whether individually or organisationally. I’ve seen the best and the worst of practices across different sectors. I’ve seen vibrant high achieving workplaces powered by a culture of ‘people first’ and I’ve seen the irreparable damage done by toxic cultures which fail to recognise the needs of the workforce. The latter is avoidable. With the right strategy and a commitment to workplace wellbeing, we can create the kind of meaningful change which benefits both employees and the bottom line.