Themes for Health, Mental Health + Wellbeing in 2022

What themes are we going to see over health, mental health and well being in 2022?

Well, this is a discussion that we're all having now, early in January, back after our hopefully restful festive breaks. And the way I see it, there's a number of themes that we will see around health, mental health and well being this year, that needs to be built into strategies and need to be thought through.

So the first is that we are two years almost into the pandemic. And life is starting to return to I don't want to say normal, because we're not anywhere near where we were before. But we're starting to look at how we come back into the workplace and what that means. So there's been a lot of talk, as you know, on hybrid and flexible models.

But I think there's a more fundamental point that needs to be built into health, mental health and well being over this next year, which is to give people space, give people facilitated time to have conversations with each other, and to process what has happened over the last 18 months, as well as putting our knowledge and skills about what works into new work structures.

Organisations need to build into their health, mental health and well being plans this year, facilitated sessions where people can kind of process the stress cycle and the anxiety and things that they might have gone through. So that'd be the first thing, as well as the discussion about, you know, how we want to work going forward.

I'm not going to repeat the flexible hybrid working stuff that's out there, because there's a lot out there. But there are sensible discussions to be had about how we manage a hybrid model, how we look after people, how we manage people with mental health conditions, and how we make a new work culture. So those are big topics this year.

The next one will be that a far more strategic approach to health, mental health and well being as needed.

I'm already seeing this in clients that I'm talking to. And I'm noticing that for the first time, in a long time, the conversation seems to be about the need for strategy and structure and thought. And that's great. So more strategy in health, mental health and well being and dropping out of that strategy, you know, more spend on health, mental health, and well, being providers and making sure that spend is going on the right things.

We're talking about a more strategic approach, more comprehensive approach to health, mental health and well being and strategies and how we weave that into the organisation. But where I'm starting to see organisations wanting to spend more on health and mental health providers, but wanting to make sure that spend a strategic spend, that's being spent on providers that have a good cost evidence and clinical effectiveness.

So there'll be a lot more discernment, I think, on that market in 2022. And, you know, this is going to be our topic for the next decade really, you know, post pandemic and Pandemic recovery, the interaction between health, the individual, the state, you know, public health, and what organization's role is in both providing health and mental health and buying providers for employees. This is going to be our next decade of topics. So we're starting to see that come in.

Now. The final big topic, I think there's going to be sort of hotting up again, this year, is another passion project of mine. So that is women's health and mental health. So over the last couple of years, we've seen life event policies and fertility policies and menopause policies and training starting to creep into the workplace. We're seeing sort of some FEM tech providers and some, like female health providers coming into the workplace. So I imagined that there'll be more of this theme coming in over this year.

So more about women's health and mental health, but also more nuances of the strategies we have so that groups such as women, but also other groups are woven into our strategic approaches to health and mental health and the providers we have.

Those are the themes, I think that we'll be seeing over the next year. Next week, I'm going to be doing three masterclasses on these, so I'll be looking at how to write a strategy, how to provide you choose your providers, and how to implement I'll be doing lots more over the year as well. But these are the themes that I think health, mental health and well being.

We'll see in 2022 Post pandemic processing, making sure we've got the right policies in place, strategic approach to health, mental health and well being more on discernment on spend on providers and how they fit into these strategic approaches. And then nuances in strategies for employee groups such as women and other things.

I hopefully see some of you at my master classes next week. If not, I will see you soon and I hope you enjoy the start to the new year

You can sign up for Amy’s 6-week practical, skills led course on all aspects of creating and implementing an organisational health, mental health, or wellbeing strategy and programme - check out more info HERE