We recently announced our signing of the Time to Change Employer pledge. Time to Change believe to achieve lasting change within your workplace it is important to create a plan of tangible activity to break down mental health stigma. We chose this pledge as Time to Change goals align with the culture we are building at Education Cubed; it is vital all employees feel they can be open about their mental health and feel comfortable to ask for support if they need it. The pledge we created details the actions we are committed to delivering within our organization to tackle stigma and discrimination around mental health.

2020 was a tough year for a lot of people and for many reasons. With the inevitable stress the Covid-19 pandemic brought to the team and the lack of physical team building activities due to lockdowns, it became clear we needed to dedicate time into developing a long-term action plan. A Wellness Committee was created internally with the initial task to define the corporate action plan, consisting of actions Cubed could perform as a company and how that could be structured. It was important to make this a well-rounded approach that would become ingrained in the company and the team culture. We want to share some of the actions that have been carried out so far:

1. Created a committee dedicated to wellbeing – A mix of people and roles who devote time to look at ways in which they can support fellow team members in their mental wellbeing with activities and improving internal processes. The committee meets once a month and divides the work, this means it is not a huge time commitment for all involved. The committee continues to invite new members to join as well as taking suggestions from the wider team.
2. Created a hub to share mental health resources – this includes book, app and film recommendations, training resources, upcoming seminars and more.
3. Three team members trained as mental health first aiders and one trained as a mental health champion.
4. Held a roundtable talk about mental health to de-stigmatise problems with mental health. In this we shared personal experiences and had an open discussion about mental health and wellness.
5. Anonymous team surveys – these have a mixture of multiple-choice answers and commentary sections. Sending these out every few months highlights new challenges arising for team members, measures effectiveness of previous actions carried out as well as providing a forum for anonymous feedback on which actions would be helpful for the future.
6. Created a mental health and wellness calendar, this is continuously updated and highlights days such as World Mental Health Day, October 10^th. We celebrated World Mental Health Day 2020 by sending self-care packages out to the team.
7. Individual Wellness Action Plans to be rolled out across the company.

We will continue to share our actions, to not only be accountable for this action plan but to help those who are looking to implement similar actions in small businesses.