Mental Health Awareness Week: advocating for a more caring events industry

This week is Mental Health Awareness week, and at EVENTSBASE we’ve been reflecting on wellbeing in our industry.

The past year has been strange and difficult for us all, and we’ve experienced a HUGE shift of pace in our industry, due to the cancellation of in-person events. Some of us are working from home, some of us have been furloughed, some of us have dealt with loss and/ or isolation, and I think it’s safe to say that all of us have dealt with stress. The events industry doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to stress, Stress Matters have reported that 71% believe their colleagues are suffering from stress.

As things begin to open up, it’s tempting to dive back into 60 hour weeks and make up for lost time, however, it’s important to give ourselves space to recover from everything that we have been through, individually and as a community. We need to focus on being kind to ourselves and our colleagues and use returning to work as an opportunity to create a cultural change.

Last month, we ran our third workshop ‘The Economic Impact of Wellbeing’ and talked to experts about how many companies in our sector are reluctant to spend money on their team’s wellbeing. However, the conclusion of our discussion was unanimous: investing in your team’s wellbeing is hugely worthwhile on a personal level and also a financial level.

For example, The Labour Force Survey found that in 2019-20, stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 51% of all work-related ill health cases and 55% of all working days lost to ill health.  (Source: Stress Matters) This could be reduced if our teams felt safe to speak about mental health.

We need to ensure that our colleagues know that we will always respond with empathy and support, whether they are feeling stressed or low; whether they have a longstanding condition; are experiencing trauma; or a mental health crisis.

Some simple changes we can make include:

Mental health first aid training.
Opening up conversations about mental health and checking in with each other.
Supporting flexible working and leave.
Letting clients know when they are subjecting us to unrealistic deadlines, rather than putting that stress on our team.
Integrating stress relieving activities into our work days.

The theme of this years mental health week is reconnecting with nature. When we get back to the EVENTSBASE office, we’ll be taking breaks to walk #EVENTITPUP, our company Cockapoo, and reconnect with nature along the way!

We hope you will join us in advocating for cultural change, centering our team’s mental health, so that the events industry can emerge from this period stronger than ever, as a supportive community.

Keep an eye out for the highlights video from our workshop!

Further mental health resources:

Health In Mind

NHS Mental Health Services

Stress Matters

Mental Health First Aid Training

by Ellie Jackson, EVENTSBASE