Thankful Thursdays: New Wellbeing Initiative

The importance of wellbeing and health (mental as well as physical) is often overlooked in the workplace at a cost. There is strong evidence that supports the correlation between employee wellbeing and productivity. Here at MCM, we prioritise the happiness, wellbeing and growth of our employees- after all, we were named as one of the best place to work in 2019.

Our employees enjoy a range of perks; such as health insurance, flexibility & duvet days, training, team building activities, a games room, and much more! Recently, drawing on cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) techniques, Aindrea, one of our dedicated wellbeing officers, came up with ‘Thankful Thursdays’ to incorporate gratitude into the workplace.

 According to a Harvard Health Publication, “gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships”.

Considering this, our goal with Thankful Thursdays was to bring in more positive energy to the office and increase positive engagement. These kinds of wellbeing initiatives help break down the monotony of the working week and gives employees something different to focus on. It increases team engagement, acts as prompts for discussions, improves bonding, and bids adieu to awkward lunch time weather exchanges. These wellbeing initiatives have proved effective in stimulating creativity, increasing productivity and improving employee attendance.

How can I set up Thankful Thursday at my workplace?

Since you asked, it’s simple to set up a Thankful Thursday at your workplace, however, to make it even easier for you, we have a few tips and resources! If you are stuck for ideas, below you will find a few topics we have done in the past.

·         What am I thankful for?

·         Favourite quote

·         Best office moment

·         Why am I like this? – a personality test

·         Moment of the week

·         Favourite feel good movie

Resources you will need: Sharpies, blue-tac, paper, space on a wall, 2-5 minutes each week.

Instructions:

1.  Find a space on the wall, ideally somewhere communal where all employees can see/access. Decorate it with a ‘Thankful Thursdays’ sign (click here to download a printable example) 

2.  Put a bunch of pens/sharpies in a pot and cut up some strips of paper.

3.  Each week a new topic is given for everyone to contribute their answers, but you could just stick with one topic.  The answers are written on a piece of paper which is then stuck on the wall with blue tac. It never fails to generate discussions and increase employee morale. 

What other wellbeing related activities do you do at MCM?

Motion changes emotion, so we do a range of different activities to get the team out of their chairs and get the creative juices flowing. Below you will find some of the things we do:

·         Fortnightly fruit Mondays

·         Tuesday Stretches

·         Football sessions

·         Silly challenges, like this and this.

·         Thankful Thursdays

·         Therapeutic office dog

·         Lunchtime pool, table tennis and darts tournaments

·         Table-top puzzles

Our wellbeing initiatives are shaped and driven by the needs and interests of our team; this is a vital factor to its success. It is also important to note that the challenges and solutions to introducing wellbeing initiatives are dependent on your organisation’s unique requirements and resources. What we found useful was to appoint wellbeing officers to consult the other team members and get everyone’s input to then organise/manage staff wellbeing.

Here at MCM, we are constantly looking for fun new ideas to try- no idea is a bad idea! So if you have a cool wellbeing (or digital marketing) idea you think we should try, drop us a suggestion or engage with us on social media.