“We deliver year-round proactive support to develop people to their full potential, create high-performing teams and help those organisations to deliver on their mission,” says Cooper. She believes Thrivall is tackling an urgent problem for employers and society generally. “We know 2 in 10 people are struggling with poor mental health. So we’re trying to provide more proactive support for people who might not ask for help either because of stigma or just not being aware that they would benefit from it. And that’s why we’ve designed Thrivall as a whole team engagement that’s sustained through the year. So we work with fully-qualified person-centered counsellors and it’s blending counselling and coaching in conversations which we call personal check-in sessions.”
Mental health in the workplace a hot topic and very important for employers to consider, Cooper believes. “The number of people suffering from poor mental health and completing suicide or attempting suicide, those numbers, sadly, are not improving. It’s costing money in terms of people not being economically productive, and there’s also other risks associated with poor mental health at work. People might make a mistake or upset a colleague or upset a client and the ramifications of that could be huge. It could even result in loss of life, worst case scenario. And then on the flip side, when people are at their best, there’s a real uplift. Investment in good mental health has been shown to increase productivity by as much as 12%.”
This, of course, brings up the whole issue of sustainability for a business. “What we’re trying to do is move the conversation around sustainability more towards humans. Why do we have biodiversity loss, why do we have pollution? It’s in large part because of human behaviour, right? We like to talk about the triple bottom line, about people, planet and profit. Yes, we need to care for the planet, but we also need to care for our people, because if people don’t feel well-resourced, how are they ever going to look after anyone else and the planet? So we really want to create a world where people feel not just sustained by their work and the organization that they’re part of, but ultimately regenerated.”
