Leadership / 08.16.23
9 Tips and Resources for Cultivating Wellness in the Live Events Workplace
Christine Payne
INTIX recently published a story about the power of personal wellness. It was jam-packed with health and well-being tips, from the importance of scheduling time off to making time for self-care and more. You really can’t go wrong by taking some of this good advice to help you live your best life.
Workplace wellness is important too because it directly impacts you, your colleagues and an organization’s overall success. Healthier employees can make more effective decisions. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they are also more productive and less likely to call in sick. Additionally, promoting workplace wellness creates a positive environment where your team feels valued and supported.
Here are nine tips and resources to help make you and your employees healthier, happier and more engaged.
- Secure team commitment. Start by getting buy-in from all your people managers to actively support workplace wellness. As a member of the organization’s senior leadership group, recognize the importance of stepping up as a role model. Demonstrating that workplace wellness is an important priority sends a powerful message to the entire organization.
- Set a good example. Inspire others by encouraging (and taking!) breaks and using your vacation time. Don’t eat lunch at your desk. Share stories and talk about what you are doing to stay active or how you find balance. Use your organization's resources and ensure everyone knows how to access them.
- Address all areas of well-being. Whether building a new workplace wellness program or augmenting existing initiatives, ensure you are supporting your employee’s physical and mental health. Consider implementing fitness challenges, nutrition classes, yoga, meditation or mindfulness sessions and/or life-work balance webinars. Healthy snacks and incentives to participate in wellness activities can also motivate your team. Mental health support may include access to counseling, stress management workshops and training for managers.
- Encourage life-work balance. We all know that ticketing isn’t a 9-to-5 job. There will be days when the show must go on and you can’t help but work excessive hours. With that said, when things slow down, create a way for employees to recapture that time. Encourage them to take time off. And be sure to do those things yourself, too. By modeling a healthy life-work balance, your team will feel supported to prioritize their personal lives and well-being alongside their ticket office responsibilities.
“It should be a priority for leaders to make sure their staff is taking downtime and is taking care of their life-work balance because it is a win-win for everyone,” Kay Burnham, founder of Perceiving Possibilities, says. “We live in a society that values productivity above everything else, and it is a trap. There is only so much time that any one human can be productive in a day. Society in general is not going to give you permission to put your life first. You have to do that.”
- Promote your wellness resources. Good communication is an essential aspect in creating a culture of wellness. You can share information about the resources that are available in a variety of ways. Regular emails, a newsletter, a Slack channel, lunch-and-learn presentations and other communication channels can all be used to get the word out.
- Direct your team to industry resources. Various mental health resources are available to professionals working in ticketing and live events.
For example, INTIX teamed up with IATSE, the Behind the Scenes Foundation and other organizations in 2022 to launch a mental health and suicide prevention initiative for the entertainment industry.
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training is available, and this training “teaches you how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illness and substance abuse.” Here are the links to U.S. MHFA Training on the Behind the Scenes website and Canadian MHFA Training resources.
Of course, it is not always the other person who may have mental health issues. It could be ourselves. An Anonymous Behavioral Health Self-Assessment Screening tool is available from the Behind the Scenes website.
The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety offers a variety of resources through an initiative called Healthy Minds at Work. The web portal is designed to help support your mental health efforts in creating a space where workers feel safe, respected and valued.
Also read: Lifesaving Resources and Conversation, Part 1: Mental Health and Suicide Prevention for the Entertainment Industry
Lifesaving Resources and Conversations, Part 2: Mental Health First Aid for the Entertainment Industry
- Focus on workplace happiness for staff retention. Ultimately, it comes down to two words — purpose and enjoyment. And what impacts workplace happiness? In short, it is you.
“Workplace happiness thrives at the team level,” Allison Arnott, the founder and "Chief Happiness Officer" of the Happiness Department, says. “You have a lot of influence over whether or not your team feels happy, whether they will stay and whether they will continue to show up and cheerfully do a good job every day.”
Also read: Workplace Happiness Is the Ticket to Staff Retention and Recruiting
- Deliver constructive employee feedback. These are usually challenging conversations, but they are necessary. In addition to improving individual performance and creating better team dynamics, they can support workers who want to advance into roles with increasing responsibility.
“Giving honest critical feedback is a huge act of service, even though it is awkward and difficult,” Rebecca Throne, SVP of Strategy and Partnerships for See Tickets, says. Throne adds that honest feedback about performance and areas where an employee needs to develop is critical for growth, improvement and happiness.
Also read: 10 Tips for Delivering Constructive Employee Feedback
- Keep the lines of communication open. Gather feedback by asking your employees what they find most effective and what could be improved. They will also likely have some great new ideas. Assessing the impact of your wellness initiatives and involving your team in the process will help you evaluate and adjust your offerings.
Like every show and game, every live events organization is unique. What works for one will not necessarily work for everyone. Customize your workplace wellness offerings to fit your organization's culture and specific needs. It will take time and constant adjustment, but the payoff to your team’s mental and physical health will be well worth the effort.
You May Also Like
Want news like this delivered to your inbox weekly? Subscribe to the Access Weekly newsletter, your ticket to industry excellence.
Tags: Leadership , Wellness