If you’re planning a mental health or self-care workshop for your employees—or even just considering it—you’ve made a wise decision. Study after study highlights the ROI of investing in employee mental health and well-being.
However, not all training programs are created equal. You must be strategic and intentional in your planning and delivery if you want to deliver results for your employees and your business.
As a professional public speaker specializing in careers, mental health, and DEI, I’m frequently called upon to help organizations curate impactful and memorable self-care workshops for their employees and teams.
In this guide, I share:
- Key benefits of investing in employee mental health and wellness (yes, it’s good for business revenue)
- Activities you can facilitate during a self-care workshop and a sample agenda
- Common missteps to avoid when planning a self-care workshop for employees
- Expert tips to make the training an overwhelming success for your employees and your business
Benefits Of Promoting Employee Mental Health And Wellness
Before diving into the workshop specifics, I want to highlight a few of the advantages of investing in employee self-care:
- Increased energy, focus, and drive
- Improved employee productivity
- Enhanced team performance
- Better employee morale and job satisfaction
- Greater ability to deal with stress at work
- Reduced absenteeism and sick leave
- Decreased costs for your organization
- Attraction and retention of top talent in a competitive labor market
The evidence is clear: employees perform better—and are healthier and happier— when they take care of themselves and their well-being. Investing in employee mental health pays for itself multiple times over.
Self-Care Workshop Ideas For Employees
There are countless ways to teach employees and leaders the power of self-care in the workplace. Here are a few of my favorite self-care topics and activities for employees:
- Mindfulness Exercises: Provide employees with a dedicated space where they can meditate and practice other mindfulness activities.
- Intentional Writing & Reflection: Engage employees in a written exercise where they journal and reflect on what mental health and self-care mean to them.
- Arts & Crafts: Allow employees to tap into their creativity through painting, collage, or another art form.
- Mental Health Storytelling: Empower employees to author and share their mental health and resilience stories in a “brave space.”
- Boundaries & Assertive Communication: Discuss the role of employee advocacy as a form of self-care and resilience.
These are just a few ideas to inspire you as you plan your self-care workshop. Ultimately, you want the topic to connect to your attendees’ unique needs with your business goals. Otherwise, you risk it feeling like an abstract concept that can be difficult for them to truly apply to their day-to-day work.
Sample Self-Care Workshop Outline
The following is a sample agenda for a self-care workshop in a workplace setting.
- Icebreaker: Begin with an intentional icebreaker that allows attendees to settle in and get to know one another.
- Intention Setting: Provide space in which to set and clarify individual, group, and business intentions for the workshop. Don’t assume everyone has the same goals for the day.
- Learning Experience: Engage attendees in education on the topic for the day. Even if they’re on the same team, participants will often have different baseline knowledge about the training topic.
- Primary Self-Care Activity: Facilitate the primary self-care activity—or activities—for participants. This will likely be the lengthiest portion of your workshop.
- Reflection & Takeaways: Allow time for attendees to share their insights, takeaways, and action plans from the workshop.
Important: You’ll need to tailor this agenda to your audience, workshop objectives, and business needs.
Common Mistakes When Planning A Self-Care Workshop For Employees
As someone who has planned countless self-care and team-building workshops, here are some of the most common missteps I see when attempting to integrate mental health and wellness activities into the workplace:
- Forcing employee participation: First and foremost, please do not require employees to attend a self-care or mental health workshop or participate against their will. Instead, allow them to choose when and how they engage with the material. Often, employees are more than willing to engage in a workshop as long as the benefit is clearly communicated.
- Assuming one size fits all: Your workshop will more than likely flop if you copy and paste an agenda you found online. You must customize your workshop to your business and audience and create opportunities for individualization throughout the training.
- Choosing a speaker based on their popularity alone: Some organizations select an external facilitator because of their impressive follower count or bestselling author status. However, if your goal is to improve employee mental health and wellness, be sure to choose a speaker who is a true expert in mental health in the workplace.
- Relying solely on one-off workshops: Although a one-day training program can be a great way to launch—or even reintroduce—your company’s commitment to mental health and wellness, it’s not enough to transform a culture. You must engage in strategic, intentional, and consistent action if you want to drive meaningful change within your organization.
Expert Tips For A Successful Workplace Self-Care Training
To ensure your self-care workshop is a success, consider these expert tips and best practices:
1. Connect to the why.
Attendees need to understand why they’re participating in this learning experience, both for themselves and for their organization. Rather than communicating this, consider creating an opportunity for them to share and reflect on the benefits they see in taking part in the program.
2. Clarify the goal of your workshop.
As you plan your self-care program, consider what you want employees to leave with at the end of the day:
- Do you want employees to practice better work-life balance?
- Perhaps you want them to learn how to advocate for themselves and their needs?
- Maybe you’re looking for a space for them to engage in mindfulness so they can show up more present and refreshed at work?
Gaining some clarity here will guide your planning process and help you decide what activities you ultimately choose to include during the training program.
3. Meet employees where they are.
Your staff will be at different points in their wellness journeys, so it’s important to meet them where they are. Your training materials and activities need to recognize these differences rather than assuming all employees are the same when it comes to their mental health.
4. Respect and honor differences.
Self-care means different things to different people. Additionally, how people protect their mental health, manage their well-being, and cope with stress will vary.
Acknowledge and honor these differences rather than assuming all participants need or want the same thing from a workshop.
5. Create tailored experiences.
Although you likely can’t create an individualized learning plan for every attendee, consider implementing a “choose your own adventure” process where attendees have the opportunity to select how they engage with the material.
For example, if participants are asked to reflect on their learnings, you can offer options like writing, drawing, or collage.
6. Remember that less is more.
Lastly, it’s tempting to cram a lot of material into a self-care workshop, but your program will be far more successful if you allow participants to absorb the material, reflect, and be present.
Final Thoughts
Investing in employee mental health isn’t just a wise investment for your business, it’s absolutely critical if you want to remain competitive and avoid becoming obsolete. Businesses that invest in their employees’ mental health are going to be the most successful.
If your organization is planning a self-care or mental health workshop or training program for your employees and is looking for a speaker, please reach out—I’d be more than happy to discuss how we can partner to improve your team’s mental wellness and performance. I’m here for you! You’ve got this!
