Workplace Solutions
Strategies for Workplace Mental Health
Whispering Hope provides solid strategies and holistic solutions to enhance mental health and emotional well-being in your workplace.
Act today to ensure that your workforce stays in optimal health!
A trusted partner in workplace well-being & employee support
Workplace mental health is just starting to get the attention it deserves.
Having an effective workplace mental health strategy is no longer optional. It has become mission-critical – crucial to organisational health and productivity – and here’s why:
Demographically speaking, loss and grief in life are inevitable in a society with:
- An ageing population, where 1 in 4 will be aged 65 or older (by 2030)
- People marrying at a later age, with higher incidences of infertility, miscarriage and stillbirth
- An increase in suicides, particularly among the young and the elderly.
Understanding loss and grief is a critical piece of the puzzle, because unresolved grief often leads to depression – affecting personal performance, team dynamics, and company morale.
Whispering Hope advocates for Preventive Care. We partner organizations to:
- Arm employees with pre-emptive awareness and knowledge
- Provide them with proactive support to prevent the downward spiral, and
- Help them bounce back and thrive – despite the inevitable losses in life.
Our Corporate Clients
Our clients are leaders in their respective industries. They trust us to deliver sound programs and quality support to their employees.
With our track record as corporate executives and trusted consultants, you can be assured that our team is well able to partner your organization with absolute discretion, sensitivity and tact.
Signature Workplace Programs
Strategic Prevention, Timely Intervention
Our key workplace solutions,
fully customisable to your organizational needs.
Mental Health & Grief: What’s the Connection?
What has Grief to do with mental health? A lot! Unresolved grief often leads to depression. So to keep our mental health at its best, we must properly process the grief we feel whenever we are hit by life’s unexpected changes, curved balls and disruptions. This program provides valuable tips for safeguarding your mental health and emotional well-being.
‘First Aid’ for Emotional Well-being [For Managers & Peer Support Leaders]
We empower managers and peer support leaders to support their colleagues through tough times, with the goal of optimising individual well-being and improving team morale. We also support them to thrive in their peer support role, and serve as the specialized resource they can tap on, beyond the initial triage or ‘first-aid’ response.
Managing the Aftermath: Post-Incident Intervention
Unexpected incidents in the workplace can cause a sense of shock, loss and grief, affecting team morale and individual well-being. When that happens, we come in to help employees:
- Understand why they feel the way they do
- Create a safe space for processing their thoughts and emotions
- Regain their sense of equilibrium and well-being.
We do this through talks, employee well-being circles, and one-to-one sessions – or a combination of all or any of the above.
Executive Coaching – Towards Recovery & Resilience
Peak performance cannot be sustained without personal well-being and health. Hence we come alongside executives to support their holistic growth.
With our unique blend of empathy, expertise and experience in loss and grief, we equip executives with our proven arsenal of tools for healthy Response, Recovery and Resilience – enabling them to bounce back and thrive despite the ‘curved balls’, transitions and disruptions of life.
WHAT CLIENTS SAY
Micro Focus
A multinational software and information technology business listed on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index
“CLEARLY A SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT”
“I would definitely recommend Whispering Hope. Clearly a subject matter expert who has a wealth of knowledge and the ability to give pragmatic yet insightful advice to anyone who is trying to learn more about the journey in overcoming grief.”
“It was Women’s Health Week, so our employee resource group, SHINE, thought that organising a talk on emotional health might be interesting for our members. My colleague from HR suggested that I contact Gracie Mak from Whispering Hope to find out more.
After speaking to Gracie and listening to the two radio interviews that she did on News Radio 938, I was pretty sure that Gracie would be very qualified to come talk to our employees about this topic.
- We had about 159 employees from across Asia-Pacific & Japan join us for the panel discussion and had a fair number of questions thereafter, so I would say that the talk did very well in terms of audience engagement and interest.
- The talk was in the form of a panel discussion, and in the limited duration, I thought that Gracie did an excellent job correcting common misconceptions of what grief is.
- We received positive feedback from the participants. Some employees also reached out to ask questions about Whispering Hope and the types of services it provides.
Generally, we tend to have a lot of misconceptions about grief and how to get over grief. Doing a talk like this at a company/organisation level certainly increases awareness.
Everyone will go through grief in life, so it is better to be educated about grief in the right way, or at least to know who to approach, if help is needed.”
Carlsberg Group
One of the leading brewery groups in the world
“GREAT SESSION. TREMENDOUS PASSION & VIGOUR”
– Lisa Low, Talent Management Director, Asia
“The session was really great. Gracie Mak speaks with tremendous passion and vigour, and gave vivid real-life examples and stories of loss and grief.”
“As part of our HR Learning Forum, we invited Whispering Hope to speak to our staff on emotional wellness. The session was really great. Gracie Mak speaks with tremendous passion and vigour, and gave vivid real-life examples and stories of loss and grief. Majority (above 80%) of the participants agreed that the session was interesting, relevant and effective in educating them about loss and grief.”
Our experience with Whispering Hope
by Mrs Joanna Koh-Hoe
CEO, Focus on the Family Singapore
(Multiple Recipient of the Work-Life Excellence Award)
I am so glad we engaged Whispering Hope. My staff are happier and healthier. I strongly recommend this program to other organisations, for the well-being of their employees. - Joanna Koh-Hoe
Why deal with grief?
“As an organisation that has been recognised for our work-life excellence, there was a very clear organisational rationale and benefit for us to engage Whispering Hope.
Because for any organisation to thrive, you need healthy individuals and productive workers. When our staff are emotionally healthy, they perform better. Because no matter how well a person compartmentalises it, grief and other struggles in life would definitely affect their work. So there was strong justification for it.
When our staff are emotionally healthy, they perform better. So there was a very clear organisational rationale and benefit in engaging Whispering Hope.
How we approached it
We started with a Grief Awareness Talk for all our staff, which is something I believe everyone in the organization should be exposed to. It helps them understand what grief really is. Grief is not just sadness, but conflicted emotions about any kind of loss, including the loss of our familiar way of working.
Next, we arranged for the Grief Recovery Method® program to be conducted for all staff who were keen to opt in on it. The Grief Recovery Method® program is a preventive measure that is relevant to all, because grief happens to all of us, and we need to properly process it.
We gave all staff the option of using their corporate training allowance for the GRM program, and assured them that the sessions would be kept strictly confidential.
With all the buzz about mental health issues, as a leader I didn’t want my staff to languish in their loss. I want them not only to survive the loss, but to come out from it better and stronger.
How our organisation benefitted
Our staff said that the Grief Awareness Talk helped them better support others, and to further strengthen our team culture. Some came up to me personally to say that they really benefitted from the Grief Recovery Method® program.
With all the buzz about mental health issues, as a leader, I didn’t want my staff to languish in their loss. I want them not only to survive the loss, but to come out from it better and stronger.
I am so glad we engaged Whispering Hope. My staff are happier and healthier. I strongly recommend this program to other organisations, for the well-being of their employees.”
THE PROBLEM:
The hidden cost of grief
Loss and grief are part and parcel of life. When employees face major ‘curved balls’, crises, transitions and disruptions in life, they may struggle with loss and grief, impacting their productivity and decision-making.
Grief often exacts an unseen and unheard burden on organisations, resulting in:
- Loss of talent
- Loss of morale
- Unhappy and disengaged employees
- Lowered productivity
- Higher absenteeism
- Impaired decision-making
- Inability to focus at work
- Poor physical, mental and emotional health
- Workplace and road accidents.
THE REALITY:
Grief isn’t just about death & bereavement.
There are more than 40 major losses in life that can severely disrupt a person’s sense of well-being and motivation in life, and those most commonly affecting the workplace include:
- Loss of Colleagues (through Retrenchment, Resignation or Death)
- Organisational Change & Restructuring
- Loss of Career Opportunities
- Loss of Trust, Morale & Motivation
- Loss of Major Clients
- Job Transitions
- Loss of Loved Ones
- Infertility, Miscarriage & Stillbirth
- Divorce & Break-up
- Suicide
- Health Losses (Loss of Health, Mobility or Limb)
- Financial Losses (Scams, Investment Loss or Business Failure).