Movement and Mindset — How they work together for good.
Author: Maddy Cullen — Pilates and Wellness Mountain Guide for Magic Mountain
At Magic Mountain, our mission is to help people lead healthier and happier lives. In this series of Blogs, our Pilates and Wellness Mountain Guide Maddy Cullen explores the changing world of work and the opportunities and challenges being faced by both employers and employees alike.
Over the coming weeks, Maddy will be gaining insight from senior business leaders and entrepreneurs to explore ideas that will benefit both business and staff in this new world of work.
Pamela Spence, Global Health Sciences and Wellness Leader of EY, shares her views on this topic. The question being asked by businesses around the world is what are the major challenges for both businesses and staff members at this time?
Pamela explains “Employers around the world are wrestling with the issue of how to safely welcome their employees back to the office, or indeed how best to support them whilst they work remotely, often from home. This is a major challenge since the Covid 19 pandemic requiring organisations to significantly adjust their operations to prioritise human wellness”.
So what does this mean for businesses and why is it so important to take action?
Pamela clarifies “The health and safety of employees is critical to long term value creation. Employees that fail to invest in the wellbeing of their people will struggle to retain the best staff and fall behind rivals. As organisations reframe their future they must consider how they can reinforce both the physical and mental wellbeing of their workforce”.
At Magic Mountain we couldn’t agree more. One element we particularly focus on is how to keep “team spirit” truly alive with people now working apart much more. We do that through the theme of fitness and healthy living — a topic which over the last year, has become predominant through the conversations and lifestyles of the population. Technology has played an even more significant role in this.
From a business perspective, Pamela observes “We often think of technology plays simply as a tool of work. But technology can also support and build strong mental health. Employees can make a number of solutions available to their employees including mindfulness apps, chat bots and telehealth visits. They can also enable effective feedback mechanisms that enable employers to listen to employee concerns and respond quickly and appropriately”.
Magic Mountain App sits right in this sweet spot to support mental and physical health through engagement of teams and mutual team goals. We see the importance of teams and team cohesion as a key element of this new world of work. Teams are now more important than ever in an age of solitary working. We must not forget that some employees do not sit in specific teams, so we need technology to unite them to like minded individuals. More specifically, this solitary way of working has been shown to have effects on mental health.
Pamela shares some interesting stats, “A survey by Qualtrics in April 2020 found that 44.4% of newly remote workers said that their mental health had declined since the outbreak of the pandemic. Results from the Future Consumer Index echo these findings: 83% of respondents cited a decline in productivity due to working from home”.
Thus showing that physical and mental health are both critical elements of wellbeing. We know from our research at Magic Mountain App that working in teams really improves fitness, teamwork and combat’s feelings of isolation.
In a time when companies and the world are going remote, we at Magic Mountain are uniquely positioned to support the nation and wellbeing of people. Our app employs the latest thinking in gamification and behavioural science, bringing together groups of friends and colleagues to tackle a shared goal. We have no barriers to entry as users are not required to have any extensive gym equipment or memberships, rather just willpower to get active! Thus Pamela’s insight that the companies that truly embrace and support their workforce will gain a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent, is the key message and one that aligns with our mission to create a friendly, healthy and inclusive environment for socialising at a distance.
