Inspire Inclusion: International Women’s Day

In celebration and awareness of International Women's Day, Natalie and Shanila from The Wellbeing Collective had a conversation about their experiences of being women in the workplace and their hopes for the future. The following blog shares their thoughts and feelings around this event.  Natalie: The theme for International Women's Day 2024 is ‘inspire inclusion’. …

How I Improve My Wellbeing with the Circle of Control

Whenever I go through patches where life feels like it’s creeping up on me, or I’m swimming a bit harder than usual against the current, I come back to the things that are in my control to do something about.  The Circle of Control is a simple diagram in Psychology that you can use to …

Saunas and Ukraine: Co-Created Wellbeing

Have you been in a position at work where a 'wellbeing' initiative has been implemented and it fell flat, not quite meeting the needs of staff? It’s not uncommon and the solution is a simple but powerful one: co-creation for wellbeing. Essentially initiating a co-produced design that involves the implementation of what staff need, rather …

My Experience of Being in an LGBTQ Blended Family

Pride Month Joan and I set up The Wellbeing Collective in 2014, three years after we had become a couple. I brought two small boys with me from my previous relationship which kicked off a whole world of learning for the four of us, as well as their dad, grandparents and friends.  I recall being …

Health Inequalities – A Community of Practice Event May 2023

On 18th May, Amy Hobson (CEO) facilitated a Health Inequalities community of practice event with the Academic Health Sciences Network at Oxford University. The event centred around how to increase health equity, community engagement and co-production in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. The following is her account of the day...  Being a consultant, I get to …

The Impact We Have on Others

A Blog About Compassion and Authenticity We had a team day recently at The Wellbeing Collective – we each ran a session and had a meaningful and productive day together. At one point during the day, we got into a discussion about authenticity – how we show it; our attitude towards others; positive and negative …

World Book Day 2023 Book Recommendations

To celebrate World Book Day 2023, we have picked out 9 of our favourite books. We briefly tell you why we recommend each one below.   Time to Think by Nancy Kline  This book provokes thought about what it means to really listen and how this affects those around you. It gives a practical framework for …

Differences in Use of Language

Less comfortable dialogues are essential to understanding and being respectful of one another I have been reflecting on some work I did with a large and newly formed team. Some conversations arose about difference, belonging, equality and other similar topics. On a couple of occasions during the session, there were some participants who disagreed over …

Consumerism and Christmas: Do they go hand in hand?

The sense of consumerism associated with Christmas gets me down every year whenever I let myself think about it for long enough. This year, the feelings I had towards both receiving and buying bags’ worth of presents were negative enough for my family and I to agree to not do stockings for each other anymore.   I …

The Term “Gender-Neutral” May Not Be as Positive as you Think

A colleague mentioned this idea to me recently and it caused me to really think. I thought I’d share it with you. By calling some lines of clothing “gender-neutral”, we are implying that clothing isn’t normally these things. This might seem pretty obvious at first but read it again and think about it a bit …