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Agricultural and Farming Jobs Wellbeing Day

22 October 2021

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Agricultural and Farming Jobs Wellbeing Day

​Here at Agricultural and Farming Jobs we take mental health and wellbeing in the workplace seriously. It is as important to each other as individuals and as a team, which is why we run a well-being day once every 6 months.

Last Friday, I personally had the pleasure of attending my first well-being day since starting my position as Marketing and Events Executive, and what a treat that was!

Emma Ashmore one of the outstanding recruiters had put the day all together and I was blown away by how much thought and preparation had gone into the whole day and I felt really privileged to be part of such a wonderful experience. The day itself was split into lots of different activities, including meditation, gratitude lists and other mental health related exercises.

To begin with, we each completed a 'wellness wheel'. This involved looking at the 8 dimensions of wellbeing and writing down something we could improve in our lives in relation to the dimensions. For example, for the intellectual dimension, I would like to spend more time reading, rather than scrolling! We then took turns sharing our wheels with each other. I would highly recommend everyone looking at the wellness wheel, it was insightful and is a great tool for self-exploration that helps to survey choices and situations that impact your overall wellness as each of the 8 dimensions are interconnected and equally important. Something I often forget! So, it was a good reminder.

We also looked at the importance of gratitude and discussed what we were all grateful for on that day. This was the most Impactful and emotional point of the day for me as an individual. It was such a great exercise to remind ourselves of all the good people, and the good things in are lives that maybe sometimes we take for granted even though we don’t mean too. I think this is one of my biggest takeaways to always try and pick 3 things I’m grateful for daily, it helps direct your mind-set to be positive rather the focusing on the negatives and the general stresses. As life is busy, it is stressful, but there are always things and people that make it all worthwhile. It was also a really great way to connect with my team, we were all open and honest with each other. I came away feeling happy that I have the pleasure of working with such amazing people.

Next came meditation, which I absolutely loved! We followed a Headspace guided meditation and learned that there are actually numerous different ways to meditate. It was a great exercise and I felt more relaxed after! Even if you think meditation is easy it was not, but it was a great way of realising how many thoughts I have in such a small amount of time. I hadn’t really thought that most the thoughts we have daily are probably not actually helpful and positive which means they are having a massive impact on your mind-set. Since this day I have made an effort to try and meditate more than usual.

We also reflected on the pandemic of the last two years and how it has changed and affected us. It was amazing to see how far we had all come and how many challenges we had faced during this time. It was incredible to see how resilient and strong my fellow colleagues are and this really inspired me.

We had such a lovely lunch that Kate Moxon MD had provided us – Thanks Kate! It was full of healthy and delicious food, a great way to refuel before our afternoon activities.

After lunch, was all about goals and dreams. We had a look at each other’s dream boards that have been created over the past couple of years. It was great to see how far everyone has come and how many things were ticked off. It has really motivated me to think about my own goals and how to achieve them. Goals and Dream-Boards are super important, visualisation is key to success, and I cannot wait for later in the year to have our session to make dream boards for 2022.

 Here are some of the team’s thoughts of the day:

The AgriFJ well-being day was a fantastic day. Emma did herself proud. The team were very open and honest, and it was quite an emotional day. It brought the team closer together with a shared understanding of how their colleagues were feeling. The pandemic session was particularly insightful. – Louise Palmer

I thoroughly enjoyed hosting our team Well-being Day last Friday! We discussed well-being, mindset, resilience, positive visualisation, and the power of goal setting. We also reflected on what the pandemic meant to us, how we coped and how this positively impacted us. We all demonstrated our resilience, mental strength, and self-awareness exceptionally well. Here at Agri FJ we are all super passionate about optimum mental health and well-being so this a great day all-round. – Emma Ashmore

I love working for a company that has regular wellbeing days and invests time and effort in to teaching us about Mental Health and positive wellbeing. It’s important to be able to work together in a safe space where we can learn from and encourage each other to do our best for ourselves, each other, and the business. It is this that makes us more positive, more focused and a great team. – Maria Ledbury

The wellbeing day enabled us as a team to talk about how the pandemic had both negative and positive impacts on each of us. It also helped us to all engage in deeper thinking and understandings of Mindfulness, relaxation and positivity all to drive better wellbeing. It was comforting to be able to truly put our hearts on our sleeves and talk about things in an open, non-judgemental forum - Ollie O'Driscoll

Overall, the well-being day was incredible and I cannot thank Emma Ashmore enough for putting on such a fantastic day! It was generally one of my highlights this year and I cannot be more grateful to work with such a driven, empowering, and caring individuals!

 

 

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