“Work it, work it non-stop” – Event industry employees' unconscious application of the Five Ways to Wellbeing

Abstract

PurposeThis paper explores mental wellbeing in the events industry. We argue that mental wellbeing is often difficult to achieve in the stressful and deadline-driven events industry, and that better awareness and understanding of specific actions for employees to flourish at work is needed.Design/methodology/approachWe used in-depth semi-structured interviews with event professionals in the UK to investigate their individual coping strategies. To contextualise, we used the Five Ways to Wellbeing framework as an analytical tool.FindingsOur findings reveal that event professionals currently unconsciously engage in a variety of actions to maintain and enhance their mental wellbeing outside of work, but not at work. Out of the Five Ways to Wellbeing, specific actions to Connect, Be Active and Take Notice were most important to event professionals. The remaining two ways, Keep Learning and Give, were also identified in the data, although they were less prominent.Practical implicationsWe present recommendations for event professionals to more consciously engage with the Five Ways to Wellbeing and for employers to develop mental wellbeing initiatives that allow their employees to flourish.Originality/valueIn event studies, the Five Ways to Wellbeing have thus far only been applied to event attendees, volunteers and the local community. Our paper highlights how event employees can also benefit from engaging in some of the actions set out in the framework to enhance their mental wellbeing at work.

Presenting a New Model for Addressing Non-severe Psychological Problems: Community Centres Dedicated to Therapeutic Lifestyle Change

“…No such review has been conducted in NZ, but the same pattern is apparent. The resources produced by the Mental Health Foundation, Health Promotion Agency and Canterbury's All Right campaign are almost exclusively downstream, including street posters, information sheets, billboards, advertisements in newspapers and on the back of buses (Stadler, Walters & Jepson, 2023;Calder, D'Aeth, Turner, Fox & Begg, 2016). Some resources are interactive, such as All Right's "downtime dice" or the Mental Health Foundation's "Wellbeing Game", which rewards five ways behaviour with points and virtual awards (Keeman, Näswall, Malinen & Kuntz, 2017).…”