2017 GHP - Mental Health Awards

6 GHP / September 2017 , Monkey Puzzle was born out of the co-founders’ desire to help businesses maximise the skills and talents of their people and grow their businesses at the same time. The aim was to blend their extensive business experience in retail and financial services with a deep understanding of people. To achieve this both John and Karen undertook training in a range of psychologies. John is a qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Karen is a UKCP registered Psychotherapist. Karen discusses the services the firm offers and the types of clients the company deals with. “The focus of our work is in businesses where the leaders are professional or technical experts who also require the skills to run their business and lead people. Examples include tech companies, financial services, architects, lawyers, accountants, marketing and also the creative industries. Our aim is to make personal and Best for Business-focused Mental Health Services – UK & Excellence Award in Business Training Courses: Time Mastery Monkey Puzzle Training and Consultancy was founded by KarenMeager and JohnMcLachlan in 2007. We spoke to Karen to find out what makes the firm successful and what the future holds for the company. professional growth real, useful and practical through a blend of training, one to one work and business strategy events.” Detailing the company’s specific focus, Karen talks us through the business plan as well as how herself and John lean on their previous experience to help staff at the company thrive in their respective positions, giving the best value for clients. “Businesses can be both successful and healthy, though all too often businesses overly focus on one or the other, either very commercially focused or very focused on wellbeing. We believe with the right skills and strategic plans and processes you can have both and take a holistic approach with the businesses we work with. The focus of our work is in supporting organisations to develop key people in the business, training employees on essential self-care and relational skills and becoming more effective and efficient with their time thereby achieving more and reducing stress. “In our previous business roles, we saw a lot of people becoming commercially successful at the sacrifice of their health and too many talented people crash and burn along the way. The problem was increasing and we believed that it didn’t have to be this way. We also saw that mental health and emotional resilience were often ‘treated’ if they became an issue through EAP schemes and sporadic training initiatives. Whilst well intentioned, these approaches never got to the heart of things, partly because mental health still carried so much stigma in the workplace. We wanted to change this and identified processes where we integrate positive mental health skills into everything we delivered. “The approach of staff includes teaching people to work on their emotional regulation as part of a leadership development programme, rather than developing a specific course or how, by using their time better, they will be calmer, more focused, and more efficient. For our clients, this approach shifted the perception of mental health from something that was a problem that needed to be dealt with to something people could develop and work on much like they would for their physical health through diet and exercise.” With regard to the company’s ongoing success, Karen is obviously excited about what the future has in store for the firm. She discusses how the firm want to develop more with other health professionals as well as maintaining the commercial success of the company. “Looking ahead, we are really excited to be working with some organisations right now who have big plans that will impact the pace of social change which we are also passionate about. We are enjoying helping some super bright people achieve great things by supporting them to develop themselves and their mental and emotional resilience. We also want to develop more with other health professionals MHA17005