Olga O’Sullivan on raising mental health awareness at Distilled SCH

Olga O’Sullivan wants Distilled SCH employees to live their best lives. As the Talent Acquisition & HR Coordinator for Distilled SCH, Olga ensures that the talent pipeline to Dublin keeps flowing. She’s also active in the HR department’s Wellness Strategy, created as a way to support Distilled employees throughout this pandemic and beyond.

After a survey revealed employees were struggling with their mental health, Olga and the HR team organised initiatives such as a four-week mindfulness course and guided meditations. The company also paid for annual subscriptions to the popular meditation and sleep app Calm and hosted stress-management and grief support workshops. Distilled has also trained Mental Health First Aiders, who can help support team members in crisis.

Olga feels incredibly passionate about these initiatives. The child of active, health-conscious parents, Olga competed regularly in sports until an injury short-circuited her running ambitions. She found new inspiration in yoga and has since become a certified Vinyasa teacher.

We’ve focused on mental health throughout this week, and it’s uplifting to see initiatives like ‘Live Your Best Life’ from Distilled. Be sure to read the inspiring interview with Olga below on the work Distilled is doing to break down stigmas and create a culture of openness around Mental Health.

Hello Olga, can you give us some background on your role at Distilled?

Hello! I am the Talent Acquisition & HR Coordinator, so my role is a mix of recruitment and HR Operations. I spend most of my time sourcing candidates for our open roles, scheduling interviews and overall, ensuring that every candidate has the best interview and onboarding experience with Distilled! Aside from this, my role has a big focus on wellness initiatives.

We read that you are also a yoga teacher — have you always been interested in wellbeing and mental health?

Yes definitely! I was lucky to grow up in an active household — my Mam has a 2nd relationship with the gym and my Dad has trekked to Everest Base Camp and climbed Stok Kangri, the highest mountain in the Indian Himalayas. Not bad for a 62 year old right?

Being surrounded by active parents growing up, and being immensely lucky to have freshly prepared meals everyday, meant that I got involved in sports quite a lot as a child and began to attend fitness classes in my late teens. I had a short-lived running career where I ran four half-marathons before an injury meant that long-distance running wasn’t possible for me.

From there I found Yoga. I am lucky to have a studio nearby (and after hating it at first), I soon fell in love and decided to undergo a 10 month, 200 hour, Vinyasa training certificate from YogaHub in 2020. For me, Yoga is the perfect blend of both physical and mental training. I find that when I roll out my mat, no matter where, I am present in that moment and nothing else matters.

Can you share with us some examples of the initiatives you put into practice to raise awareness on mental health at Distilled?

It goes without saying that the last year and a half has been tough for everyone on a mental, physical and emotional level. Distilled was always very supportive of people’s wellbeing when we worked in the office, however, when we switched to remote working, most of these activities couldn’t happen the way they used to.

Further, the HR team became more aware that a “one size fits all” approach to Wellbeing simply wasn’t an option anymore. Living through a pandemic and remote working meant that every individual in the company was dealing with a different situation, whether that be living alone, trying to work and homeschool children, or dealing with grief.

As a result of this, the HR team developed a dedicated Wellness Strategy in Distilled, called “Live Your Best Life” which was designed off the back of survey results we received from 70% of employees. This allowed us to develop a tailored Wellness Strategy that would address the issues that our employees were experiencing at that time. It’s reviewed on a Quarterly basis to ensure it consistently remains relevant.

Over 50% of our employees who responded felt that their Mental Health had declined in the last 12 months of living in a Pandemic. Therefore, we put a huge focus on Mental Health in the first half of this year and organised for a 4 week mindfulness course to take place called “Calming a Busy Mind”. The facilitator, John, also ran two additional 15 minute guided meditations throughout the week so that employees could have a dedicated slot for mindfulness and really begin to develop their practice.

In February this year, we also rolled out a free annual subscription for every employee to Calm, the World’s number one app for sleep and meditation. I was lucky enough to get to trial all the various options available, and we decided on Calm because it offered everything from sleep support, meditations, physical stretching, breathing exercises and workshops. Calm also has a hub for children which was great for our employees with young families.

In April we organised two Positive Stress Management workshops to take place, which helped employees to better identify their stress levels, where their stressors are, and what they can do to balance this out.

In Distilled, we now also have 10 employees who are fully trained and certified Mental Health First Aiders. They are on-hand to support those suffering with their Mental Health, and to also reduce the stigma and open up conversations about the importance of looking after our Mental Health.

Finally, we hosted a series of Grief Support Workshops for employees and their families to attend. The past year has seen a huge amount of grief and for people to have to experience this in a socially distant, isolated way, is immeasurably tough so these workshops provided a lot of support in how to manage Grief during COVID.

How were they received by the colleagues? Did you notice any significant positive changes in the working environment?

People are extremely grateful to be receiving this type of support in these times. We are sending out a touch survey in June to begin capturing more data on how people feel now, how the initiatives in the first half of the year helped them, and to better understand how we can continue to support the Wellbeing of employees throughout the rest of 2021.

What I have really noticed however is that people in Distilled are more comfortable to open up about how they are feeling without thinking that they’ll be judged for it. Breaking down that initial stigma with Mental Health in particular is so, so important.

I believe that creating a culture of openness from the top down is key. We are lucky in Distilled as our Leadership Team have always been extremely supportive of our Wellness initiatives and they are very open and happy to share how they are feeling on days when they might be frustrated by isolation, negative news, or the lockdowns. At the end of the day, it shows that we’re all human.

Have you planned something particular for Mental Health Awareness Week?

We have integrated our Wellness and Corporate Social Responsibility Strategies and have sponsored a team from Distilled SCH to take place in Darkness into Light on May 8th. Darkness into Light is a fundraising event for an Irish Charity called Pieta House where attendees walk, run, cycle, or swim into the sunrise from darkness into light. Pieta House are a suicide intervention charity that offer their services for free to people who are in distress. None of their services could happen without the support from the public, and given how tough the Pandemic has been, they have seen a large increase in the use of their services from the public.

We are proud to support this charity and any money raised by our team will be doubled by Distilled and donated to Pieta House.