Every year we challenge the January blues by making ‘Brew Monday’ a highlight of our wellbeing calendar.
We give colleagues the chance to take a break and enjoy a complimentary barista-made coffee as part of an initiative inspired by the Samaritans’ national Brew Monday campaign.
The third Monday in January is considered to be the most depressing day of the year, and turning ‘blue Monday’ into Brew Monday gives people a chance to meet over a warm drink and reconnect, in a bid to combat isolation and help people open up and start conversations.
We think this is especially important for our trades and repairs staff who often spend their working days alone travelling from job to job and don’t always have time to get to know others in their team.
So a mobile coffee van visits our offices in Congleton and Liverpool as well as our depot in Toxteth over the week.
Environmental manager Joe Feeley has been a champion of the Brew Monday events as a way to get the mostly male trades teams talking, and aware of the support on offer to help maintain good mental health and wellbeing.
“Brew Monday is great because it is something that brings us all together as one big team and you can see the enjoyment on people’s faces,” he said. “It’s really important that our repairs colleagues have a chance to take a break, have conversations and get to know or catch up with each other. It’s something that can make a difference to someone’s day and be really beneficial for everyone’s mental health.”
Our coffee van days have been so successful, they return for colleagues on World Mental Health Day in October as well. It is one part of a wide-ranging suite of wellbeing initiatives and support for colleagues, including everything from access to the EAP Employee Assistance Programme, Medicash, legal and financial advice, workplace mental health first aiders, and more.
Jas Samra, director of People, said: “Feedback from the Brew Monday event is always brilliant, and colleagues tell us how much they appreciate being able to have that break and a conversation.
“It is vitally important these days that as an employer we are able to offer colleagues wellbeing support in ways that are meaningful and useful to them, and we’re really pleased to have had such success with our coffee van events.”
