Living Well and Lumien join forces to shed light on work place mental health

The West Midlands’ leading mental health charity, Living Well UK, has announced its collaboration with Birmingham-based tech developers, Lumien, to pioneer a platform that assesses workplace wellbeing. With the ability to accumulate information, analyse the results and advise on next steps, the application – called Lumien – will be instrumental in keeping mental health a priority for employers and employees alike as they navigate this new way of working.

With the nation in the midst of a second lockdown and working from home looking like a more permanent situation than previously thought, the platform is being launched just in time. With loneliness on the rise and burn-out remaining prevalent, the mental health experts are debuting the platform to help equip people with the wellbeing support they need at home.

The purpose of the Lumien platform is to enable companies to gather anonymised information on all aspects of good mental health within their organisation: from nutrition and finances to working from home issues. Designed to take away the stigma of talking about mental health in the workplace, the system is revolutionising the world of employee wellbeing.

The programme works by asking employees to take part in weekly wellbeing quizzes, before using these to craft a tailored plan recommending treatments from a consortium of Living Well UK members. Companies will also receive an overall report showing if certain trends are emerging and what practices they can put in place to remedy them. A simple traffic light system is used to quickly identify areas that need addressing, making connections in the data to provide a deeper insight.

What’s more, the individuals will also be given a personal wellbeing score based on their answers, and from these will be signposted to programmes and activities that are able to alleviate the pressures they face.

Ben Skirth, the co-founder and director of Lumien, is looking forward to working with Living Well UK, commenting:

“The world is facing unprecedented circumstances and with that, the knock-on effect for mental health and stress cannot be underestimated. At times like these, it will be vital that businesses openly communicate with their staff about not only what they expect from them but also what support they can offer. We sincerely hope that by working with Living Well UK, we can ensure that the Lumien web-platform is a simple and effective solution for how this can be achieved and sustained.”

Areas covered in the Lumien reports include stress, emotional wellbeing, anxiety, grief, financial worries, security, loneliness and self-esteem with advice on organising in-house mental health workshops, encouraging employees to keep active and engaged, understanding payslips and eating well.

According to Office for National Statistics figures, twice as many adults in Britain say they are experiencing symptoms of depression compared with this time last year. The survey, reported by the BBC* and based on more than 3,500 adults, suggested one in five people appeared to have depressive symptoms compared with one in ten before the pandemic with those under 40, women and people with a disability saying they are most affected.

Ben Howells, the CEO of Living Well UK, commented on the collaboration, saying:

“I am so pleased that Living Well UK is collaborating with the Lumien team to offer the expertise and knowledge to empower businesses to make smart decisions around mental health for their employees. We know that everyone within a business will have a different experience of how they are coping during the pandemic – whether that’s due to money worries, fears about the future or their children returning to school – and through this platform, we hope Living Well UK can help create the room for them to have a voice to convey these emotions as well as navigate strategies for coping with them.”

Living Well UK provides free mental health support to people living in Birmingham and Solihull, promoting wellbeing from an individual and community perspective to help find practical solutions to life’s challenges. These include online stress and anxiety courses, counselling and self-help, creative therapies and CBT, drawing on the knowledge of a consortium of expert members across the city.

To access the Lumien platform, head to www.lumien.io and for more details about Living Well UK’s services, visit livingwellconsortium.com/ or call 0121 663 1217.