Loes St.Ather, Parkable

Loes Dermott
Loes St.Ather, operations, parkable

 

Why is wellbeing important to you and your organisation?

Wellbeing is critical in our organisation, as it is in life. There are so many different aspects to wellbeing and we know that wellbeing is linked to health, productivity and general happiness.

 

What is currently in place at your workplace when it comes to wellbeing?

At Parkable, we focus on connection, physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing. Connections are so important to us humans inside and outside of the workplace. We are very lucky in the fact we work with some really great people and we have some great friendships among the team. We have a weekly morning tea which is rotated around the office for people to bring in snacks (healthy or not) for people to enjoy together. And pre-Covid we also did shared lunches twice a week. We use Slack as an internal communication and connection tool. It allows multiple groups and anyone can create a group for people to subscribe to. A few examples of groups we have are: #burgerclub #wellness-and-lols #podcastklub #rockclimbing #thebiggestlooser

Physical wellbeing is something we try and encourage. We have a corporate gym membership at the local gym, and the business pays for a weekly bootcamp for everyone to enjoy. During lockdown we continued to have these on zoom which was great. One of our awesome team
also trained to become a yoga teacher recently and she is holding free classes which a lot of us go along to, to support her.

Mental wellbeing is supported at Parkable by the majority of the meetings starting with a check in, in order to bring the way people are feeling to the forefront. We also practice gratitude. This is supported by our Slack channel #wellness-and-lols in which people
post cute photos of dogs, funny memes and every Wednesday I post a picture or quote to support Welbeing Wednesday.

We also support all the national events like Mental Health Awareness Week, Pink Shirt Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Maori Language Week among others.

For the month of August we had a Winter Wellness Month with a different wellbeing focus each week (Exercise, Financial, Sleep, Nutrition) that was the first of it’s kind and quite well received. To be totally honest, there is some structure but most of it is quite ad-hoc. I am working on a calendar with all our upcoming events/activities in it.

What do you enjoy about working with us?

I can’t actually remember how I came across the ROW Network (formally the Wellness Champions Network) but I am very glad I did. During the first lockdown I watched a lot of webinars, many on wellbeing and I connected with a lot of the speakers and participants on LinkedIn. Perhaps someone I connected with shared something? The themes are topical, the discussion important and the network supportive. I have always been attracted to like-minded people and groups and have always had a passion for helping people. Hoping that being part of this group
will help me grow and hopefully learn from other great wellbeing experts.

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