Corporate Wellbeing Programmes: Why Personal Safety Training should be included.

Learn why all good Corporate Wellbeing Programmes should have staff Personal Safety training as a core component.

Personal Safety and Security are Fundamental Necessities for Human Wellbeing

From the work we do across corporate workforces, we see that an unfortunately high number of professional staff in Britain, in particular those working in offices in the principle cities, are regularly concerned for their safety on their journeys to and from work.

Corporate Staff speaking to us about their concerns report feelings of daily nervousness and unease, to feelings of outright terror.

In a recent Personal Safety Talk we delivered to a highly intelligent professional workforce of several hundred staff, our standard 1.5 Hour Lunchtime Seminar format was extended by our own decision to stay for 3.5 hours (please note with no extra charge to the company) to help everyone in the room due to so many people present having experienced a frightening incident either on the street or on public transport travelling to / from work. We stayed to address each incident because we know training works. The later feedback received from the staff was the "talk" had been the most useful thing they had attended. This company were doing the right thing:

They assigned a budget for personal safety training and support for staff
They enabled staff to leave their desks for training sessions in the middle of the day
They didn't pressure staff to return to their desks when the training sessions extended for 2 extra hours, out of pure necessity to address the fears, fear-states and trauma tangibly present in the room from the high number of threatening experiences the staff had encountered on their daily commutes.
They facilitated staff training to empower the staff with personal safety tools, strategic thinking and safety behaviours which helped their workforce feel more safe, confident, supported and hence more healthy on a daily basis.

It is important that this daily experience of our corporate talent in the UK is not brushed aside as the new norm, and is addressed properly at both government and local level but also within how we support and empower our workforces. It is not healthy to feel regularly unsafe. We can live in a modetn environment full of its instabilities and be vitally aware that we live in difficult times, but we also have to be careful not to accept it as a norm and do what we can to maintain wellbeing, regardless of the environments we live in. Maintaining wellbeing in unsafe environments requires training and education.

Healthy

Personal Safety training contributes to good health. We know, we're trained. By having our own personal safety skills we are able to approach the challenges and environments of modern daily urban life with stability and awareness.

Contrary to popular belief fear is not useful. Alertness, awareness and strategic thinking with the calm ability to act and maintain one's own physiological responses to threat are useful. As highly trained full-contact defense operatives, fighters and ex military, our team know that if your body enters a fear-state it is starting to shut down some of your core functioning mechanisms. Fear, experienced regularly, daily, even at a low level, undermines your wellbeing, your peformance and negatively impacts your health.

"Removing fear on a day to day basis enables humans to thrive"

Corporate Wellbeing Programmes

We are posting this article to encourage more companies to take a similar approach to the company mentioned above, by including Personal Safety in ALL Corporate Wellbeing Programmes. Why?

Budget
Most companies do not have an assigned Staff Personal Safety or Security Training budget.
In the absence of such, we also often see the same companies spend significant money on motivational speakers, celebrity speakers and wellbeing packages which do not address core fundamentals of human wellbeing. Personal Safety London is affiliated to Five Rings Training & Research Institute which specialises in human development and has carried out over a decade of studies of the human system in combat and under duress. There is NO wellbeing, if you are in a state of fear. Personal Safety support for staff needs to be understood as a cornerstone for staff wellbeing programmes. There are plenty of providers in the UK so you can easily find someone near you to choose from. If you need our advice or training contact us. The first step for companies is understanding that training is vital and important now. A new Staff Personal Safety and Security Training budget is not required if your Corporate Wellbeing Programme includes the training and hence your existing corportate wellbeing budget is being allocated, not increased.

There is a fundamental link between sense of safety and human wellbeing.
Feeling regularly scared for your safety creates a series of physiological and psychological effects which undermine your overall wellbeing such as:
* Heightened levels of adrenaline and cortisol production
* Negative impact on the central nervous system
* Negative impact on breathing, posture and hence digestion.
* Creates overall instability and lack of inner balance, both physically and energetically, which leads to emotional and mental health impacts.
* Over time, undermines positive outlook, increases timidity and creates a lack of confidence in life
To name but a few.

Training is cost-effective.
Personal Safety Training is far cheaper than the fee to book a motivational speaker, and provides your staff with immediate life-saving and health-building tools. In most cases, once an individual learns the core stratregic principles of personal safety and applies it to their day to day life, they have that knowledge for life and don't need further theory training unless their environment significantly changes. We advise undertaking theory training before physical self defence training in all education programmes. Physical training needs repetiition, theory training imparts core principles which can be applied to multiple scenarious for awareness, avoidance and prevention and hence if companies first focus on this learning provision they provide staff with the biggest value impact of useful information for a relatively small budget and short period of training. We are happy to advise on this if you would like to contact us to discuss. In our own delivery we provide theory seminars in all instances and if the budget allows, we follow it up with self defence training programmes.

Our Advice

Here’s some advice to help your company implement personal safety training and support for your staff, whether you have available budget or not.

Prioritise Life Skills Examine current budgets for staff wellbeing and look to what money can be reassigned to training, without having to increase your budget allocation. Make it a foundational element of your Corporate Wellbeing Programme, even if it’s just one annual seminar for all staff to attend at least you are providing something of real life-skills value. If you can't afford further training at least you have provided staff with a basis and the contacts to seek further training should they want it.

Ask your employees Most corporate staff surveyed confirm they want to be receiving safety and defence skills training and staff security support. In some cases, where small companies have had no budget available, we have provided corporate staff training which has been paid for by the staff attending much as they would pay to attend a yoga session, subsidised and organised by the company. There are always options to be able to create one learning session per year.
Speak to us about your budget. Let us help you. We help companies all over the world find solutions to their budgets, from short intensive learning sessions to training up your in-house teams or individual staff members as your own company security leads and supporting them as a way to reduce your annual training budget. There’s always a solution to bringing more safety support to your staff at a price your company can afford, whether that’s by reallocating budgets or building you long term sustainable economical solutions within your current in-house resources, it is best to start the conversation to explore solutions.
Team up. For companies with reduced budgets, team up with other companies in your post code or business group to host a jointly funded personal safety event. This serves as both a vital education and learning event and promotes team building and networking. In key areas of London such as Canary Wharf and West London we have trained up to 20 companies together through one event in each location. It is a great way to bring people together and empower staff in skills whilst building supportive local networks.
Sponsorship. We work directly with sponsors so if you have a sponsor who can support your CRS (corporate responsibility scheme) with staff training we’ll work them direct to help you get the training you need.