Jedidah Mould, Research and Survey Officer at the NTDC, tells us about her experience of the recent Virtual TechNet Wellbeing Event at the University of Sheffield.
The University of Sheffield’s Virtual TechNet Wellbeing Event which took place on Thursday 27th April 2021 between 12.30 and 1.45pm focused on staff wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Emily Faulds from HR presented on ‘6 Ways to Wellbeing’ in the pandemic. The six ways included i. Connecting ii. Being active iii. Taking notice iv. Continuous learning v. Giving and vi. Self-care. There was a panel discussion of experiences during the lockdown. The panel also shared some links to support systems available for University staff like Campaigns/Mental Health (mentalhealth.org.uk), Health Assured, My Health Advantage among others. Three people who had previously experienced mental health issues during the pandemic shared their stories on how they survived depression and discussed positive steps that can be taken to support and improve mental health. Some of which included gardening, exercising, starting a YouTube channel, making time to talk to family and friends.
Adelina Acosta Martin (nature presenter) presented on how nature impacts mental health and wellbeing and used jam boards to capture what the technicians’ thoughts were on key wellbeing questions. Mentimeter, an interesting app was used to summarise key thoughts about how nature impacts mental wellbeing. Participants were able to use the app to describe how they feel when they connected with nature which was very interesting and therapeutic.
Adelina who presented said they would send pdf of the slides to the attendees of the event.
The TechNet event was open to technical managers and technicians, researchers, administration staff, HR personnel, teaching staff and anyone who is interested in the technical community and wanted to find out more about the technical community. TechNet’s Virtual Wellbeing Event was hosted for technicians at the University of Sheffield, but welcomed attendees from other areas and technicians from other institutions.
