Supporting Employee Wellness

United Utilities supply and remove water across the North West of England. They supply water to 7.3 million people across Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria and Cheshire.

Motivated to support their 5,000 staff through the long months of lockdown they commissioned a series of 12 short films, that were distributed throughout the business to help employees understand all the many things they can do to get their brains working better on a daily basis.

Neuroformed Ltd wrote the scripts collaboratively with Blue Shift films, who provided directorial, filming and editing services, producing a successful series of films covering a wide variety of topics in a compelling and accessible fashion.

Below is a taste of the neuroscience-informed content covered by this series of short films.

To discuss how your company could engage Neuroformed Ltd to provide similar support for your campaign, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Coping with Change

The human brain evolved to adapt to the changing pressures of our immediate environment. When the background of this insight is fully explained this narrative really makes people feel better able to cope with the consistently accelerating rate of change.

This film started out by outlining the concept of neuroplasticity, emphasising that anything we do regularly, intensively and keep up the practice in the long run can physically rewire our brains to help us adapt to new situations.

It ended with a few practical tips to help people understand what they can do in terms of spending more time in real and virtual environments that lead to positive brain changes and how to go about adopting new habits to direct brain changes in the direction of improved wellbeing.

Building Resilience

This mini-film outlined the importance of taking the time to carefully distinguish between things that we can control versus things that we can't. It might seem obvious, but worrying over things we can't control increases suffering without having any positive impact on outcomes overall.

The first steps towards building resilience is lightening the load of unnecessary suffering by actively avoiding spending time consuming resources that remind us of stressful things that are beyond our control (e.g. doom scrolling on social media, cutting down on national and in particular global news).

The next step is to focus on breaking down what can be controlled into bite-sized pieces. Chipping away daily at manageable tasks gradually builds a person's sense of being able to take matters into their own control; to feel like they are pulling their own strings...

Neuroscience of Anxiety

Fear is the brain's response to immediate danger.

Anxiety is the brain's response to possible future danger.

A better understanding of the neuroscience of anxiety can help people to develop better psychological self-management processes.

In this mini-film we outlined the neuroscience evidence indicating that 20 mins of daily mindfulness meditation is sufficient to noticeably improve a person's ability to keep their attention focused after just 1 week. It can lead to structural changes in the brain's grey matter (connections between brain cells) within regions known to be important for emotional self-management after just 4 weeks. And the structural integrity of the white matter (electrical cabling) feeding these anxiety-reducing brain regions is improved after 8 weeks.

It is a fantastic example of something that is totally free, that anybody can do, that significantly improves a person's ability to better manage their own anxiety levels after just a few weeks...

Stress

While stress has got itself a bad name, the truth is that the stress hormone "cortisol" is actually really useful; in small doses. Chronically high levels of cortisol can be damaging to physical and mental health, but moderate doses of occasional cortisol are actually vital for helping us to deal with the root causes of stressful situations.

This mini-film outlines how stress directs our attention and resources to dealing with the root cause of problems, making us feel more willing and able to take the necessary steps to address the difficulty, so that cortisol levels can be allowed to subside and we can go back to NOT feeling stressed.

The net result of watching this mini-film was that people were left with a more nuanced understanding of what cortisol actually does to body and brain. It also provided people with practical tips they could start applying right away to more effectively manage their stress levels on a daily basis to ensure regular periods of recovery where cortisol levels are allowed to subside.