Top Up Together
Next week (6th -12th October) is Mental Health Awareness Week, with the 2025 theme Top Up Together. This year’s theme is an invitation: to stop thinking of wellbeing as a solo project and to begin seeing it as something we build and sustain together. If you want to find out more about MHAW you can here
In our workplaces, wellbeing is too often framed as an individual responsibility: Do your mindfulness. Get more sleep. Go for a walk at lunchtime. While these are valuable, they miss the deeper truth—our wellbeing is profoundly shaped by the people around us.
In our workplaces, wellbeing is too often seen as an individual activity or responsibility. something we do (like going to the gym) by ourselves outside of work time. Of course our individual self-care is essential but the focus on individuals misses the wider notion of collective wellbeing. In some cultures asking how you are, involves enquiring about their family. The assumption is that no one is truly well if those closest to them are not. That demonstrates a more collective approach to wellbeing.
This Mental Health Awareness Week, I want to invite you to consider what collective wellbeing might look like for your team or organisation. This won’t just be every individual doing well on their own, but the team intentionally supporting, replenishing and building one another up. Flourishing together asks more of us, but also provides more for us than seeking to flourish alone. Once we have a shared sense of what collective wellbeing means, we can begin to grow a mindset of doing things together that add to our health and happiness at work. This is a shift away for me doing my little routines towards us finding ways to top up together.
Foundational to this idea of communal wellbeing is the truth that we need each other, yet we are living in a society that has lost our sense of interdependence.
When Geese migrate, they fly in a V formation. The bird at the front breaks the air resistance so that it is easier for those following. Geese take turns leading, when the front bird tires another takes it place at the front. They share the work and have a procedure for supporting each others energy. Imagine if we organised our teams like geese do, taking turns leading and resting.
Workplace wellbeing is often approached as though we expect everyone to be the bird working hardest all the time. The focus is on keeping each individual bird flying at their peak. A collective approach to wellbeing, asks something different: that we help to keep each other topped up, and that we step in to support each other when we are tired.
As a team or workplace, we can start thinking about how to build collective wellbeing through the five ways to wellbeing. Each day of the week offers a theme that we can use to focus our activities.
Monday: Me Whakawhanaunga /Connect
Building a sense of connection through kindness is the foundation of our team wellbeing. We can’t top up together unless we are connected, and connection is built through kindness. One of the biggest challenges to connection is time. In workplaces under pressure to meet outcome targets building relationships with teammates can be deprioritised. As a society we are becoming increasingly poor at relational exchanges. Support and scaffolding are often needed to encourage genuine connection. At the same time may workplace connection strategies feel contrived which builds dislike and ineffectiveness.
Connect Ideas For Your Team
Match staff into random pairs and give them 5 minutes to talk about something non work related. Support them to begin by providing a list of prompts such as: share about one of the following: a hobby, a favourite place, favourite tv show, something about their kids, their childhood home, their dream holiday.
Tuesday: Tukua / Give
We know that giving to others, being generous or kind has positive wellbeing benefits for both the giver and receiver. For those I work with in helping professions, where our work already involves so much giving we actually need practice receiving rather than giving. This can be an uncomfortable identity shift for those of us used to being in the ‘helping role’. I have been challenged by this myself over the last few weeks, as I rest my foot to recover from ligament tears. I have been unable to help others as I am used to, and have also had to ask for help. You might like to reflect: Do you give more than you receive? What might stop you receiving gracefully from others? How can you make receiving part of team culture?
Give/Receive Ideas For Your Team
In a team meeting set aside some time for a “help exchange”. You could give this a work focus, inviting people to ask for help with an element of their work. If you want it to increase connection and fun as well, you could make it a non work activity (perhaps with a caveat that it can be done in a couple of lunch hours).
Wednesday: Me kori tonu / Be Active.
Have you noticed that it is those who already enjoy physical activity and are already fit; the gym goers, the trampers, the marathon runners, are the ones that talk about it most at work? Yet is probably those of us who struggle to make physical activity part of our daily routines that most need encouragement and celebration.
We know that being active is good for our mind and body, improving workplace resilience and stamina. But it often feels too personal to talk about in relation to collective wellbeing. Beyond workstation set up, or the occasional lunchtime joint yoga session we don’t tend to include activity as part of our team culture. It can help bring it back into the workplace if we think of activity in its simplest possible terms.
Be Active Ideas For Your Team:
Ask a teammate if they have been outside today.
Start a daily routine, such as an open invitation to jointly walk a lap around the building at 3.15pm.
Normalise fun “stand-and-stretch movement moments during the workday.
Thursday: Me aro tonu/ Take Notice.
Taking notice is about slowing down and being aware of and attending to the here and now. Some of us might practise this through mindfulness or meditation, these are often individual activities. Practicing mindfulness and meditation together is beneficial, helping us with the activity,and supporting out wellbeing in ways that enable us to relate and work better, it doesn’t directly increase the sense of connection between us.
Let’s think of collectively being aware of the here and now as attending whole heartedly and mindfully to each other. Too often in conversations we are distracted by our own thoughts of the to do list,our inner thoughts or something like wanting lunch. We can take notice together by committing to being fully present in our conversations.
Take Notice Ideas For Your Team
Commit to being fully present with one another for a day.
Take the time to notice how each other is - does anyone seem a bit off, or stressed?
If you are having a conversation be fully in it, don’t multi-task, try and focus away from distractions.
Friday Me ako tonu / Keep Learning.
Our minds need exercise, just as much as our bodies. It is easy to fall into familiar patterns of thinking and habitual ways of doing things. Learning together isn’t simply about running a “lunch and learn”. Without genuine engaged discussion, this is often individual learning done in parallel. Collective learning means being willing not to know, to be curious and to apply what you are leaning together. Sometimes what we most need to exercise our minds is not so much more information but more creativity, to stretch our thinking into new spaces. We can do this by using more creativity focused tasks, and by focussing on generating as many ideas as possible, the good ideas are usually not first, but we often stop too early.
Keep Learning Ideas For Your Team
Model Sophie in a Bizarre Bra from the World of Wearable Arts Show
Invite your team to play with ideas. Start with something deliberately absurd to free up creativity. For example: If we were to design a bizarre bra that represented our workplace what would it look like? Come up with as many ideas as possible.
We are stronger when we top up together
When we approach wellbeing as a collective responsibility the five ways to wellbeing become more than individual checklists they become team practices that enhance cohesion, provide encouragement and increase flourishing for all. As teams we are stronger when we top up together.