Wellness that Works Galway..another great success.

On Wednesday, June 12^th, on a beautiful sunny day in Galway, set in the Clayton Hotel, DeCare Dental hosted the latest Wellness that Works breakfast seminar. With an early start and busy morning ahead, the Clayton Suite was quick to fill with an extensive range of Wellness experts including business and HR managers, wellness advocates and employee leaders.

DeCare Dental’s CEO, Maureen Walsh, welcomed the room and introduced the morning’s guest speakers and proceedings with a presentation and video to demonstrate how positivity and happiness can be spread with something so very simple as a smile. Maureen encouraged the audience to use their smile to help their health and provided the audience with some research which focused on the life elongating benefits of the smile. Maureen discussed how DeCare’s oral health expertise became a dominant stepping stone to developing Wellness programs in the workplace hub.

Promoting Mental Health and Wellbeing.

David Casey, DeCare Dental’s Wellness and Health Promotions Manager, followed next and gave a very compelling back story, outlining the World Health Organisations definition of health. It was clear to see from the get go that David had engaged the audience and throughout this presentation, you could only hear a pin drop. David has over 9 years clinical experience in healthcare and has worked over the past 6 years designing, building and implementing wellness and education programs for over 500 companies across Ireland and the UK. Using audience participation, David showed the room that a healthy lifestyle is different for everyone and explained how workplaces could benefit greatly by focusing more on the determinants of health rather than downstream poor health outcomes when considering Wellness initiatives. The benefits of having a healthy workforce and the workplace as an optimum location to promote health and wellbeing were explored in depth and the most poignant message from this discussion was “The wealth of business depends on the health of workers” (Dr Maria Neira, WHO).

Munster Rugby Legend and Mental Health Advocate, Alan Quinlan took to the stage next to share his own experiences in dealing with mental health issues, anxiety and depression. He spoke about the key role a healthy lifestyle can play in dealing with stress levels and how concrete support, both in the home and in the workplace can have a massive impact on recovery. He explained how mental health was a “hush-hush subject” when he was growing up and people were cast aside or viewed as different if they had a mental health issue. Encouragingly, stigma associated with mental health issues is gradually being broken down and there is now far more compassion and empathy around trying to help people.  Alan believes that creating an openness about your feelings and vulnerability is a proactive way of dealing with mental health issues. He stated that it is very important to continue to educate people, and most importantly educate our children about the importance of resilience and the importance of being open.

Helen Quinn, HR and Employment Law adviser, treated the room to a relaxing meditation session after the informative morning talks. Helen is very passionate about bringing meditation into the workplace and bringing more awareness into our day to day working lives.

Dermot Goode, MD of totalhealthcover.ie is a leading expert on Healthcare Benefits in Ireland.  Dermot took us on a journey of the emerging trends in employee wellness and how wellness is not just a quick fix. It takes commitment over time to achieve the very best results.

New for 2019 – Panel Discussion

Wellbeing event growing from strength to strength…

With the success of events in Galway, Dublin and Cork, DeCare’s next wellness event will be announced very soon. DeCare Dental are experts in dental benefit solutions and employee wellness programmes. When it comes to employee health and wellbeing, we understand just how important a healthy, happy workforce can be. This is why we developed a course that is rooted in holistic, researched based aspects of health and wellbeing. Companies throughout Ireland are using these tools in order to improve the overall wellbeing of their teams. DeCare’s Health and Wellbeing Training Program, includes everything you need for your managers, team leaders and wellness champions to set up and manage a workplace wellness program. The training is designed to equip organisations with the tools to run successful wellbeing programmes. Statistics show us that keeping our employees healthy can improve quality of life and can impact your bottom line with reduced healthcare costs, improving productivity and boosting morale.

If this is something you would be interested in attending, email wellness@decaredental.eu to be the first to hear of new events across the country. For information on wellness programs offered by DeCare, visit www.decare.ie/corporate/wellness and for upcoming events see www.wellnessthatworks.ie

To view photos from our Galway breakfast seminar click here