In this episode of the HRchat show we discuss ways to support the physical and mental wellbeing of employees.
The guest this time is Dr. Ally Jaffee, a multi-award-winning NHS Doctor and mental health speaker featured on Channel 4, the BBC, The Times and more.
Ally is a passionate Mental Health Content Creator with over 18,000 followers across her social media platforms. She has spoken at high-level events including Google London, Royal Society of Medicine, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, The House of Lords,The Wellcome Collection, Soho House and Soho Theatre. She has spoken about Mental Health on GB News, in The Times and elsewhere.
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In this episode of the HRchat show we discuss ways to support the physical and mental wellbeing of employees.
The guest this time is Dr. Ally Jaffee, a multi-award-winning NHS Doctor and mental health speaker featured on Channel 4, the BBC, The Times and more.
Ally is a passionate Mental Health Content Creator with over 18,000 followers across her social media platforms. She has spoken at high-level events including Google London, Royal Society of Medicine, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, The House of Lords,The Wellcome Collection, Soho House and Soho Theatre. She has spoken about Mental Health on GB News, in The Times and elsewhere.
Feature Your Brand on the HRchat Podcast
The HRchat show has had 100,000s of downloads and is frequently listed as one of the most popular global podcasts for HR pros, Talent execs and leaders. It is ranked in the top ten in the world based on traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness. The podcast is also ranked as the Best Canadian HR Podcast by FeedSpot and one of the top 10% most popular shows by Listen Score.
Want to share the story of how your business is helping to shape the world of work? We offer sponsored episodes, audio adverts, email campaigns, and a host of other options. Check out packages here.
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. I'm your host today, Bill Bannam, and in this episode we're going to discuss ways to support the physical and mental well-being of employees. My awesome guest today is Dr Ali Jaffe, a multi-award-winning NHS doctor and mental health speaker, featured on Channel 4, the BBC, the Times and much, much more, including now, of course, the HR Gazette. Boom. There we go, Dr Ali. Welcome to the show today.
Speaker 3:Hi Bill, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:So I'll be on my reintroduction there. Why don't you take a minute or two and tell our listeners all about yourself?
Speaker 3:I am, what I like to say, very multi-passionate. I've got multiple interests and lead what's called a portfolio career, so I wear multiple hats. So, first hat, nhs doctor. Second hat I'm a patient. I talk very openly around my experience with poor mental health. And that brings me on to my third hat, which is mental health speaking, consulting for corporate startups etc. And then my fourth hat is I am the co-founder of NutriTank, which is an award-winning non-for-profit company that aims to improve nutrition and lifestyle education within healthcare professionals and students.
Speaker 3:So we know that poor diet is the leading cause of death, mortality and disability worldwide. Yeah, unfortunately, in the curricula in medical school and other healthcare related degrees except for dietetics of course, there's minimal around nutrition. So we have done a lot of policy work and we've done a lot of change making work to really shift this and move healthcare into that proactive way rather than reactive, and moving away from the pill, from a pill for every ill, so hugely passionate about that. And then I get up to loads of other things. I've got a huge interest in the arts. I've got a BSc in medical humanities, philosophy, creative arts and law, and so I'm a bit of a systems thinker, I think, using my right brain and my left brain, bringing the methodical scientific approach together with the creativity. And that's kind of me in a nutshell.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.
Speaker 2:Wowza, what a busy person. Oh, my goodness me. So usually when I'm putting a script together for an interview with an awesome person like yourself, I'll hone in on a particular theme. I was going through your profile, ali, and I'm like well, this person does so many different amazing things. I just want to sort of dip my toe into many of them and share a whole bunch of different things with our listeners about what you get up to and why. A whole bunch of different things with our listeners about what you get up to and and why. So let's do that, if that's okay. Starting with um, well, we're recording this episode in, uh, very, very late jan 2024, which is unfortunately it's certainly in the northern hemisphere one of the most gloomy times of year for many, many people. In fact, the third monday in jan is often referred to as the most difficult day of the year. My question for you, though, is how can leaders be better at spotting mental health issues in the workplace?
Speaker 3:It's a brilliant question, bill, and I'll just start by just busting some myths and misinformation around what you alluded to, which is Blue January, so it's an awareness day that happens every year and it actually is false. It came from a marketing campaign by a flight company to essentially get more people to travel to sunnier countries by saying that it will improve their mental health, and so a lot of hr uh corporates have essentially twigged onto this and have made it a really great day to obviously talk about mental health, but it's just important to say that it doesn't exist, and I think awareness days are great but, as you know, probably within your HR work, it's all about a systemic, continual, consistent approach throughout the year to help employees really thrive at their greatest. So what are some ways that are really practical to improve mental well-being when, as you said, it's really dark outside and it really does have an impact on your well-being? And there is a condition related this called saad sad, which is seasonal affective disorder, which is a real and true thing. So people listening to this could have experienced it and seen their GP about it, or have been too frightened to not validate themselves to go and see their GP about it, but it's a real thing that the lack of light can bring you down. So let's think about some practical ways during the winter months.
Speaker 3:I'm going to start off with something that I've actually been working around for, a campaign over this month, and that's called Red January and that's all about movement as medicine and movement for your mind. So it was started by a friend of mine called Hannah Beecham. She even got an MBE for this brilliant campaign and she gets all different corporates and all different individuals around the country to sign up to Red January and just commit to a little bit more movement over the month to support their mental health and come together as a community, because we know that social isolation also kills and research shows that social isolation has even more of an impact on our health than smoking cigarettes, which is absolutely startling. So Red January is all about improving mental well-being, because Sports England data showed that over the January month and other winter months that physical inactivity in adults in the UK really plummets, and so why not improve your mind and body through doing just a little bit more movement? So if that's taking the stairs at work instead of taking the lift or elevator, or even what I try and do is get off a few tube stops earlier and walk some of the way if I'm going somewhere to a meeting, and likewise with the train, and likewise just parking a bit further away for, for instance, from the hospital where I work to just get a few steps in here and there unless I'm in a really crazy rush.
Speaker 3:And so movement can be really powerful, especially in these dark times. And getting into nature, as we know, that green space has the power to really connect us with ourselves and take us out of our busy minds and give us that perspective that there is something out there that's greater than us. And it tends to kind of make our problems shrink when we're out in the expansive green spaces. When we're out in the expansive green spaces and there's research that shows that even the colour green can reduce your blood pressure and bring about that parasympathetic nervous system activation which in lay terms, is all about rest and digest and activating that vagus nerve into relaxation. So movement and getting out to green space and for me, as I have a huge passion around food, it's just part of my entire being I say that it's really important that when you are craving those comfort foods, especially because it's cold and you're feeling a bit down, and that's totally fine.
Speaker 3:You are allowed those comfort foods, give yourself permission to have them, but just try and think about your overall dietary pattern in the week and what small changes and swaps and additions you can make to make your diet more brain healthy, and by that you will be helping your mental health and also just really reducing that stress.
Speaker 3:So we know that our guts and our brains are connected, so what we put on our plate has a huge impact on our mind.
Speaker 3:So just small changes like swapping out refined carbohydrates by that I mean white pasta, white rice and swapping it with whole grains and brown pasta and brown rice, and in that sense you get more fiber with what you're eating, because that outer layer of the grain hasn't been removed and your gut loves fiber and makes your gut really happy by feeding the happy gut bugs, and then that has an impact on your mood as a result. It's not a quick fix, though, and it's not a pill, so it's not just oh, I'll have a fiber, a high fiber meal, and I'll be happy. It's all about building it up over time, over a week, over a month and that is why you can still have your comfort foods and things that you like, that are, you know, perhaps a treat and that is absolutely fine. It's just getting in that overall dietary pattern to make it a more brain healthy change thank goodness I can still have some of my comfort food.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Um, okay, next thing I want to chat to you about is your role as a social media ambassador with the world health organization. Uh, you, you work on the uh, the who fights project. Can you, can you tell us about how that project is trying to counteract the spread of health-related misinformation on social media and support the public to make more informed, evidence-based decisions about their health?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I am very honoured to be part of it.
Speaker 3:I've no idea if you pronounce it Fides or Fides, but regardless, the origin of the word is Latin and is all about trustworthiness, and that is what doctors and healthcare professionals should really represent.
Speaker 3:And it's a tricky space out there, because now we've got social media and we saw in covid that a lot of misinformation around the vaccine was being spread by influencers or in even some cases, anti-vaccine doctors and healthcare professionals, and that's where really the campaign came from. And so I'm on the feeders program to continue my work around spreading information that's credible and evidence-based around mental health, nutrition and well-being, as those are really my passion subjects, and so I just want to continue doing that and be part of a like-minded community that really sees the benefit in digital health in that it has so much scalability to really create a huge impact, as everyone around the world with a screen will be able to receive that information and actually, over time, I believe, will reduce the inequality when it comes to accessibility towards health information, as it's not just about your circles and being able to access healthy neighbourhoods, interventions and whatnot. It'll be about just being able to access good information on your phone, assuming you have a smartphone.
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Speaker 2:Excellent, thank you. The next role that you have that I'd like to chat with you about is you're a judge for the Insight Out Awards, which champion achievements in workplace mental health. How did the pandemic exacerbate mental illness, and where are we now, in 2024? What are things getting better?
Speaker 3:so do you have three hours, bill? It's yeah, that's a mammoth question. I guess I'll just start off by introducing the role and try and give a really brief overview. So I am a judge for this year's Inside Out Awards. It's founded by Rob Stevenson and another gentleman called Chris, who got together because they have their own corporate well-being initiatives and they thought, well, let's make this work much more impactful and extend it to a wider community. Let's really celebrate those in this corporate well-being space and award people who are doing great work and companies who are running brilliant initiatives for their employee workforce great work and companies who are running brilliant initiatives for their employee workforce. So that's what that's about and I'm going to be on the panel deciding who wins those awards, which is exciting for the award show in June.
Speaker 3:And from my perspective, it's really just a personal perspective rather than being able to say what the data is showing. But I think, from what I've seen and heard, with consulting and speaking to a lot of employees and people in HR, I think the hybrid approach to work and the working from home has been quite problematic because it just doesn't suit all companies and it doesn't suit all employees and some people love it because it means they can look after themselves more and go to the gym in the middle of the day and just do some steps or some exercises in their accommodation whilst you know, in between calls and things like that, and are able to do life. Admin put on a wash, whatever it is. Some people like that because it's just make their life easier, don't have to do a long commute. And other people with child care and children that they need to look after.
Speaker 3:Home is not necessarily a distraction free place and also some people become more and more socially isolated by not being able to have that structure and that engagement with their colleagues face to face.
Speaker 3:So that is a big kind of topic I'm seeing at the moment, especially on my feed as well, about whether it actually works the whole working from home. And then on the other side is is it ridiculous and highly regimented to always get employees to show face when it's not necessary? And some people like to beat to their own drum and um, you know, not always go into the office the entire time and doesn't want it to feel like a school, like you have to go into the office. So I'm seeing both perspectives, but I can definitely see how this is a no one-size-fits all Everyone's an individual kind of issue at hand, and I do think we'll probably see, and probably have already people who are more suited to going into the office will probably start to leave and go to startups where that is more modern, and other people who like that more old school approach will stay in big corporates, or vice versa, depending on what the company's approach to this all is. But it's quite complex overall very good, very good.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Uh, the next role that you have that I'd like to chat to you about you mentioned it earlier in your intro is you're the co-founder of uh nutri tank, an accredited cme provider of high quality open access medical education on lifestyle medicine, and the cic that has worked with none other than jamie oliver and his public health campaigns team on the campaign Nutrition for Medics Tell us a bit more about that.
Speaker 3:So that has been essentially my brainchild. I started NutriTank with my co-founder, dr Ian Broadley, around seven years ago now. When we were early on in medical schools. We saw a huge gap when it came to learning about techniques to talk to patients with chronic conditions on how they can improve those chronic conditions, manage the symptoms and sometimes even reverse them or prevent them from happening in the first place. And a lot of that comes down to learning about diet and lifestyle. But medics unfortunately have very little emphasis on that in the curriculum, and more so, as I alluded to earlier, there's that appeal for every ill approach and you jump straight to the pharmacological intervention and we know that we are whole human beings and there needs to be a holistic approach with every intervention. So diet and life cells a huge part of this.
Speaker 3:So with NutriTank we have been running weekly webinars for all healthcare professionals and students where they get CPD accreditation and they are on all different topics, for instance, the benefits of sleep, the relationship between sleep and mental health. We had a really interesting one last night on nutrition and its impact on brain health and productivity and how that's beneficial for the workplace, and we had one recently on nutrition and its impact on trauma and how you can help patients who have long-standing trauma with diet interventions to improve their symptoms. So lots of really exciting content that we produce and, like you said, we've had the honour of working with Jamie Oliver and winning the BBC Food and Farming New Talent Award in 2019, which he presented to us, and it's been a really incredible experience being a founder and going on this learning curve, as it's so different to being a doctor, a completely different skill set, and we're hoping, bill, to actually extend our offering into corporates and bring all these topics into the forefront of education for employees outside of the NHS. So watch the space for that.
Speaker 2:Rock and roll. And just finally. Already we're coming to the end of the conversation today. So just finally for today, but I will be hounding you to come on more shows, I'm sure. How can our listeners connect with and learn more about you?
Speaker 3:So I'm across most social media platforms. I am mainly on LinkedIn and it's just my name, dr Ali Jaffe A-L-L-Y-J-A-F-F-E don't forget the W and I have the same handle on Instagram and I have the same handle on Instagram, twitter or X, and I have my website, wwwdoctorallyjeffreycom, where you can learn more about me and the events that I've spoken at and radio and TV viewings, and you can book me for a talk if that's what you're interested in getting me to speak at one of your corporate away days. I do that a fair bit at the moment and so, yeah, do fill in the form if you're interested in having me speak.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Well, that just leaves me to say for today, dr Ali, I think you are an awesome human being. I'm super impressed by you, so continue to be awesome, please, and thank you very much for being my guest.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. All the best and take care.
Speaker 2:And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.