This week is mental health awareness week, an annual event hosted by the Mental Health Foundation, which provides an opportunity to reflect on our individual mental health and focus on achieving greater mental health for all.

This year’s theme is loneliness, which feels increasingly important to address in today’s post-pandemic, digitally led society. With loneliness affecting millions of people across the UK, it is something that needs addressing. Moving away from our screens and reaching out to peers, building personal connections and thereby reducing the hard-hitting effects of loneliness must surely be one solution.

One of our core values at Hollis is ‘connected’; being connected to our colleagues, clients and friends. Equally, being connected with our surroundings helps to reduce the effects of loneliness and protect our mental health, and is something we promote to our employees at Hollis. Whether it be our ‘brew & banter’ sessions, our social events to help ‘find the fun’, or even simply a walk outside with a colleague, we encourage our people to stay connected with each other and build a community within the workplace. We are hopeful that our people can continue these healthy habits in their personal life to achieve a happy and healthy mental mindset in and out of work.

We have always cared passionately about the wellbeing of our people, and this continues to the wellbeing of our society. As we draw a close to another successful year for our Charity of the Year, we can look forward to fundraising for a new employee-agreed charity. With this in mind, we are pleased to announce that Hollis will be raising money for two mental health charities, providing support and services in the countries we operate in: MIND and Befrienders Worldwide. These charities provide life changing support to individuals across the globe, and we look forward to supporting them in their efforts this year.

We encourage all our employees to reflect on their mental wellbeing this week and reach out to colleagues, especially if you find yourself struggling with loneliness. We are here to listen, and here to help.

Let’s raise mental health awareness this week, and keep mental health a priority for life.