Raportit tapahtumista

Webinar Defeating Burnout

On Thursday 3rd of June CCFF of Helsinki organised a very interesting workshop about wellbeing at work. The subject was rather important and unfortunately more and more popular now, as a numerous people have suffered or are suffering from this terrible disease of Burnout.

Three wonderful coaches gave us some insights on how to spot burnout and how to avoid it: Terhi Vuoristo, Tomi Hussi and the moderator Johanna Mouadane. All three are Finns - however, Johanna has been living in Paris for more than 20 years and Terhi and Tomi have worked in international environments.

An interactive app was used during the webinar. It showed us that a lot of the participants had experienced a situation linked to burnout either themselves or through their colleagues, and all had a lot of questions about the possible “cures”.

Amongst our panellists we had two great women, who had faced this situation and gave us their personal experience. Hereunder their stories:

Päivi Jokinen, Founding Partner, Avant Advisors. Board Member, Incap and Enersense International.

Päivi went through this painful experience which is burnout and told us that the best way to preserve oneself is to listen to your body and your needs. The basic error is to think that to be successful you must work more than others. This to be avoided and replaced by the idea that to be successful you need to have a mind and body at rest to be able to face challenges. Finnish Sauna is one of her favourite ways of letting go, and I think we can all agree on this. Many thanks to this wonderful invention! She also said that it is important to have good communication within the team and not to be afraid to talk if you have the feeling that something is wrong, or someone is not well.

Hilde Maeland, head of HR Nordic Region at BNP PARIBAS

Hilde explained to us how her team managed during these last few months. The challenging times of COVID have radically changed the ways of working, more specifically for the Finnish team who was used to working together in one office and then suddenly they all had to work from home.

Isolation and despair were the two factors they had to face. Therefore, several online events were organised, and specific instructions given to open a discussion with the HR manager in case of facing difficulties. Those were very much appreciated by the team members. Hilde implemented a new dynamic in her way to work with her teammates and emphasized to every member of the team the importance of group work. She also gave them the freedom of creativity to organise their own coffee break or some other event that would make them feel part of the team and important to the whole achievement.

The message from all these experienced people can be summarized in these few points:

• Take care of yourself and find a safe place to work.
• If you feel you cannot cope, it is not a failure, the task you have been given needs to evolve with your team members to be dealt with properly.
• Take care of your colleagues and be a good team player.
• A company is constituted of people, we are not robots, mechanics of work should be adapted to people.

We are planning a second edition to go even deeper on how to create a very good work environment between French and Finns.