Kaktus AI

15/11/2021

12.7% of all sick days in the UK can be attributed to mental health conditions. Here are our top 3 picks for companies striving to provide the best mental health support for their employees.

25/10/2021

Brenda Phillips - Samaritans volunteer

“No-one envisaged or wanted this pandemic, but, once it was inevitable, Samaritans launched a dedicated wellbeing line for our health and social care staff who have acted as our frontline against coronavirus. The line is open 7 days a week, from 7am until 11pm. We did this with speed and enthusiasm, matched only by the alacrity with which volunteers signed up to join, and it’s a huge privilege to be part of this.

We speak to all manner of key workers within the health and social care sector, including medical professionals and other roles from porters to administrators. Many of these roles were already stressful at the best of times and the pandemic piled on unprecedented pressure.

Everyone is different and every call is different. I’ve heard from callers worried about safety, unexpected redeployment, juggling the relentless demands of work and home life, and matters like bereavement. I’ve also heard from those struggling with exhaustion and isolation and I’ve often offered a listening ear to callers who’ve told me they felt guilty for not doing more.

Looking back on the year, I’ve realised how frontline workers often put other people’s feelings above their own, with some callers saying that they didn’t want to burden colleagues or risk passing on Covid 19 to friends and families. While they were struggling, they needed to talk about how they were feeling and that’s where we come in.

Talking things through can provide comfort and perspective. We can discuss options or coping strategies, but often the pressing need from health and social care workers is simply to offload to someone who will listen without judgement. Whether it’s been one terrible day or they have been struggling to cope for a prolonged period of time, we are there to listen and support them.”

Source: https://www.mentalhealthatwork.org.uk/blog/you-help-others-let-us-be-there-for-you/

14/10/2021

As the effects of the Covid pandemic begin to wane, new challenges seem to be emerging as we try to reimagine life post-Covid. Transitioning from full time remote work to hybrid functioning, we offer our take on the benefits and disadvantages of this switch:

Read more on our blog here:

Navigating the transition from pandemic driven remote work to hybrid work models as economies open up world over.

01/10/2021

Wondering how to engage with your employees in a better way? Check our new blog post and find out who's sinking your boat!

What is Employee Engagement?  Until today, the industry did not have a unified definition of employee engagement. William Kahn first proposed the concept of Employee Engagement in 1990: ‘The harnessing of organization member’ slaves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and express ...

27/09/2021

Ken Robinson (1950 – 2020) was acclaimed by Fast Company magazine as one of “the world’s elite thinkers on creativity and innovation” and was ranked in the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top business thinkers.

24/09/2021

Paul - Anaesthetic practitioner, intensive care unit:

"Working long shifts in the ICU presents many challenges both mentally and physically. Wearing a hood and gown for long periods of time becomes hot and claustrophobic and makes communication difficult. We have our photo on the outside of our hoods so that patients can see who we are and we try to make as much human contact with them as possible. Patients are often scared and when the decision is made to put them on a ventilator, some call loved ones on their video phones to say goodbye, sometimes for the last time. It’s heartbreaking to witness this level of human grief and suffering.

As frontline workers, we carry the scale of suffering, the isolation and loneliness the patients endure and the fear in their eyes with us. The burden of guilt and helplessness seeing and knowing patients are suffering and dying alone. For one shift this would be unbearable, but we come back day after day, week after week.
We are supported by our hospital well-being and psychological services, which have become 24-hour with walk-in clinics available. The COVID-19 pandemic has put mental health at the top of the agenda for staff wellbeing and accelerated funding for services in the NHS, which is a huge positive for both the short and long-term effects of COVID-19 on frontline workers."

Source: Mental Health at Work (https://www.mentalhealthatwork.org.uk/blog/what-we-do-is-positive-its-caring-its-empathy-its-for-the-greater-good/)

20/09/2021

Spreading awareness of workplace mental health issues is important to us at Kaktus AI. We need to make our voice heard to more of you to highlight the ever-increasing demand for workplace mental health support.

We are now happy to announce we’re also sharing our blogs on http://Medium.com! Please check us out and follow us if you’re on Medium to learn more about workplace mental health issues and solutions and to keep up to date with the latest Kaktus AI innovations.

Read writing from Kaktus AI on Medium. Kaktus AI is an innovative cloud-based workplace mental health analytics platform that focuses on the key asset of any organization – people.

17/09/2021

Do you want to nail your global HR role in 2021? Here are some of the HR trends in 2021!

15/09/2021

Next up in our Meet the Kaktus series is our Marketing Intern, Yamini Karunagaran!

03/09/2021

Next up in our Meet the Kaktus series is our Marketing Intern, Angelina Huang!