About this article

Read time:

4 minutes

Category:

Life at Skout, Opinion, PR in the press, Uncategorized

How are you doing?

We take health and wellbeing (is it one word?) pretty seriously here at Skout. Coming out of Covid, we quickly recognised the impact the changing environment was having on the staff of our B2B PR agency and made some investments that we hope have helped the team negotiate and manage some of these new challenges.

According to PR Week half of those working in PR, marketing and comms have experienced severe stress, anxiety or burnout more than once in the past year. That’s quite a statistic. Good mental health and wellbeing doesn’t mean that you’re always happy and positive. But it does make it easier to cope with challenges in your daily (work) life. Mind, the mental health charity, points out that “mental wellbeing doesn’t have one set meaning. We might use it to talk about how we feel, how well we’re coping with daily life or what feels possible now.” And that might simply be the tasks that you deal with every day, even if you can normally do them in your sleep.

There are plenty of resources out there for anyone struggling with their mental health and wellbeing. I like this list from Mind:

• Relax and reduce stress
• Find ways to learn and be creative
• Spend time in nature
• Connect with others
• Look after your physical health
• Try to get enough sleep

Man in nature - get outdoors it's good for your mental health.
Get outdoors: it’s good for your mental health and wellbeing. Image credit: Francisco Moreno


The PR Week survey also found that that 67% of those who had mental health challenges felt their employer is doing the “bare minimum” to help employees with mental health problems. No wonder the industry has seen such a volatile turnover of staff recently. It’s bad enough to feel that your mental health isn’t great, but it will be unmanageable if you don’t feel supported at work.

Enjoying our blogs?

Enjoying our blogs?

We can deliver a monthly round-up straight to your inbox


I am clearly no health and wellbeing expert but I have worked with a few to develop Skout’s programme. Our first investment was to hire a health and wellbeing consultant – Dawn Barnes. Throughout last year Dawn delivered monthly wellbeing sessions that delivered insights into what is happening inside your head, how to recognise potential issues as they start to build, and introduced the team to practical techniques that they can use to manage their wellbeing – from meditation and mindfulness. to breathing patterns and self-talk. I think that it’s safe to say that we all learnt something that we can use. As someone who regularly meditates and is a massive advocate of yoga in developing mindfulness, I’ve been really pleased that the team’s reaction has been so positive.

“It has helped me to remember that it’s okay to take a pause when life is getting a little busy.”

What else can B2B PR agencies (and any company – however big of small) do to support staff? There are 100s of things. Here’s a few that we’ve implemented:

  • New learning and development opportunities – often stress can be caused by not feeling like you know what you’re doing. Address this with in-house training that can be quickly and easily accessed by staff.
  • Get outside – lots of the Skout team are enthusiastic walkers, so we introduced the Skout walkies. Once a month we go for a two hour walk in the beautiful Cheshire surrounds that we’re lucky to have on our doorstep. It doesn’t need to be scaling up a mountain, just a couple of hours amble and a chat with colleagues.
  • Create a community where your team can motivate and support each other. We’re currently walking across the world (virtually) as a team. So far we’re mid-Atlantic Ocean.
  • Keep an eye on each other and make it easy for employees to tell you how they feel. There’s no magic bullet for this one. It’s about asking each other ‘how are you’ on a regular basis. We’ve formalised this as part of monthly one-to-ones but you might find an informal approach is just as good. But it’s as much about a top down culture of openness and sharing that help staff to feel that it’s ok to be honest about how they’re feeling.
  • Wellbeing isn’t just about mental and physical health. We’ve also extended our programme to include financial wellbeing. Given the current cost of living crisis, we know that being financially unhealthy is also a major cause of stress.


All of this does beg the question: should we also stop working with clients who are causing staff undue stress? The ones with unreasonable demands who very much treat the team as someone to dump on rather than the valuable (skilful, interesting, fun) marketing partner they are? I can put my hand on my heart here and say yes. The client/agency relationship needs to be productive and when its more master/slave than partnership, it’s no longer productive or healthy.

Do you want to work somewhere that takes health and wellbeing of their staff seriously? Remember we’re always hiring. Take a look at our Life at Skout page or send us an email to info@skoutpr.com to find out more.

About this article

Read time:

4 minutes

Category:

Life at Skout, Opinion, PR in the press, Uncategorized

Sustainability – how our team is crushing plastic and saving the planet

B2B thought leadership PR – everything you need to know

Browse more blog posts

Posted on
byClaire James
In B2B PR, thought leadership is one of those concepts that gets spoken about all the time. But do you actually know what thought leadership is? And do you have the right tools and skills in place to make it work effectively for you? In this post we aim to clarify what B2B thought leadership can do and help you gain greater benefit from it.
Posted on
byRob Skinner
In B2B PR, thought leadership is one of those concepts that gets spoken about all the time. But do you actually know what thought leadership is? And do you have the right tools and skills in place to make it work effectively for you? In this post we aim to clarify what B2B thought leadership can do and help you gain greater benefit from it.
Posted on
bySkout team
If you haven’t heard by now, Skout is under new ownership! No, we haven’t been bought out – in fact it’s quite the opposite. As of last week, Skout officially became an employee-owned business. This was achieved by the founding shareholders, Rob and Claire, signing 100% ownership over to a newly established Employee Ownership Trust acting on behalf of the...
Posted on
byClaire Lamb
A few weeks ago, the entire Skout team visited the beautiful and historic city of Palma, Majorca for our annual kick off event. It’s been a long time in the planning (pre-pandemic to be precise) and the first time we’ve been abroad for a kick off to the new financial year. We’ve always found kick off meetings a great way...
Posted on
byHonor Williamson
TikTok is increasingly being used as a platform for B2B companies to implement their marketing strategy, aiding in brand exposure, lead generation and profile building. But, where does paid TikTok advertising come into play? Is it an effective tool to engage with B2B audiences, or is the ROI just not worth it?  If you’re the least bit social media savvy,...
Posted on
byClaire James
In May I was fortunate to be able to attend the recent UK Construction Week at Excel in London and see the strides forward an industry, that has become recognised as one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, is making in tackling the thorny issue of achieving Net Zero. In his keynote on day one, Lord Callanan, Under Secretary...
Posted on
byJames Weaver
In the world of B2B marketing, it is essential that you have a solid B2B marketing strategy in place to effectively connect with your target audience.
Posted on
byHonor Williamson
Why was PR your chosen career?  PR is all about storytelling, with so much opportunity for creativity and content creation. Since I’ve always loved writing and always had a big imagination, I thought that PR would be the ideal career to channel my creativity. I’m all about communication, and PR really allows you to foster meaningful relationships. I’m already learning...
Posted on
byJack Doyle
As a smaller business, it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to sustainability. Sure, we all do our best to use the right recycling bin at home, and bring our re-usable coffee cups to work. But with serious pressures now mounting from the government – which pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 –...
Posted on
byLee Simpson
Another week, another round of mass layoffs in the tech sector. With Amazon (AWS) and Meta cutting thousands of jobs, and further layoffs at Salesforce and of course Twitter, it has felt a bit like the tech world has been imploding of late. This is of course concerning for us working in B2B tech PR, but more importantly for the...

Send us a message

Download The B2B business relationship report

The B2B relationship renaissance – did digital kill it? The importance of relationships throughout the customer buying journey. Please complete the form below and receive a download link via email.