Working and home-schooling or caring? You can do it!
50 days ago
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With England, mainland Scotland and Wales under lockdown and Ireland in full level five, many Sodexo families find themselves once again affected by school (and some nursery) closures, or juggling caring responsibilities with work.
We have Joe Wicks back jumping around in the morning, BBC Bitesize and RTÉ bringing learning to the big screen, and schools providing more structured classes.
It seems that in many ways, we’re better prepared for the days ahead, but we’re also facing new challenges - extra demands on our time, and living up to expectations set last year.
In the first instance, if you’re impacted by juggling family life (whether that’s childcare or caring for someone else), please speak to your line manager and have an open conversation about the support you need.
Our teams across the region have worked to curate a wide range of resources to support you through what continues to be a challenging time for all of us:
Lockdown wellbeing support page
A new page has been created on Your_Sodexo covering a number of key wellbeing topics and providing quick, easy access to resources that may help you.
Working parents, carers and those home-schooling can find links to new Ingenium content and how to keep bodies and minds healthy.
Sodexo Working Parents Group
Sodexo’s Working Parents Group run a Facebook group for those who are, or are about to become parents or carers. The group is a safe space, and anything that you’d like to ask anonymously can be submitted straight to the group admins.
You can find helpful, practical advice, and someone to talk to. One fantastic tip we picked up from looking through recent posts was how to access Office 365 via a games console!
Talk
Talk, our employee assistance programme (EAP), is the talk of the town!
Shannon Wall, Diversity and Inclusion Co-ordinator, recently used Sodexo’s EAP service to find support whilst caring for her grandad during the Covid-19 pandemic:
“I was open with my managers about my situation and they mentioned accessing Sodexo’s EAP service. And although I didn’t think I’d enjoy talking to a counsellor, one day I felt so low I tried it, and to my surprise it really helped. I’d call through anytime I just felt I needed to let it all out - to cry, to laugh, to get advice, and it was such a release.”
Shannon has written a blog post all about her experience caring for an elderly relative during lockdown which is available to read here. If you’d like to share your story, please feel free to email us.
If you need it, Talk is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from anywhere in the world, with expert advice available, and you can directly access the telephone counselling and information line on the numbers below, or visit my-eap.com (login: sodexowell).
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United Kingdom: 0800 111 6387
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Republic of Ireland: 1800 551 556
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Abroad (including Falklands and Cyprus): +44 845 330 5132
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Manager support helpline: 0800 1116 385
Lockdown 3.0: Emotional Wellbeing Matters webinar
In partnership with Educating Matters, we are delighted to be able to offer all Sodexo employees access to a webinar on 1 February where Rachel Vecht, a former primary school teacher and university lecturer who has worked globally with working parents, will share practical tools around how parents can navigate and protect their own mental wellbeing through expectations, mindset and managing guilt and stress and how to help children do the same.
You can register your interest via the lockdown wellbeing support page.
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