Embedded Expertise, Published: February 21, 2020 - Updated: August 22, 2022
As the science of brain fitness and mental wellbeing picks up momentum across corporate Australia, one company is leading the charge.
Australian technical resourcing company Embedded Expertise has launched Australia’s first Wellness Program for its contractors.
The program will focus on mental health prevention, minimisation and brain fitness for its network of contract-based engineers and project managers.
“Mental Wellness is about increasing our ability to innovate and think outside the box – it isn’t just about dealing with and preventing mental illness,” General Manager of Embedded Expertise Virginia Williams said.
“The program covers all aspects of mental wellbeing: from delivering coaching and advise, to educating and arming our team with tools that will improve their ability to perform.”
The program provides participants with both prevention and coping mechanisms including: Access to the Mental Wellbeing Toolbox, brain training techniques, one to one specialist life coaching, wellbeing and mental health tutorials, contractor community forum, and regular phone calls with their talent manager.
Ms Williams says the program was born out of an alarming need to better support contract or consultant professionals, who typically didn’t have access to the same support as permanent employees.
“In my experience, people in contract roles typically feel more isolated, left out and under far more pressure to deliver than their permanent counterparts,” she said.
“But the other significant benefit and aim of this program is in training the brain’s synaptic pathways in positive, and creative thinking – which has been shown to produce more out of the box thinking, problem solving and innovation.”
“We see this as being directly beneficial to our clients businesses and the candidates themselves.”
The program will support Embedded Expertise as Australia’s only dedicated industrial automation and control contract resourcing company.
“We work with an extensive group of specialist contractors and clients across Australia, and this is part of how we’re supporting them in their current roles – and in their next role.”
Embedded Expertise specialises in finding and placing technical talent across industrial sectors including: transport, energy, utilities, defence, manufacturing, mining and resources. We specialise in control system engineers, IT and business analysts, project managers and ITS engineers, and study managers.
Contractors
After an initial pilot program the overwhelming feedback was that all our expert contractors had felt isolated and had challenges with their managers (our clients), and that the program helped facilitate better ways of working.
“The program helped our experts overcome some of these obstacles in giving them tools to improve their own communication technique and to realise when they are caught up in their own story and agenda,” Ms Williams said.
“We’ve got feedback that they’ve felt an improvement in their listening skills and benefits in finding a joint goal with the team, versus only focussing on their individual role in the project.”
Organisations
For organisations, the program supports managers by providing their contracted experts with holistic care and support that they may not have the time for – especially in short term, high pressure project environments.
“I can actually see the impact of this program, and after one of my experts had gone through it, I want to do it myself,” said Jules Piyasena, Technical Lead at a large gas distribution company.
“I saw the potential of how everyone came together better and resulted in more innovation for the project rather than people being caught up in their own personal agenda.”
