Frequently Asked Questions
What is Safe Space?
Safe Space is a leading mental health and wellness service provider that delivers virtual workshops, events and subscription services, designed to enhance employee wellbeing, happiness and productivity in the workplace.
Over the last two years, Safe Space has been fortunate enough to engage in thousands of conversations with leaders and employees worldwide regarding employee wellbeing within the workplace.
We understand the pain points organisations face and the journey that HR leaders, employees and business owners can set upon when exploring or implementing a wellbeing strategy within the workplace.
We’ve encountered many great questions throughout these conversations, so we’ve decided to highlight some of the more asked questions to help save you time and money.
The clients we work with are vital to our business; however, our priority will always lie with each individual, rather than the organisation itself.
What’s unique about Safe Space?
Our blend of uplifting, educational & practical webinars makes learning about your mental welling fun! No stuffy content here.
We only work with experienced content creators because we believe this gives our users the best customer experience.
We want your employees to leave each session feeling inspired and energised, helping teams to stop surviving & start thriving.
What’s the best way to get team leaders engaged in wellbeing?
To ensure any new initiatives around wellbeing are adopted, it’s imperative to engage senior leaders. If your company leader isn’t utilising our services or advocating it as a new initiative, employees may be slow to adopt.
While our goal is to ensure that the senior leaders are adopting our mental health support services because they know it's the right thing to do, we also understand that sometimes not everyone shares our view.
We’ve worked with many clients, helping them build a case for these initiatives centred around absenteeism, best highlighting the issue and why our services are required.
Does Safe Space share employee data with employers?
Safe Space never shares user information; however, we may inform the companies we work with a utilisation score, which helps them determine if our services’ are of value.
What terminology is best used to describe mental health in the workplace?
There’s nothing wrong with using the term “wellbeing”; however, it’s important not to shy away from using words like “mental health”.
We aim to get people feeling comfortable talking about the things that make them feel uncomfortable. That includes any stigmas associated with expressing feelings or emotions culturally.
Some cultures are happy to use terminology like ‘mental health’; others may restrict. For Safe Space to communicate effectively regarding this subject, we choose to speak about mental wellness; however, encourage our clients to explore the whole meaning of both.
How should I respond if someone I know is struggling?
It can be extremely challenging to support someone who is struggling but remember that you are halfway there just by listening empathetically.
The critical thing to remember is that you don’t need to take everything on yourself.
Although you may feel like you need to provide the answers, that’s a job best left to the professionals.
Suppose you don’t know where to find support? Check out our
resources page or see the next point below.
What should I do if someone is in a crisis?
Customers located outside of Dubai, please visit our resources page for a reliable list of support numbers.
Customers located in Dubai can contact The Ministry of Health and Prevention, which has established a dedicated hotline 04519 2519 for anyone requiring an urgent response to psychological concerns and anxiety.
You can call the mental support hotline available from 9 am to 9 pm, from Sunday to Thursday or send an email to Alamal.consultations@mohop.gov.ae.
If you find yourself or anyone else to be in an emergency, you should visit Al Amal Hospital.
You can find directions to their emergency mental health department
here - Or search Amal Psychiatric Hospital. Al Aweer, Dubai.
Why should we prioritise mental health and wellbeing at work?
We believe that when an employee feels well, they work well. By empowering your employees to be the best version of themselves and prioritising mental health at work, these changes can positively impact your employees’ well-being, happiness, and productivity – eventually leading to the possibility of an even healthier bottom line.
Isn’t encouraging employees to talk about their mental health in the workplace a recipe for creating issues?
Mental health covers a large spectrum of thoughts and emotions, both good and bad.
That means in reality that these conversations are already happening with your employees whether you realise it or not.
Mental health shows up in many different ways, so it’s important we give people space to explore these emotions within a private, professional setting, emphasising prevention and not cure.
Won’t encouraging employees to talk about their mental health create a drain on our resources?
The reality is that this isn’t a reason to try to avoid starting conversations around this subject.
Maybe it's time to hire an additional person in your team or invest in something like our Virtual Drop-In sessions to support your employees without affecting general business hours or creating any further strain on your HR teams.
Ignoring the wellbeing of your employees won’t make it go away.
According to The World Health Organisation, statistics show a 5:1 return on investment within companies that prioritise well-being.
Shouldn’t my HR or Learning and development team be equipped to deal with these issues?
Many organisations have excellent resources to support their employees’ needs; however, the people in these positions are often not equipped to deal with such complex personal issues. Furthermore, employees generally report that they feel more comfortable discussing emotional problems outside of their employment.
Safe Space service allows employees to feel supported without creating an unnecessary burden on internal resources.
What if the root cause of people's unhappiness isn’t coming from outside influences?
Giving someone the space to learn more about themselves may help surface emotions that suggest their current situation isn’t serving them, which may involve dissatisfaction with the work they carry out or could be related to your organisation’s culture.
By addressing unhappiness, you create opportunities to look within your organisation and reflect on any improvements to help your people thrive.
Helping individual employees understand their emotions, can often create a more significant shift in the entire organisation. When one link gets repaired, the whole chain becomes much more robust.
How do I book a chemistry consultation with Safe Space?
You can book a consultation directly through our website or by sending an email to hello@wearesafespace.com.
How much does an initial chemistry consultation cost?
Safe Space offers a complimentary 30-minute chemistry consultation via Zoom or telephone to discuss your workplace mental health and wellbeing needs.
You can book appointments for your company directly by clicking this link and providing a few details.
How do I know I'm choosing the right wellbeing services for my business?
We’ll help determine your business’s needs through an initial chemistry consultation by asking some important questions, helping us establish what path your business is on and where to take your wellbeing strategy.
Following this conversation, we’ll support you by conducting a wellbeing assessment to assess any specific challenges your employees might be facing. We’ll then provide you with a report and a list of suggestions that address your employee needs.
How does the wellbeing assessment work?
Based on The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, our assessment enables us to measure the mental wellbeing within organisations by allowing employees to score their wellbeing using key metrics that remain entirely anonymous.
The 35 question survey takes around 10 minutes to complete and measures five major response categories, helping us determine a single score for the entire company.
All the questions are all positioned positively and cover both feelings and functional aspects of mental wellbeing, creating an average score that supports organisations in evaluating projects, programmes, and policies to improve general mental wellbeing.
What happens if the assessment does not provide a dominant result?
Sometimes but not often, employees may feel motivated to position their answers in an apathetic way. Apathy is also a good indicator of what might be happening within your organisation.
When employees show a lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern, this can flag or suggest poor engagement or highlight that perhaps employees haven’t felt supported during other similar initiatives.
Our job is to help improve their interest in such topics and get your employees feeling switched on again to their mental wellbeing.
We don’t have much budget – does that matter?
We understand that not every organisation is financially able to provide 24/7 support, but that’s ok. We offer many affordable services to suit every business size, helping business make incremental steps towards improving organisational culture and well-being.
Our virtual drop-in session or on-demand subscription platform might not be suitable for your company right now. However, we can certainly support your team in creating or improving a wellbeing strategy that helps you and your company work towards this future business goal.
We aim to engage business in talking about wellbeing and educating our customers on the long-term benefits of support.
You can request a consultation to discuss our entire pricing structure by clicking here.
Where should I start with a mental health strategy?
Every business is unique, and we treat each of our customers that way too.
Whether you’re looking to create a statement with an external campaign or feel you want to take incremental internal steps to assess and improve the wellbeing or your employees starting perhaps with a survey, we’re here to support and guide you in that process.
What are the organisation benefits of implementing a corporate wellbeing strategy?
Some of the benefits of implementing a mental health strategy include reduced sickness absenteeism, improved employee engagement, increased productivity, improved retention, increased team morale, improved company culture and enhanced brand image and reputation.
What are the employee benefits of implementing corporate wellbeing strategy?
There are many benefits that employees can experience from workplace wellbeing, including improved resilience, self-esteem, better communication in our relationships and a greater sense of mental and physical wellbeing.
Our Company is Sharia-compliant, will this be a problem if we wish to work with Safe Space?
Safe Space strives to create inclusive environments for employees to hold conversations around mental well-being. We respect and acknowledge that cultural sensitivity sometimes that impact these kinds of discussions.
We work with a diverse network of international organisations, many, with specific policies regarding considerations to modest dress code or a ban on the use of particular terminology and that’s fine.
We’ll work with you and your team to find the right solution, including creating a separate time table to suit these needs if required.
What is a virtual drop-in?
A virtual drop-in is a private space for employees to talk through issues that could be causing them stress, worry or anxiety, relating to personal topics such as finances, relationships, communication, confidence, self-esteem and much more.
Each session can be accessed through an online platform with a personal email ID and last up to 45-minutes.
What exactly does a virtual drop-in session entail?
It’s not always easy for employees to chat with their peers, line manager or employer about their mental health concerns. That’s why we’ve created a judgement-free zone, with trained experts that can offer unbiased support, to help them find quick answers and resources to deal with mental health-related questions.
Our anonymous online platform provides employees with a flexible timetable of sessions five days a week, which offers valuable insights into improving life areas such as; stress, anxiety, worry, relationships, communication, confidence, self-esteem, and much more.
Virtual Drop-ins aren’t a replacement for one to one counselling, and it’s not group the it’s a chance for employees to offload and get advice in a supported and safe space.
What will employees gain from attending a Safe Space virtual drop-in?
In the beginning, your employees might feel like they don’t have much to ask, and that’s ok.
Employees can choose to talk in the Q&A box or submit questions in advance, whatever they feel most comfortable with and gain answers from our helpful team of experts, to whatever’s on their mind.
Our team is on-hand to guide the conversation, helping our users get the most out of every 45-minute session.
We might not always cover an entire topic in just one session. However, we recommend encouraging participation and providing recommendations so we can tailor future sessions around these needs.
What happens If an employee is in crisis during or after a session?
Safe Space isn’t a crisis management solution; however, we acknowledge that sometimes feelings may become triggered during sessions, leading to emotional distress.
Safe Space monitors all activity during our live session. If we feel that someone is in distress, we prompt them to reach out directly via telephone or email and signpost them to the nearest crisis support.
Safe Space will never pass on individual personal information to an employer; however, if evidence presents that a company’s employees are continuously at risk, we will flag this at an organisational level. We do this to highlight where additional support might be required and leave this to the employer’s discretion.
What if our employees don’t use the services we’ve purchased?
From what we’ve experienced, most employees are eager to talk about their feelings in an environment where they can work on their mental wellbeing.
Individuals may feel hesitant to adopt the new initiatives; however, we generally find that when leadership supports the introduction of our services, they get utilised to maximum capacity.
Often poor utilisation comes from the poor introduction. That’s why we have carefully crafted a seamless onboarding process to ensure every individual feels comfortable within any of the Safe Spaces we create.
What languages are sessions delivered in?
90% of sessions are in English; however, we have delivered workshops in Arabic and Hindi.
Our aim is to one day provide a full-time table spoken in multiple languages.
If you have specific language requests, please reach out to us, and we will try to facilitate your request.
How do Safe Space onboard employees to ensure they know how to use this service?
As part of our onboarding process, we offer each company a complimentary 30-minute introduction session for employees. We provide the opportunity for your people to ask any questions and see how our services work. We’ll also send you a recorded version of this conversation so you can share with anyone that cannot attend.
Once your team is familiar with our process, we’ll provide your HR department with a unique landing page for your employees to register and sign up for sessions.
Your company can decide if they would like us to track utilisation through existing work email addresses or prefer employees to use their personal emails addresses instead.
What can I expect from a wellbeing workshop?
Our wellbeing workshops designed to empower staff with the insight and tools to make positive changes to enhance their health and wellbeing.
Each workshop is 60 to 90 mins long and delivered live via Zoom, facilitated by mental health professionals or expert consultants. These sessions include several exercises and/or topical discussions, followed by a Q&A discussion at the end.
Visual slides support all conversations to ensure your employees remain engaged.
What are the benefits of a wellbeing workshop?
Our virtual workshops are a great way to bring together employees who are working from home or remotely.
All of our sessions are delivered through Zoom as standard, supporting up to 100 attendees at any one time.
All of our virtual sessions are delivered live by one of our experts, and you will receive a complete recording of the session afterwards, which you may distribute internally.
Should you do wish to share any of our content externally. Please request permissions first.
What if my company doesn’t support Zoom?
Not a problem. We can work with you over any other existing lines of communication used within your organisation.
Is there a maximum number of attendees?
The maximum capacity for our virtual workshops is up to 100 people. However, for teams to get the most out of the session, we recommend no more than 60 attendees at any one time.
Are the workshops recorded?
Yes, the entire workshop is recorded and is yours to keep and distribute internally.
Virtual drop-in sessions, however, are not recorded or shared to respect user privacy.
Any content shared externally from your organisation must gain appropriate permissions first.
What’s the best way to engage employees in mental wellbeing?
Including mental health within KPI reviews, are an excellent way of engaging and reward employees showing an interest in improving their mental health.
Smart people can’t argue with data. KPI metrics are great for building a case study to present to senior management for any future budget requests.