March 2025
Stress Awareness Month with Edinburgh Leisure
We speak to Sam Scott, Health Development Officer (Mental Health and Wellbeing) at Edinburgh Leisure about what they are doing to support their staff during Staff Awareness Month.
In 2025, Stress Awareness Month in the UK takes place in April, aiming to raise awareness about the causes and cures for stress and promote mental health and wellbeing.
The Stress Management Society encourages participations through their 30-day challenge, which promotes daily actions for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
This year’s theme is #LeadWithLove. It’s a powerful call to action rooted in the principles of Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR), encouraging us to approach ourselves and others with kindness, compassion, and acceptance, no matter the challenges we face.
In today’s world, where stress often thrives amid conflict, tension, and division, they believe that love is the universal force capable of shifting the narrative. By choosing love as our starting point, we embrace empathy, prioritise understanding, and create positive change in every interaction.
Whether it’s extending a gesture of kindness to someone nearby, offering support to global communities, or simply practicing self-love, even the smallest acts of love can spark powerful waves of positivity that ripple outward.
As a charity, Edinburgh Leisure is committed to supporting people in Edinburgh to be active and well. And that also applies to everyone who works for us. We want to encourage all our staff to be active and healthy, and as such, we ask each staff member to set a Wellbeing Goal. It could be as simple as choosing fruit as a snack; doing something they enjoy once a week; aiming to drink 2 litres of water a day; meeting friends once a week/month; trying a new sport or pastime.
The key things we encourage them to do are to:
- Make it fun
- Make it exciting
- State it in the positive
- Use ‘I am’ statements
- Keep it achievable
- Celebrate success.
We are supporting staff with setting a Wellbeing Goal and have several assets to help them out – either a digital or printable Wellbeing Goal booklet. We also have our own 30-Day Wellbeing Calendar, which aims to encourage colleagues to make small simple everyday changes that will improve their health and wellbeing.
This is one way of supporting self-love, by taking time for self-care and showing the same to kindness you offer to others to yourself.
But other Acts of Love that you extend to others can be as simple as holding the door open for a stranger, to being an active listener or choosing to speak or connect with someone in the office you wouldn’t ordinarily do or even asking them for a coffee or to join you at lunch. #LeadWithLove.
Share Your Journey: Use the #LeadWithLove hashtag to inspire others by sharing your acts of kindness and moments of connection.