The newly launched KANapp from KAN Employee Wellbeing brings a fresh and innovative approach to workplace mental health for the fenestration, home improvement sand construction related sectors. KAN systemises and embeds an organisation-wide drive towards healthy emotional habits and a ‘KAN Do Attitude’, with the aim of creating a proactive, empowering and preventative mental health culture in the workplace.

The KANapp combines pocket-based nuggets of training, check-ins and initiatives, taking an educative and engaging approach which compounds over time. By working towards a ‘KAN Do Attitude’, the individual employee is gently encouraged to learn and implement aspects of positive psychology applicable both professionally and personally.

“The stigma around mental health in the workplace tends to mean companies take a reactive rather than proactive, preventative approach,” said KAN founder Kate Ashley-Norman. “Through embedding an organisation-wide programme of culture change based on a dynamic internal communications framework, companies can build towards a potential return on investment of up to £9 for every £1 invested.

“Mental distress is not an overnight phenomenon, but the result of a compounding of various issues and factors. Our aim is to reverse that compounding effect away from building on the negative over time, to building on the positive.”

The KANapp enables a company to bring good emotional habits onto the factory floor, onto construction and installation sites, out on the road, into the office, and into the home office – in fact, anywhere that your employees need to work.

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It creates a commonality of language and attitude to encourage every one to approach their working day with an empowered, problem solving mindset.

“It’s been a hard year on everybody, and even the best of us feel as though we are running on empty, which is why it is important to replenish those levels of emotional strength and resilience,” continued Kate Ashley-Norman. “It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day slog, and forget to take care of your own thinking”.

An employee with a ‘KAN Do Attitude’ is better placed to build emotional strength and resilience, and harness it to both prevent a slide into mental distress, and demonstrate a higher degree of self efficacy and problem-solving. The employee develops greater emotional intelligence, acknowledges both positive and negative emotions, and learns how to use them productively. The employee is empathetic with colleagues, responding to them in an upbeat, proactive manner; accepts responsibility and actively learns from past mistakes.

There can be no denying that post-Covid, significant amount of emphasis will be placed on mental health, and the effect that mental health has had on the population as a whole. While much of the construction sector has remained working, every individual has had their own experience of the pandemic, and many of the distressing experiences will be leaking into the workplace.

The KANapp gives organisations a structured and quantifiable tool to put into place systems which will proactively help to support employees who may be struggling at home, inadvertently bringing those struggles into the workplace, and vice versa. The consistent, compounding and congruent approach, delivered through the KANapp, encourages a daily accountability that becomes a part of a daily routine.