The newly launched Kan app aims to bring a fresh and innovative approach to workplace mental health for the fenestration, home improvement and construction related sectors. Created by Kan Employee Wellbeing, the app systemises and embeds an organisation-wide drive towards healthy emotional habits – a ‘KAN Do Attitude’. The team behind the app intends to create a proactive, empowering and preventative mental health culture in workplaces. Find it on Google Play, here, and on Apple’s App Store, here.
The Kan app 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 employees are gently encouraged to learn and implement aspects of positive psychology that are 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’s 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 Kan app aims to enable 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 employees need to work. The app sets out to generate a commonality of language and attitude, to encourage everyone 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. “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, she argued, and to harness it, preventing a slide into mental distress, and demonstrating a higher degree of self efficacy and problem solving. Employees using the Kan app develop greater emotional intelligence, acknowledging both positive and negative emotions while also learning how to use them productively, said Kate. The aim is for employees using Kan to be empathetic with colleagues, responding to them in an upbeat, proactive manner; the app helps employees develop the skills to accept responsibility and actively learn 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,” Kate added. “While much of the construction sector has remained working, every individual has had their own experience of the pandemic, and many of of the distressing experiences will leak into the workplace.
“The Kan app gives organisations a structured and quantifiable tool to put into place systems that 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 Kan app, encourages a daily accountability that becomes a part of a daily routine.”
To find out how the Kan app can help your business, click here, or contact Kate direct by calling or messaging her on WhatsApp (07904 345 354). Alternatively, email her at kateashleynorman@gmail.com.
