Welcome to the first winter column for 2010

As winter makes its chilly presence felt, it’s a good reminder to take a ‘temperature’ reading inside the workplace as well.

Although we joke about it, it’s not without reason that the weather is a mainstay of conversations – it really does affect us. Every year at Seed, we see a significant increase in counselling referrals as soon as the winter months arrive.

And it’s more than just the depression of bleak, rainy days with few hours of daylight. It’s a physically demanding season as well - on the other side of Queen’s Birthday weekend we have the longest gap between public holidays.

At this time of year it’s easy for problems to seem bigger and harder to resolve – a lot of our activity at Seed is simply working with people to help make things seem manageable again.

This year is no exception, we’re seeing the usual increase in counseling requests and we’re unfortunately also seeing an increase in critical incident call-outs.

So keep an eye on your teams and don’t wait for things to go wrong before giving us a call. Some may benefit from a couple of sessions with a trained counselor, and for others just knowing we’re here can be enough.

Whatever the case, our role is to help you maintain a healthy, productive environment whatever season you’re in. If you’d like support for your workplace in any regard, we’d love to talk with you – you can contact us here.

In the meantime, here’s our top five tips for keeping spirits up despite the winter blues.

David Rodgers

Acting Chief Executive

Seed