Workplace Wellbeing Challenge

Hannah entered the field of wellbeing by default after having her own personal experience of hitting ‘rock bottom’. She had spent 9 years being owner/operator of a couple of NZ’s top hospitality businesses, during which time she worked extremely hard and at times played pretty hard too. Hannah burnt out as did her relationship with her partner, who was also her business partner. It didn’t end well, she lost everything – businesses, income, house, relationship and experienced anxiety and depression for a period of time as a single Mum with two very young children. For Hannah, she only had one choice and that was to change the way she thought. Learning how the body worked in relation to the mind and how to activate primal resources we all have inside ourselves was what lead Hannah to start the first holistic workplace wellbeing company in New Zealand so she could inspire, motivate and share tools to support others. Along the way Hannah trained with leaders in their fields when it came to studying mind/body exercise, the importance of the breath, our hormones (the feel good and stress ones) and that the simple and powerful choices we can make. She has trained with Wim Hof, founder of the Wim Hof Method, Dr Kataria, founder of Laughter Yoga and Nic Marks, founder of the Five Ways to Wellbeing. After reconnecting with Hannah in 2017, there was a real synergy in the direction Jo was going with a high focus on personal coaching which frequently turned into wellbeing type conversations. She introduced Hannah to HBDI and she was hooked! Together they developed a Whole Brain Wellbeing plan and workshops to match. It was very clear that taking a whole brain approach to developing workshops and wellbeing itself, would ensure that everyone is accounted for. One size doesn’t fit all for learning or wellbeing. By understanding thinking preferences and taking a whole brain approach: varying initiatives and content would appeal to everyone, no matter who they are strategies and programmes would engage more people people would learn how to communicate better, how to understand their colleagues and how to feel more empathy and respect for each other Their varying skills led them to go into business together and very quickly they developed The Wellbeing Challenge web app based on the Five Ways to Wellbeing which has had great results. A wellbeing platform, Your Wellbeing Matters is to be launched in 2020. Her business partner, Jo Fife, entered the business a number of years later when the two of them re-connected after many years and started having a conversation about a neurometric measuring tool Jo had been using for many years, which is based on how people prefer to think (not their skills and capabilities). The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) is a holistic tool based on neuroscience.