Numerous studies on mental health and stress at the workplace have shown that this is a problem that affects millions of people in the EU, and since the pandemic levels of stress and burnout have reached record levels. This has led to an increasing focus by employers on the concept of workplace wellbeing, which involves looking after not only the physical but also the mental health of employees, because happy and engaged employees are in the first place, happy people. With our project, we have created a number of training resources based on a survey of 160 HR managers in 5 European countries to encourage the implementation of workplace wellbeing programmes. The ultimate goal is to build a supportive and caring culture to have more relaxed, motivated and resilient employees.

The project is targeting human resource professionals and trainers whose focus is on the psycho-social health of people. We also аpproached managers and business owners who need capacity building in this direction. Our wide network of professional contacts, both among the HR community and company managers, has allowed us to reach out to them through a variety of methods: emails, free webinars, presentations to the target group and to provoke considerable interest among them.

The project is alined with CATRO's overall policy for the well-being of people in organizations and complements our training, psychological and consultancy services. The project ran from 01.2022 to 12.2023, the first year focusing on researching the specific needs of HR professionals, trainers and managers and creating a best practice handbook, and the second year we created and piloted a training and mentoring program which is accessible via an online platform THRIVE@WORK.

1. Conducting a survey among 160 HR managers and company owners from Bulgaria, Belgium, Greece, Italy and Cyprus to identify the factors that influence the perception of well-being and the needs of professionals who take care about it (May 2022). The survey showed that more than 95% are already implementing wellbeing at work programs and more than 85% are planning activities in this area in the next 2 years. 2. Creation of a workplace well-being practice guide again to assist HR professionals in planning and implementing well-being programs. It covers good practice from across Europe and specific advice/guidance in several areas. 3. Create a training and mentoring program consisting of 6 modules derived from the survey and the handbook. It was piloted in 2023 in the 5 countries with a total of 100 HR managers and trainers (20 of them in Bulgaria) to build their capacity and improve their skills to support employees in areas such as: stress management and burnout prevention at work, achieving work/life balance, leadership and mentoring skills promoting wellbeing at work.

The project activities provoked a lot of interest among the HR community and the managers. With all the events that we organized - online webinars to promote the individual points of the project and training workshops we reached over 100 representatives of different companies in Bulgaria. The feedback about the benefits of the project and in particular the manual and training program was extremely positive and nearly 10 companies continued with active actions towards building/upgrading their wellbeing programs. With the development of an online platform that holds all the training resources, we believe that even more HR and managers will benefit from the shared expertise, know-how and valuable practical guidance to improve the wellbeing of their employees.