Wellbeing at OE

UX Research

As we all know working remotely can be challenging, we no longer have those water cooler conversations or lunch breaks with our colleagues.

Wellbeing at OE (Objective Experience)

With that in mind at Objective Experience, we now have a “wellness weekly catch up” framed around being compassionate through connecting and supporting each other during a time of remote work and isolation.

We’ve had two sessions so far, one with a group meditation, and the other a collaborative drawing game called Gartic Phone. The focus of the meditation session was on compassion, gratitude and many of the team had never experienced it before. For our drawing session, the team surprised us with their tenacity and creativity. Some of the highlights and craziest drawings are included throughout this post so enjoy!

We started with “UX consultant editing report for the third time”. Started from “an ancient tree playing chess” and ended with “red rodeo”.

 

5 top takeaways from drawing together:

  1. Building blocks take time to concrete

  2. Humans are resilient and learn to cope with ‘broken’ things

  3. We improve quickly practice

  4. We perceive stories differently and those interpretations can change at the drop of a hat

  5. Clear communication at the beginning only makes life easier

“Centaur cleaning a red carpet” to “woman surfing happily”

So far two sessions down, and many more to go. It’s been great to see how the team has swapped up the sessions with enthusiasm and had great feedback so far.

Inspired by those sessions, we’ve created a wellness week which happens to be in the same week as mental health awareness day ‘R U OK day’ in September. We’re looking forward to sharing these experiences with you over the next few months and even beyond!

The idea of the weekly wellness sessions was set up and is being championed by CEO James Breeze and consultant Ligia Pessotto. Ligia describes the sessions as follows:

““Every week a different team member will be facilitating the session. The idea is to be fun and to create a safe place for everyone to share personal experiences.””

— Ligia

For Ligia it isn’t a shift in OE’s culture, but rather an addition to a workplace which values mental and physical health and says it’s an “already great” place to work.

““It’s important for team members to be compassionate; supporting and connecting with each other, especially now during lockdown.””

— Ligia