Winter and wellbeing

Managing our wellbeing over the winter months can be challenging at the best of times. This year, as we face the added pressure of rising living costs and increased workloads, wellbeing provision couldn’t be more important.  

What we’re doing to help 

In the Wellbeing team, we’re working hard to develop a programme that supports all aspects of staff wellbeing. Following the launch of Wellbeing: Thriving at Oxford in September, we’ve visited over 20 different teams across the University to deliver workshops, launched the Wellbeing Survey, created a Wellbeing Champions Network to share best practice and a Wellbeing Teams webpage to create a community around wellbeing, shared the first steps of the strategy, launched Being for Beginners (the first in a series of workshops open to all staff) and worked cross-collaboratively across the University to ensure we are developing the programme in line with staff needs. It’s been a busy couple of months! 

We’re pleased to share that from January 2023 we will also be delivering: 

  • Financial Wellbeing workshops for those needing practical support with the cost of living crisis; 
  • Being for Beginners: a two-day, in-person course, starting in March; 
  • Line manager training focused on providing skills to support team wellbeing;  
  • Training for our expanding network of Staff Wellbeing Champions; and 
  • Planning the programme, content and sessions for the inaugural Wellbeing Festival in May 2023. 

To stay up to date on the latest news and events, or if you wish to register for a course, please bookmark our Wellbeing news and events page

Thinking about your wellbeing over winter 

The importance of rest is often overlooked in high-performing organisations, and can be the hardest thing to prioritise, but it is absolutely critical to wellbeing.  We’d like to recommend the following resources which can each contribute to improving your own wellbeing: 

If you are reading this as a manager and are looking for tools to support your team’s wellbeing, there are a number of resources available to you on the Resources for Managers webpage

We hope you are able to engage in some of these resources over the coming weeks and find time for some rest and relaxation over the winter period.  


Meet the Wellbeing team

Joanne Mason, Head of Wellbeing
Lara Hayward, Wellbeing Programme Manager 
Frances Parkes, Thriving at Oxford Skills Development Manager