Ep88 What If Employers were Legally Responsible For Your Wellbeing?

A million more people are now economically inactive for health reasons than just a few years ago, and once an employee has been on sick leave for a year or more, the chance of returning drops to around 3%. That is not a wellness statistic. It is a warning light for businesses, communities and the economy and it is the spark for this conversation with Poppie Foakes, Director of Product and Innovation at the Retail Trust, and our Chief Psychology Officer, Dr Amanda Potter.

We unpack how prevention beats crisis by design. Poppie explains how the Retail Trust supports a dispersed, shift‑based workforce with tools that actually fit real lives: de‑escalation and resilience training for frontline abuse, virtual GPs that work around rotas, online CBT, and financial coaching that targets the number one anxiety driver in retail. We dig into the evidence, linking preventive investment to lower absenteeism, reduced presenteeism, and fewer leavers critical in a sector where replacing a colleague can cost around £5,000. We also explore why health inequalities persist between head office and store teams, and how simple changes in access and language can close that gap.

The conversation gets practical. We share the three culture levers that keep people, fair pay, a strong line manager relationship, and clear purpose and show how they map to psychological safety. Poppie takes us inside their data engine: happiness assessments that generate personal action plans, platform analytics that surface early risk, and emerging agentic AI that recommends targeted campaigns by role, region or demographic. We talk about the Keep Britain Working Review and a future where employers are incentivised or mandated to handle prevention, potentially shrinking a £15 billion annual burden on benefits and healthcare that could rise to £25 billion by 2030.

If you lead people, manage a store, or shape HR strategy, you will come away with actionable ideas: train line managers to signpost not shoulder, normalise de‑escalation skills for every frontline worker, make financial education part of culture, and put colleague sentiment on the agenda next to sales. And if you are personally feeling the strain, you will hear small, realistic habits to set boundaries, protect energy, and find one daily moment of joy that keeps you steady.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow and subscribe, share this episode with a colleague who needs it, and leave a quick review so more leaders can build healthier, happier, high‑performing teams.

Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/

To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betalent-by-zircon/

To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://www.betalent.com/research

For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: Hello@BeTalent.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stakes On Wellbeing
• 1:08 Poppy’s Mission And Retail Trust Origins
• 3:10 Prevention Over Crisis: The Business Case
• 6:20 Health Inequalities Between Store And Head Office
• 9:45 Training, Virtual GP, And Financial Support
• 12:48 Proving ROI And Mandating Employer Duty
• 16:01 De‑Escalation And Respecting Retail Campaign
• 19:10 The Everyday Abuse Few People See
• 22:00 Future Vision And Data‑Led Targeting
• 25:05 Happiness Assessment And Agentic AI
• 27:05 Personal Strategies For Work Life Balance
• 30:20 How To Engage And Where To Get Help
• 39:40 Closing Thanks And Reflections

Transcript

Kristian Lees Bell: 0:04

Welcome to the Chief Psychology Officer Podcast, the show where we dive deep into the psychology behind leadership, business, and success. I'm Kristian, and today we're joined by Poppie Foakes from the Retail Trust and our very own Chief Psychology Officer, Dr. Amanda Potter. And our topic today is happiness and well-being work. In this episode, you'll hear all about what we can do to help employees, particularly at the lower levels of the organization, focus on their health, happiness, and well-being, and how we can encourage organisations to make health, well-being, and happiness a strategic imperative. Welcome Amanda and Poppie.

Poppie Foakes: 0:41

Thank you, Kristian. Thank you. Nice to be here.

Kristian Lees Bell: 0:44

Yeah, it's great to have you on the podcast. I'm really looking forward to it. But before we jump in, make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you want to keep the conversation going, connect with us on LinkedIn. Just search for Kristian or Dr. Amanda Potter. Plus, check out the website for more resources. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating so that more people can discover our trove of insight. Let's kick off. Poppie, could you introduce yourself and your role, please?

Poppie Foakes: 1:11

Absolutely. So I'm the director of product and innovation at the Retail Trust. My role is looking after the non-clinical side of the people that we look after and our clients that we serve. I look at creating data and agentic AI to better help clients understand how their colleagues are feeling, but most importantly, how to better support them.

Kristian Lees Bell: 1:33

Amazing. I was struck by one stat in the prep for this episode, actually, almost a million people more economically inactive because of health reasons than about five or six years ago. And it just struck me that's not just a number, is it? Hundreds of thousands of people who've lost income, confidence, and their sense of identity. So when you see it like that, well-being and happiness at work stop looking like nice to have and start looking like essentials for keeping people in work in the first place. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Dr Amanda Potter: 2:05

Well, that makes what I'm about to say terrible then, because I had never heard of the retail trust before Poppie and I met. And there she is with her organization, which is a charitable organization, helping literally hundreds of thousands of people across multiple organisations at the lowest level look after those three things happiness, health, and well-being. And I'd never heard of it. But as soon as I had, I was immediately struck by the impact you're having and the difference you're making, which is why I asked you to be a guest. So thank you, Poppie.

Poppie Foakes: 2:36

Thanks for having me. Yeah, so I'd love, I guess it'd be great to share a bit about the trust and what we do. So we are the oldest industry charity in the UK. We've been around nearly 200 years. And what I love about it is our mission has stayed the same the whole time, which is alluded to, Amanda, is to create hope, health, and happiness across the sector. It was set up by our founder Thomas Helps, who was a leading businessman at the time. And he realized that if you look after the well-being of your people, you actually get more from them and it's really good for business. So he brought lots of the big industrial leaders together at the time and said he wanted to create this confederacy of good feeling, which is something that we still really lean into. And the trust has been part of a lot of big societal changes across the years, the decades. The first being actually they were part of the lobbying group for a weekend. They realized that if people had time to recover, time off, time to spend with their families, they come back to work happier and healthier and again more productive. Similarly, in the 50s, I believe, we were part of the lobbying group to have a national pension. Again, back in the day, people gave decades to usually one organisation or at least one industry, and the idea was to look after them when they finished retirement. We then, on top of that, now as part of the trust, have a set of estates where we look after those that have retired from retail. Again, we put a lot into kind of community and combating loneliness, which can be a big issue in well-being in old age. And we believe we're at the precipice of a new societal change, which is where it will come mandated for employers to look after the well-being of employees. Christian, you kind of alluded to it that there's a ton of people inactive at work who could be able to work, and some of the stats around it are, as you say, kind of flabbergasting. I believe people are inactive from work for um over a year and have been on um sickness benefits, only 3% are likely to return to work ever again. And we're seeing an epidemic in younger people under 35 out of work at the moment. So imagine that potential of lifetime earnings, but also a whole generation that might not end up being in the workforce as well. So we believe that it will be mandated for employers to actually look after the well-being, but in particular around prevention, because actually sometimes even when you've gone to the GP, it's too late. And so we want people to be aware of challenges to their well-being, to make healthier choices, and to prolong that period that people are in work before they ever have to go on sick leave, and that is a big part of at the trust where we now focus is really at that kind of prevention phase.

Kristian Lees Bell: 5:06

Yeah, that's that's massive.

Dr Amanda Potter: 5:07

And how big an organization is it? And what's the sort of impact that you have, Poppie?

Poppie Foakes: 5:12

So we um look after 200 retail clients, most of which are high street that you would have heard of, and the headcount that we look after of those 200 clients is just shy of 700,000 individuals. In the last 12 months, we have looked after around 20 to 25% of those individuals. Around 2% come to us for when they've really hit a crisis point and need in the moment support, and that is usually in the form of counselling or um financial aid. We gave out just shy of half a million pounds in financial aid last year. But what is great and where we're seeing a really big improvement is in those preventative side of things. People coming to us for training, for understanding signs of mental health issues, looking at how to sleep better, better nutrition, anything that you can think of is where we kind of support them in that preventative side of things.

Kristian Lees Bell: 6:03

And as a psychologist, I'd say prevention isn't fluffy at all. It's biological in the fact that stress can be constant, can't it? So cortisol, we know, narrows self-focus, brain goes into survival mode, and we stop problem solving and start firefighting. So once that sets in recovery, as you've mentioned, can take months, can't it? So I'm really curious to why. Well, first of all, it's great that employees are now looking at that prevention side before they reach crisis point. But why do you think employers still wait until that crisis point before stepping in?

Poppie Foakes: 6:37

I think because some of as much as you say it's not fluffy, it can feel fluffy to the powers that be, I guess. It's very hard to show the impact and quantify, I guess, financially, the impact of introducing those preventative measures and looking after the well-being of colleagues. I think what we've been trying to do at the trust is show that impact. So using the data that we have and using a it's a 30-year-old Deloitte study that shows the impact of different interventions on colleagues and business. We've worked out a business impact methodology that does show that actually if you invest more at that preventative side, this is the impact it has on an organization, and that is in terms of reduction in absenteeism, a reduction in presentedism, which has become rife over the sort of past sort of five to ten years, and especially post-COVID, where people are incredibly worried about job security and especially in lower paid roles. If you don't turn up for your shift, you don't get paid. I always say that I think well-being is a privilege for the middle class or for salaried employees because if I'm poorly tomorrow, I still get paid. Whereas if I'm on a shift, I don't. So it's much, you know, for job security and even for financial security, I will most likely turn up to work because I need to get paid. We did a research report recently, our Health of Retail report, and 40% of shop workers felt that they couldn't keep up with their monthly bills. So if they miss one shift, then that can have a huge impact. So sorry, back to your question, Kristian, around the impact on the business, is if you've got people turning up to work where they're not feeling that great, eventually that can wear down to the point where they have to be off sick. And as we've seen, if you're off sick for a longer period of time, it makes it harder to get back into work. For an organization and retail on average, it's about £5,000 every time someone leaves your organization to replace them. So again, the cost of that is huge. And I again believe that companies which invest in the well-being of their people have greater cultures and end up having less people leave, and then again, that has a huge impact on the bottom line. So as much as it is fluffy, we are trying to show that link between the business impact financially and why it is really important to look after your colleagues.

Dr Amanda Potter: 8:48

So evidence is absolutely key, isn't it? As soon as you can show that there is a proven link between what you're doing, prevention, and actually impact, and of course, these organizations, you mentioned their retail organisations predominantly, the numbers really make a difference for them, don't they? They have shareholders, they have a reason to make decisions, which is all about making sure the numbers are as good and as stable as possible. But you said something earlier, Poppie, which was about employers will be responsible for the well-being of employees in the future. What does that actually mean?

Poppie Foakes: 9:21

So what we believe, and um we've been sort of staying close. I don't know if you've come across it, but the Keep Britain Working Review, which is being led by Sir Charlie Mayfield, actually an ex-retailer, he used to be the MD of John Lewis. He and his team have been doing a huge bit of work to look at this problem of the amount of people out of work at the moment. And he's seen that one in five people are out of work, and actually, Sir Charlie recognised is they've come from somewhere, right? So it's 2.8 million people at the moment who could be in work, they're currently out of work. So the impact of that on the government in terms of kind of benefits, reliance on NHS services, all of that is around £15 billion. And I believe by 2030 they think that will increase to £25 billion. Put that into perspective: that £15 billion is the defence budget. So that amount, if they could tackle that, could be a huge change in the government's deficit. He believes that it's going to become mandated for employers to do it. We should incentivize employers to look after it. As we've talked about, it's that idea of preventative rather than it being something you deal with when it's actually an issue. And as we've especially talked about in retail, if you miss a shift, it can cause all kinds of problems the road, especially financially. And so what the Keep Britain Working Review is looking to do is to say actually, if employers are mandated to look after it, the prevention side, obviously, not once um they're out of work. Also, if we can look at plans of when someone's out of work, the employers are also part of they have occupational health to get people back to work quicker, it will have a huge impact on that £15 billion that it's currently costing the government in terms of sick pay, NHS services, etc.

Dr Amanda Potter: 11:05

I mean that's a really good reason why the trust is so important. But at a very practical sense, what is it the trust does? What's the gap that the trust fills?

Poppie Foakes: 11:15

We do quite a lot. And again, I've sort of talked about these health inequalities. Again, when you work in um corporate organisations and especially in retail, we see quite a big gap between sort of the head office and the store staff, both in terms of how they feel. We measure happiness and our store staff are not as happy as head office staff. Head office staff are given more flexibility because of their roles, but also often they're invested in in terms of private medical insurance, whereas store staff, what we try and do is kind of fill that space between private medical insurance and NHS services, especially when it comes to mental well-being. When you have any kind of mental health issue, it can be really hard to get in the moment support from the NHS. You often go on long waiting lists, and again, that problem then can exacerbate, it can mean someone is out of work for a much longer period of time, and as we've discussed, harder to get them back into work. So, what we try and do is fill that space. We have acted in the past as I guess a traditional EAP, and we still very much offer those crisis and in-the-moment support services, but where we've really broadened out in the past three to four or five years is those preventative side of things. So we have invested a ton in educational resources, a ton in training. So we train everything from line managers but also through to frontline staff. There is a huge crisis in terms of colleague abuse at the moment that distribution drivers, distribution centres, call centres, and store staff all face. So we do a ton of training through our Let's Respect Retail campaign where we teach them about resilience but also de-escalating situations, and then there's a whole pathway for anyone that has suffered any kind of abuse in store. We have everything from kind of virtual GPs. So again, when you're on shift work trying to get an NHS, GP appointment can be very tricky. You often have to be on the phone at 7:59 and 59 seconds to get that appointment. And if you're on shift, that's impossible. And even if you got the appointment and they say, Can you come at 1 p.m. and that's the middle of your shift? Absolute nightmare. So we try and push things such as the virtual GP, and then we lean very heavily into financial wellness as well. We know that financial well-being is the number one cause of anxiety for those working in store and in retail, and so therefore, we do financial planning, we give people loads of stuff around, free financial resources, access to a financial coach, and then again our crisis side is financial aid if they need that at the moment of um sort of in the moment support. But we try to work with people so that they can put away a little bit of money so that if life happens, your fridge breaks, all of that you have something to be able to spend it on, and then we have a whole heap of ways to cleverly save money. So working with a provider, you can get money off of your weekly food shop. Um we actually did some work, and people between now and Christmas could save £250, which is a huge amount of money, and you know, could help people with their Christmas shopping because that again can add anxiety. So we do lots and lots to try and get people to do things before it gets to that troublesome time, yeah.

Dr Amanda Potter: 14:20

Yeah, before they start putting it on a credit card, which then with interest rates and everything just gets worse and worse. Absolutely. So could you just remind us of some of the stats and the numbers you've kind of got around the number of people who are currently not working? Because those stats are just fascinating.

Poppie Foakes: 14:36

Absolutely. So this is the UK as a whole, and these stats, but um it's 2.8 billion people that are of working age that are out of work. That's one in five people eligible for work. And then the biggest one to me is actually if you've been off work for over a year, only three percent of those people are likely to get back to work. And actually, what the review found was the reason for that was actually it feels more secure being on benefits once you've been there. So you're worried about job security, you're worried if you go back, are you going to get sick again? And are you going to have to get back into the system? So it's this whole systemic change that needs to happen, both in terms of employers really focusing on the benefit of looking after your colleagues, but also from a governmental shift as well. But yeah, it's 2.8 million out of work, and that's 40% more than it was in 2019.

Dr Amanda Potter: 15:25

And the numbers in themselves are quite shocking, aren't they? I think the cost to the economy. So when you're going out to these retail organisations and talking about it, what's the angle you take?

Poppie Foakes: 15:36

So the angle that we um have started to do is again, if we all collectively work together as an organization, so one of the lovely things we have is we are really retail specific. So we know the industry incredibly well. We know how to look after disparate workforces who span a kind of quite a big pay range and a ton of different jobs. So if we work together as an industry, we can make a seismic change within the industry, which again I think is really huge. Three million people work in retail, that's a large portion of the working population. It's the largest employer outside of the public sector. And so we kind of again we see this as that confederacy of good feeling. If more people join us, we can have more of an impact and we can actually change this at a cultural level. And then we kind of go down to say actually why it's really important for a business. Again, that thing of you know, if you look after your colleagues, you have less people of sick. As I've talked about, there's a high presentedism level in retail given the nature of the shift work, so you would have higher productivity and less churn. And then actually, we just talk about it from an individual level that colleagues are people, and as an employer, it is the right thing to do to look after them. And it's right for the business, but it's also right on a human level. And actually, again, taking it back up to that 2.8 million outwork, it's good for society as well.

Angela Malik: 17:01

What kind of insight is of most value to you? Whether you'd like to gather qualitative or quantitative data to help you pinpoint where individuals or teams need help, our blended 360 means you don't have to choose. Take control of your own 360 questionnaire and become accredited to use our powerful tool and platform. Once accredited, you will be able to build, manage, and facilitate your own 360 projects and events. Our questionnaires offer customization to suit the needs of your organization. Visit the CPO.co.uk to learn more about the B Talent Suite or get in touch with me, Angela Malik, on LinkedIn. That's M-A-L-I-K.

Dr Amanda Potter: 17:40

What does the future look like? What are the projections given what you've been talking about is happening today and where we are today? If you weren't to intervene, what are they saying of the future looks like?

Poppie Foakes: 17:50

So I believe it's that um if we don't intervene and another 600,000 people a year will end up being out of work. Two to three thousand people sign on to sickness benefits every day. So that will just continue to grow and that will increase to 25 billion a year. Another impact on society.

Dr Amanda Potter: 18:11

Wow. So the cost of that will be 25 billion a year. Yeah. So there is really a burning platform here. We really do need to look after the well-being and health. Really not fluffy at all, is it? Let's be clear.

Poppie Foakes: 18:21

Definitely not fluffy. It's just being able to really prove that link, which is the trickiest thing. And especially in retail, they have such tight margins that they are working to that they want to see that kind of tangible result. And most, don't get me wrong, most retail leaders definitely buy into the fact that looking after colleagues is right. As you talked about, they have shareholders, and sometimes it is really tricky to kind of dot that I across that T to really show in a PL if I invest X, this is the impact on Y.

Dr Amanda Potter: 18:51

So prevention then, how do you prevent?

Poppie Foakes: 18:55

Um, I think the prevention is education and awareness before it's got any kind of crisis point. So, one of the big things that we look and talk about is how do we do big campaigns out to retail colleagues to make them aware of all of these services that they get access to and to get them to use it. So, again, we've slightly started to change how we talk to colleagues, and it sounds quite crude, but it is putting things back into financial terms. So I talked about how we looked at some of our services and they could save £250 before Christmas. Now, actually, that's a really tangible amount of money and an incredible amount of money for lower-paid colleagues. So we have started to just push things like that out. You could save X amount because again, if someone is slightly starting to worry about Christmas, which could roll into high levels of anxiety, which could mean that they end up being out of the business and needing some in-the-moment support. So it's all about kind of education, awareness, and engagement and really getting people to engage with their well-being. We've started to do things like well-being for blokes. So again, we look after a ton of distribution centres and um delivery drivers, and without being stereotypical, lots of them, I guess, would say they're a bloke. And so well-being again, um, you know, we interviewed a couple of them and they were like, Oh, well-being is about sound baths and eating hummus and yoga, and actually it's it's not about that at all. So we against so do I. Um but we have tried to sort of look at different personas, and we do it based on attitudes towards well-being, and it's how do we engage those different personas with well-being? Because I think again, well-being can feel like said it before, but like this middle class privilege that you know, people that are um having avocados and soundbars are then the only ones looking after their well-being. So it's really around trying to change our language, talking to people in in ways that kind of mean something to them and trying to then get them to do something different. It's about action. And as I said, actually, the GP is a little bit too late. It's great if someone reaches out to the GP before it's got to a crisis point, but if we could have done something a little further up the line, then that's also great as well.

Kristian Lees Bell: 21:02

Poppie, what makes the greatest impact for the organizations that you work with?

Poppie Foakes: 21:07

Um, so a few things. We kind of say if there was one silver bullet, the first thing we would always do is train line managers. So, in retail, in particular, there are a lot of junior line managers, often who have been promoted because they're really good at their job, not necessarily because they are people leaders. And what can end up sometimes happening is that they become accidental counsellors, they can take on the burden of their colleagues, and then that can create an issue for them. So we do a lot of training with line managers to improve awareness of potential signs of poor uh well-being, but also you know, we do some specific training around domestic abuse, suicidal ideation as well, so that line managers feel really equipped to support their colleagues. And when I say support their colleagues, we remove any kind of accidental counsellor that comes in there. They are able to have the right conversation and then signpost them to the right interventions and to the right places, which most of the time is hopefully to the retail trust, and then we um then look after them on behalf of their employer as well. So training line managers has one of the single biggest impacts in terms of your colleagues' well-being. We also know that if you have a good relationship with your line manager, you are more likely to stay at that organisation. So there is three things that lead to colleagues more likely to stay at an organization: feeling fairly paid, having a good relationship with their line manager, and like feeling that they have a purpose or understanding the organisation's sort of mission. And sometimes people are like, oh, but they just work in store, like, why do they need to know that? But actually, people work in store because often they love customers, they love engaging with people, they want to make sure that they're having a great time. So it's really important that they understand kind of where the organisation is going and kind of the reason that they're there, and those three things can lead to a really great culture.

Dr Amanda Potter: 22:57

It's really interesting that you talk about being fairly paid, the relationship with the line manager and purpose being three of the reasons why people stay, because it completely concurs amazingly with our research around psychological safety, because our three foundational elements of psychological safety are purpose, interpersonal connection, which really relates to the line manager relationship, and the last one is trust, which is of course really similar to the kind of fairness point. You've got to trust who you're working with, you've got to trust your employer and feel like you're being treated fairly.

Poppie Foakes: 23:26

So I was going to say part of that is that it's really important for organisations to communicate any kind of change really transparently, it stops any kind of anxiety. That sort of again leads into the line managers. Again, in store, that kind of chain of communication uh goes down. So people need to understand how to have those kind of conversations. Cost of living is having an impact on retail in a big way, and you often see redundancies. They always think 60,000 jobs at B and Q cut last week. If you work at BNQ, that can feel kind of really unsettling. So it's about explaining why to your colleagues and having that communication really being really transparent. And then I think there's um two other kind of really quick things, especially when it's around retail. I think it's really important to try and train every single person that works in store or in a distribution centre, a delivery driver, or a call centre, so any sort of frontline worker around de-escalation and resilience. I know they can't all go on day-long courses, but they can do bite-sized bits of training just to understand that 95% of retail colleagues last year here in frontline positions experience some kind of abuse. Now that isn't necessarily physical, but that could just be someone tutting or rolling their eyes or just swearing at someone. And if you receive that day in, day out, that really can grind on your mental well-being. So part of it is how do we support colleagues to deal with that situation? We're probably not going to tackle this abuse overnight, but it's about equipping them with those tools. And again, our campaign's called Let's Respect Retail around that, and we do some surveys each year. We found last year that 60% of colleagues would leave an organization because they don't feel looked after and supported around abuse. That reduces to only 16% if they have had some kind of training and they feel supported. So, again, if you support and look after your colleagues, they're more likely to stay with you as an organization. And then we've talked about the business impact that could have. So I think there's a big thing in retail around training those colleagues, and that is around two million people, so that is a large um number of people. And then I think the final thing that can have the biggest impact is around making awareness of support as kind of part of your culture, as much as like sales and numbers is. So if you know, Monday morning trading meeting in head offices around retail businesses, it's all about the numbers, and so it should be. But if we also talked about how our colleagues are feeling or how many people have left this week or this month, it should just start to become part of it so that we're starting to push out that support and that awareness. And in particular, for the lower paid workers, increasing that financial education and that kind of financial support. Obviously, you can't increase their wages, that's not beneficial to the business. But how do you help them learn how to budget better? How do you help them just get a little bit of discount, think a bit smarter around how they spend their money, you know, reducing subscriptions, all of that, because we know it is kind of one of the biggest impacts whole mental health in retail colleagues is worried about finance.

Dr Amanda Potter: 26:21

What is really interesting, everything you've just said, Poppie, is considering the neuroscience. Kristian alluded to it earlier that when we're in a constant state of battle or fight or flight, what we're doing is we're activating the physiological system. And what we're doing is we're readying ourselves for that fight or flee process. So it means that we're activating the emotion centre, the amygdala, and we're releasing cortisol, releasing adrenaline because we're on high alert. So if someone tuts at me, that's such a small thing, but it would have a massive impact on me. And I can imagine that happens regularly for somebody in a shop who's queuing, someone's queuing and they're not fast enough and they're on their lunch break, for example. That would really impact me. So I think that's really interesting, the point around the onslaught of behaviour and the impact of the people around them. So I wouldn't have ever thought tuting as bullying or as inappropriate language until you described it just then. And then when I thought about it, I was like, wow, that would actually really impact me. Just something so minor like that. I'm not being shoved or attacked or anything. It's just a small tut and it that would still upset me, I think.

Poppie Foakes: 27:32

So I saw an example of it in the supermarket the other day. I was at the checkout checking um my shopping out. The lady manager came, told the lady that was serving me, you can go on your break after this lady. So she put across her clothes sign. A gentleman came up and she was like, I'm sorry, sir, my um lane's closed. If you could find another lane, he was like, No, I'm I'm going to be here. And he wasn't overly aggressive, but also I was like, That lady is a human, she's entitled to a break, and also there's many more ones you might have to wait a couple of minutes longer, but it's sort of things like that. And I guess she sort of felt like it was her job. And actually, a couple of my team went out. We wanted to do some research around this, and I just sent them out to the high street, and I was like, go and ask people, and they were like, Oh, it's just part of the job. And um, I was just really shocked by that. Oh, it's part of the job, you know, people do Tartar Arsehle, yeah. And I was just like, That is appalling. And actually, the Sainsbury CEO did a big announcement, and he was like, It is not part of the job, it's not okay. And they have just launched, I think it's facial recognition AI technology on their somewhere in store, but also on their um the tech that colleagues wear to um record um issues on their badges. And I was like, firstly, it's great that the CEO of Sainsbury's have recognised it's not part of the job, but how horrendous that we live in a world now that store staff in Sainsbury's are having to wear body worn cameras that usually is saved for like police, right? Yeah, it's a huge epidemic. And I think people think about colleague abuse of someone coming in and stealing or getting really aggressive or holding people off at knife point. And don't get me wrong, that happens, but actually, on more on the daily, it's that tuting, it's that eye rolling, it's the oh god, and that just can pride you down.

Dr Amanda Potter: 29:15

It's really interesting, isn't it? So Poppie and I met,K Christian, through the gym. So we actually both members of the same gym. I won't say the brand of the gym, just but they're very proactive in gathering feedback. They ask for feedback after pretty much every class that we go to. But I was talking to one of the instructors and she was saying that people really complain. It's quite a complaining culture because it's a reasonable gym. It's really well, I love my gym. I love I think it's a great gym actually, but there's a high expectation from customers. So there is a propensity for people to complain. But it has a real impact on the instructors because a lot of the things they complain about are not the instructors' fault. It's just uh you know, the organisation, the way that things happen. And sometimes that the situation is outside of their control.

Kristian Lees Bell: 29:57

And they're more readily share. They're they're not so good things, right?

Dr Amanda Potter: 30:00

Yeah, we've become a bit of a moany culture, haven't we?

Kristian Lees Bell: 30:02

Patience as well is definitely not as maybe something that's increased collectively in the last five years, arguably.

Dr Amanda Potter: 30:09

So this is how Poppie and I got to meet. We were literally doing sprint runs up and down the room talking as we passed each other every time. What do you do? And then we go literally running past each other. And I realised that there was a real opportunity there to bring Poppie on, which is very cool. So what's the future for the retail trust then, Poppie? Where are you focusing your time and attention? And where is your CEO focusing their time and attention?

Poppie Foakes: 30:33

Really great question. So by 2032, which is when the uh organization is actually at 200 years old, we want to have shifted to be the first port of call for anyone in retail for their well-being needs. So rather than thinking I'm going to call my NHS GP, you know, I'm going to save up to have some physio, that they can come to the retail trust as their first port of call, and that we cover a whole suite of well-being and health interventions that, especially at that preventative side, that will help people look after themselves. We really want to have been a huge part of that, as I've said, through our Let's Respect Retail campaign, really trying to reduce that colleague abuse, both through a campaign and a training initiative to support colleagues, but actually through a consumer campaign as well. And watch this space over the next 12 months. I'm really hoping you guys will. We've got these little characters that are going to be much more of a consumer-focused brand. We took over the Piccadilly Lights in London last year. We've been really lucky to be granted a lot of advertising space in different retail stores and um in shopping centres and on high streets, and that we're going to hopefully launch on Black Friday. Coming up to peak, it's obviously peak time for people to be stressed and to kind of take it out on colleagues.

Dr Amanda Potter: 31:48

Christmas is coming.

Poppie Foakes: 31:50

Exactly. We want to make a huge impact in just making people aware that people working in store are human. I think you know it's actually even been one of my biggest learnings because we're all busy, and sometimes you can feel frustrated, and it's just about realizing that don't take it out on that poor person. You know, it's they're just there to do their jobs, and sometimes life is frustrating, but let's all say it with a smile is kind of the main thing. And then underpinning all of that, which is actually, I guess, where my role fits in, is really being able to use the data to more specifically and target it to look with retailers to look after their colleagues, so that we can really specifically start to say you've got a problem with young male line managers in the southeast, they're really at risk of burnout, and if you don't do something about it, you're probably going to see a churn of 50% of those line managers. Therefore, you might want to start to do a campaign to actively educate around the signs of burnout, but potentially you might want to think about some specific line manager training just for those young male line managers, for example. Similarly, we can start to use the data to say we've actually seen a significant increase in calls around suicidal ideation, which in our world are only very small. So if that went from kind of you know one call every three months to two in a month, that might be actually quite a big shift. And therefore, you know, again, the so what is you might now want to do some training to line managers to really recognize those signs so that they can start to signpost and have conversations with colleagues, and also we might also want to do a campaign to really make colleagues aware of all of this support that they have access to. So we're able to start to really interrogate that data now. We're really starting to build some really exciting agentic AI capabilities to be able to do that and to hold the hands of retailers. We're slowly moving out of just talking to the HR and people function into the comms teams as well, so that we can really start to nail some great comms that people actually engage with and uh start to listen to and take interest in.

Dr Amanda Potter: 33:48

So basically, you use the data from the people who are calling in, but also you have all this push technology, don't you, around the happiness surveys. So you're constantly asking people questions if they access your site. I remember you saying you have all these pop-up questions that people can answer. And so you're always getting data feeds in, which is amazing.

Poppie Foakes: 34:07

Yeah, so we get data from all sorts of places. So, as you said, the helpline, but that's actually not a huge part of our data feeding. There's obviously the website, which is where we have a lot of our education resources, so we can start to see what people are looking at, how long they're spending on different ones, how far down the page they're looking. We have all of our other sort of preventative services that talked about kind of the GP side of things, the financial well-being side of things. We have some kind of online CBT and that side, but we also um do a happiness assessment that you've mentioned there, Amanda, which is a tool for colleagues. They answer some questions, it tells them how happy they are at work, and then it gives them an action plan off the back of it. So things to actually do to improve their happiness at work, gives them conversation starters to have with their managers. People can sometimes find that a little bit awkward, and it links them back to other resources. So if it says, you know, you you might want to think about improving your work-life balance, it will then take them to a resource around top 10 tips of improving work-life balance, that kind of thing. All of that data then feeds into the platform, which is what the retail HR function can access, does all its clever bits and bobs in the background, and then the um agentic AI gives that retailer an action plan and says, This is what you should be doing. These are the kind of topics that you should be talking to your colleagues about, so that it doesn't become such a spray and pray model, excuse my turn of phrase, but well-being can be it can be like, oh, yeah, it's November, let's do something about um you know not feeling sad in the winter. Lots of people love getting cozy in the winter, but actually, if all of your colleagues are coming to us because they are recognising signs of burnout, why don't we do a whole campaign around the top 10 burnout signs and how to deal with it? It's really exciting that we can start to see workforces having specific campaigns. And as I said, over the future, what we really want to get that to is at a demographic level so we can start to look by region, by gender, age, seniority, etc.

Dr Amanda Potter: 36:06

Well, with the numbers you've got and the data you've got, it's just incredible.

Kristian Lees Bell: 36:10

Poppie, what advice would you give individuals for balancing work pressures with personal life demands?

Poppie Foakes: 36:16

So I think there's two things. The first is I think you've got to be strict with your time, and it's okay to switch off. So I like to diarise things, and between these times, this is what I'm doing. And then I do have two young children, so I am kind of hooked by the fact I have to go and pick them up. So I do have a hard stop, but I do try and make sure that I diarise things and I'm really strict, and at this time I switch off. I think it's also really important to find one thing a day that you can kind of get a little bit of joy from. So Amanda and I have talked about the fact that we go to the gym. I try and just sneak in a 30-minute gym session before I start work if I can, or even again at lunchtime just downing tools and going for a 20-minute walk around the block. I think actually we can get so into this connected world, you know, we're always on, we've always got phones that you can find it hard to switch off and it's totally okay. And I think the second part of that is that we are all working to live a life, and that actually it's okay to say that we have lives outside of work. You know, I've got two young kids, they can often be um sick from work. When I first came back to work after my first maternity leave, I would be like, Oh, my child's sick, oh gosh. And actually, now I just kind of own it and it's not ideal, but you kind of have to work it through. It's the same with if you want to take annual leave for stuff like it's okay to take leave, and if you met any of my team, I batter home taking leave. What I hate is at the end of a year, everyone's got 20 days of annual leave left. Firstly, as a business that's really hard to manage because everyone's out for two months and they can't deal with it, but also you need to take a break. So I celebrate when someone takes a bit of annual leave because I'm that actually to everything we've talked about today, you need to take a break and you need to go and do stuff that you enjoy, and you come back energized and better at your job. So I think it's really about realizing that we're all human and we all have lives and just taking a little bit of time every day just to do something for you.

Kristian Lees Bell: 38:12

And that's especially the case also for front of frontline retail workers, isn't it? All the way down to taking their breaks and uh making sure they have even little bits of time and space to recharge and to reset and be at their best.

Poppie Foakes: 38:25

Absolutely. And actually, I think that's the nice thing about retail working shift work is that you kind of do have to take your breaks. Whereas actually, sometimes I think with kind of more head office or work from home type jobs, you can feel like you can't not take that break. And actually, it's super important to sometimes just take 15 minutes and go listen to a podcast, scroll on Instagram if you want to do that, go for a walk, whatever that needs to be.

Kristian Lees Bell: 38:48

Poppie, I've found this podcast really fascinating in all the stats that you've shared and some of your insights into what we need to do both from a system perspective and also strategies and behavioural changes to help people in the moment to deal with some of those stresses. But I'd love to give uh listeners a chance to connect with you and then ask you sort of where they can go to find out more. So if they're in retail or a HR team or an L and D team, where can they go to get this support and your services potentially?

Poppie Foakes: 39:18

So you can visit the website which is retailtrust.org.uk, and I'm also really happy for people to reach out directly. We'll leave my email address in the show notes as well if people want to get in touch or Poppie Foakes on LinkedIn as well.

Dr Amanda Potter: 39:33

Amazing. It's Poppie with an IE as well, which really flumuxed me when I first met you.

Poppie Foakes: 39:37

I know. I blame my crazy mum who just felt the need to spell Poppie in a bizarre way.

Dr Amanda Potter: 39:43

Thanks, Mum. Yeah, right. Well, that's been brilliant, Poppie. Thank you so much for your time.

Poppie Foakes: 39:48

Thank you, guys. I've loved it. I love the podcast, and it's great to be able to come and chat to you about it. So thank you for the opportunity.

Kristian Lees Bell: 39:54

Likewise.

Dr Amanda Potter: 39:55

Thank you, Kristian, thank you, Poppie, and thank you everyone for listening. I hope you all have a wonderful and successful day.