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Communicate your wellbeing plan to your team

Productions often involve long hours away from home and intense situations, so all team members should know how to access planned support for their mental health and wellbeing.

You can do this by sending a wellbeing pack to a new team member when they join a production.

The pack will outline key elements of your wellbeing plan and details of available support – and its contents should be referenced through wider communication processes.

This guide covers three actions, including the following key tasks:

 

For a complete approach to supporting mental health and wellbeing while preparing for a production shoot also see our three other pre-production guides.

Actions to take

1. Put a wellbeing pack together

As you build your mental health and wellbeing plan, communicate key elements to your team through a wellbeing pack.

The pack should outline all mental health and wellbeing support in place for team members, and how to access it, alongside any policies.

You can put all details into one document that acts like a memo, providing links where needed – or, you could send an email that specifies your wellbeing support, including relevant attachments.

You could send this information with an onboarding email – but, emailing the pack separately when team members join could help highlight the importance of mental health and wellbeing.

The pack can include:


With the following Word template, you can: 

  • Share your support contacts and resources all at once
  • Signpost your production company’s support policies and provisions, as well as external support
  • Offer wellbeing tips to support healthy behaviours

Production Wellbeing Pack template

 

 

2. Ask your team about individual needs

Asking a few key questions when a person joins a production is a simple way to get to know your team’s individual needs and build strong working relationships.

Completing a Working Well With Me questionnaire is voluntary, but there are key factors to consider when sharing and reviewing the completed document, such as responding to the information received and ensuring confidentiality.


In the following guide, you can: 

  • Learn how our Working Well With Me questionnaire can start conversations about how you all can thrive on set
  • Understand considerations for specific needs and protected characteristics
  • Download an editable Working Well With Me template
  • Download a Working Well With Me example

How to work well with your crew

 

 

3. Agree a wellbeing communication plan for your whole production

Mental health and wellbeing support should be championed and communicated repeatedly during production – not just when wellbeing packs are first sent out.

Communicating regularly sets the tone, normalises conversations about mental health and acknowledges that busy productions can take their toll.

The pre-production stage is the ideal time to decide when and how to communicate, and who is responsible for sending out messages.

Your process could include:

  • Sending weekly or fortnightly wellbeing messages – by email, text or WhatsApp – to remind team members who to talk with when needed, offer tips on building healthy habits and share key support details, such as those for an employee assistance programme or mental health first aiders.
  • Adding key messages, such as those promoting rest and self-care, to documents, and including helpline support in email footers, scripts and call sheets – as shown in our Call Sheet template.
  • Arranging for senior leaders to talk in person to the team about mental health and wellbeing at the beginning of production, and also before key filming days.


In the following guide, you can: 

  • Identify the key skills needed for you and your teams to talk openly about mental health.

How to talk to your teams about mental health

 

 

Case study: Sara Huxley, Mini Productions

In this video, line producer Sara talks about the benefits of using the Toolkit on her production and how wellbeing communications can empower crew to support one another. 

Sara’s experience highlights that, when people in leadership roles consider individual needs and talk about the behaviour they want to see on set, advantages can include:

  • Successful job sharing arrangements and learning opportunities.
  • Increased accountability.
  • Greater confidence in calling out bad behaviour.
Play video

Feedback

As we regularly review Toolkit content, if you have any suggestions to improve this guide, or any part of the site, we would love to hear from you.

 

Our resources:

Links to other resources:

Pre-production guides

These four guides support mental health and wellbeing across your pre-production processes.
1. Agree a wellbeing plan
2. Communicate your wellbeing plan to your team
3. Be clear on bullying, harassment and discrimination
4. Build inclusive recruitment and flexible working practices

Disclaimer: The information in the Toolkit is for educational/advisory purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice. ​Specific professional advice should be sought if production companies need assistance in the interpretation of or deployment of the content set out in the Toolkit.