 Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. So we're doing a special series of podcasts which I'm recording over Google Hangouts. So we're doing audio and video because for some unknown reason people don't want to come see me face to face right now. But there's always opportunity and the cool thing is I'm able to now podcast with people from all over the world. So we're going to get an amazing eclectic mix of people from different industries, different perspectives to share their story and tell us you know their thoughts and feelings on what's going on right now and all of that cool stuff. Hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy. Awesome and we're live. Thanks Nick from Nick Taylor, CEO and founder of Unmind for joining me today. How are you doing? I'm very well thank you and thanks for having me. Pleasure, pleasure. Your view behind you looks beautiful. Yeah so we took the decision I've got a family three small children who are six, battery six, three and one and we took the decision just at the end of last year to move so we moved down of London in Halston, north-west London to Hampshire and we moved on Christmas Eve and I'm now really glad because we have a small place in London and I think the kids would be really jumping around the walls by this point. So it's a beautiful place which is nice to be. It's nice. My oldest daughter was six yesterday. And then my other one's three and a half so similar to you we just haven't we haven't jumped in for the third yet. But yeah it's been interesting. How have you found it? Are you home schooling and stuff? Yeah so we are. Yeah my wife's a primary school teacher so that kind of helps with that but only really the eldest is actually in school so my middle son's a nursery so we're teaching him kind of numbers and some basic letters. It's funny because I'm dyslexic so a lot of what children learn about how to read at that age I find immensely difficult so it really takes me right back to like my struggling school days. Yeah I was awful. I think I was awful at school but my kid is going to school at the moment because my wife is in the NHS so it's been useful because she definitely does not listen to me when I try and teach her to read and do maths and stuff like that. She's got zero interest. Because I've heard that's not been taken up as much as they thought it might be. You mean how many kids in the school? I think there's about 10 to 12 out of a couple of hundreds or so that are in the school but the thing is so if one well if both parents are key workers then you have no choice. If one is a key worker and the one that isn't has to work then you kind of you have to send your kid to school because you know for me if I had both a six-year-old and a three-year-old at home I can do zero work so you know it's pretty vital. If maybe the partner who's not a key worker isn't working then yeah maybe you know depending on on your view on it you'd keep them at home. Yeah you know we found it the first couple of weeks really tough. That was the period when it was hardest for us as a family because there was all the adjusting and trying to work out new rhythms and and I realized because previously my role I would kind of leave the house at seven in the morning and I'd be back at seven at night and I'd be away on trips maybe once a month and in sometimes a bit more and the idea of somehow trying to translate that into my house initially I found really hard because I tried to kind of apply that model into an environment where there were three young children and of course it didn't work so I realized then I had to adjust and I stopped working much earlier and then take breaks by schooling and my wife and I have kind of been working hard to find a rhythm in how kind of we can operate as a couple because I think relationships at the moment are under tremendous pressure because we'll have to work in new wonderful ways. Yeah that's true that's true they say that they say divorce rate and pregnancy rate will both be sky high by the end of this. Right I mean I'm absolutely sure but actually it is scary to think about some of those statistics because you know I think domestic abuse has been much higher and that's a big problem. Homicides tend to at risk of going up suicides and I think we'll see a kind of a tailwind through it as well as we move into the impact of on our mental health of this period. Yeah well I think I think the stats from the US were that suicides had gone up 400% and cause to helplines like 1500% or something like that. Yeah that's alarming. Yeah I think those might have come from Donald Trump so don't quote me on them. But yeah because the other thing is you know obviously we're entering a recession now I mean there's the mental health aspect of staying at home which we're keen to talk about but also as we go into a recession you know pretty bad things happen and you know it's a very it's a very precarious scenario we're at the moment. Yeah absolutely I think that's right and it's this kind of all the adjustment that we've made to get to where we are today but of course this place we're in today is not now the new normal it will be replaced in the very near future with a new new normal and people are going to have to change all again and find ourselves in a totally new environment and that's exhausting right I mean we find change hard enough at the best of times and we're going through really profound social changes every couple of months at the moment. Yeah yeah it's crazy it took me a bit of time to get into it because I love I get a lot of energy from meeting people you know like a cup of coffee a cuddle you know that kind of stuff and then suddenly and I never work at home ever I don't have an office at home that I'd set up or anything like that my kids are used to me working and coming home and then being with them and my work at home might be answering emails and stuff like that so for everyone in my house it's been very it's just taking time to adjust it's interesting I love I love scheduling things I'm quite structured and so we've kind of had to have done that at home now so even with exercise you know me and my wife usually die rise on a Sunday what we're going to do the following week because you have to go to the gym or go and for a run or whatever now it's great we're doing exercise like every day online zoom and online zoom because that for me is amazing for my mental health I need to do those things yeah I look like I totally agree and funnily enough actually we've done the same so I'm running more than I've run for years we've got driver account and it's really great doing it and then my wife's going for an hour bike ride every day she's loving that you know so it's like it's really positive and I agree and with the physical health on the mental health thing because that because that's widely recognized by the science that actually our exercise is so integral to our mental wellbeing yeah yeah what about what about your diet why you've been at home if you found that you've been you've been eating more healthy because you must get some amazing fresh produce in Hampshire yeah do you know I'm I don't know if we get I mean perhaps we do but we buy from the supermarkets right the only thing the supermarket sells that's local produce is beer so I'm not sure that's your favorite but the but you know I definitely find I'm eating less snacky food on them on the mood because they there just isn't the same selection so you're not walking if you're in London any city you're walking past great cafes and you see a coffee and a nice cake and oh God there's not much in the village you know no no it's interesting for my my team we love coffee we probably drink a bit too much so I got everyone a nice bag subscription to a nice bag of coffee so we get a bag once a month which is quite nice so we kind of feel you know a bit close what have you done with your with your team now how are you keeping everyone yeah so it's been a big change for us as a company so we're coming up to 50 people um now so we've actually been hiring quite hard during during this period as well um which is brings its own challenges but previously we all had a kind of uh we had a policy one day a week you could work from home um and we invested a lot in an amazing office space um with great breakdown spaces lovely kitchens sleep pods etc gyms and the reason for that is that we see the inherent value of everyone being together to work on things in person and and that human connection except from the team bonding team um so for us this is a very big transformation having to then go fully remote having said that we are a very very digital company um so we all have the latest technology with zoom accounts and slack and all the notion all of those it's a software um so we were well positioned to do it from a tech setup of not from a cultural perspective having said that the move has been good um it's you know I think people everyone what we've realized today everyone has a different set of pain points um in this situation could be um elderly parents they're caring for it could be children it could be some secondary health complications it could be the size of that that where the living accommodation is etc and making sure that we're adapting to kind of be sympathetic and compassionate supportive of everyone's unique circumstances um we put in place a couple of um things that we thought would be helpful so a kind of internal wiki page all about home working uh we schedule um regular all hands to get together on zoom um kind of start of the week at the end of the week um and and also every day we start with a little one different present each day records a short one minute video that they then upload at the start of the day some of which have been absolutely hilarious and like really well put together others which really kind of genuine authentic kind of short videos saying hi with the idea being like rather than sit down and compute the first thing and see a slack message you're sitting down seeing your colleagues face talking to you as a person so little things that that's really nice how have you i've spoken to a lot of people leading businesses and what they've the challenge has been really understanding how people have been feeling because you know you kind of hop on a video call and you put your best face on and a sticker a jumper or a t-shirt or whatever you know when meeting someone face to face you can you can read their non-verbal communication you can see if someone's feeling but but over the video it's a bit more difficult how have you gone about just making sure people are okay you know if they're living on their own or whatever different scenario they might be in yeah that's right and i think there's a few things to do and one is that making sure that in zoom calls you're making time uh to speak with people about how they are as well as what the purpose of the call is i think that's been really really important and then collectively people who are kind of managing teams making sure that we are supporting one another to support our teams and then also we we keep a kind of pulse check on the on people's well-being both through kind of software that tracks engagement but also through the unmind assessment tools where you can see an aggregated anonymized scores of how the company is doing um and we have a very very transparent business culture and um very supportive business culture and obviously as you would hope and expect like given that we're a mental health company um we have a very open conversation around our mental health um and i think that enables people to speak more freely about how they're feeling um and how they're doing awesome do you want to just run through what unmind is yeah unmind of the workplace mental health platform so what we do you can kind of think about in two buckets the first is that we um empower employees in organizations to look after their mental health proactively and we do that by giving them access to our digital platform which is essentially a suite of tools and assessments um that they can use to look after their mental health and when we talk about proactively what we're really thinking about is like mental health is something we have from the moment we're born to the moment we die um literally it's really a single moment of our entire life like our dental health like our physical health and and as you know no doubt this morning you woke up and brushed your teeth we've already spoken about the benefits of exercise you know so we know that prevention and health care is very important but with mental health for a long time it's kind of been in the dark really and we haven't focused on prevention we've only talked about it when problems occur but the reality is we should be looking after mental health proactively and kind of really taking care of it on a daily basis so the second part of the area of what we do is that we aggregate and anonymize the well-being scores of the employees so that organizations can understand how their people are doing um on a global level and that allows them to then strategically invest to make sure that people are getting the right care at the right time and what I would just really emphasize is the anonymity of that so an organization will never be able to see what Joe Bloggs's mental health scores are they'll never see that but they'll understand that okay their team is showing heightened levels of anxiety at this point um so that's what we do interesting have you is there any difference between men and women engaging in in mental health conversations yeah that's really interesting typically what you see is women will engage in it more so I prior to unmind I was a clinical psychologist uh leading a team in the national health service um so I'm very used to come and analyzing waiting lists and engagement data and things and typically you will see more women engage in mental health services and talk about mental health um and there's variations according to parts of the world you're in um but but actually I think one of the things about digital mental health is that because it's anonymous people can engage in it without any stigma and without any fear of others um thinking of it why they're engaging in their mental health piece of software um so I think that mitigates that and the other thing is because we're talking about mental health something we all have all of the time it's not just about stress anxiety depression and suicide it's about you know how are you focusing in the morning how are you communicating with your loved ones um you know how are you getting to sleep at night etc and that makes it more engaging that's really cool so it's it's kind of like so they ask they ask me questions how you feeling what are you up to and then it will it will then feed that data back to the line manager or whatever no not quite like that so what happens is um when you first come onto the online platform the first thing is you can choose what you wish to do so it's not a prescribed journey um but one of the things we encourage users to do is to complete what's called the unmind index and that's an assessment that we developed in-house it gives you scores across your mental health barriers such as coping calmness happiness sleep etc and and based on your unique scores the platform will then make recommendations for what you might find most helpful and those recommendations might be completed learning and development program the we call series on let's say get to sleep better or managing anxiety or um understanding mental health um or it could be tools which are ad hoc exercises that take anything from about one minute to about 30 minutes to complete and range from things like stretches yoga mindfulness audio it's really varied and then also sign best of all the services as well so it's about integrating care brilliant and then the mindfulness the yoga is that integrated into your platform yeah absolutely so we work with the world's current leading authors academics clinicians people with lived experience to bring to life their often lifetime of work and multiple books or academic papers into bite-sized chunks so that people can use their insights and wisdom to help with their own mental health but never taking one just a couple of minutes a day brilliant mindfulness seems to really uh increase in popularity recently yeah absolutely it's been a huge trend hasn't it and and i think that there's enormous value in in practicing mindfulness um but it's worth remembering that in many ways practicing that being mindful is practicing being in the present moment and human beings are very very good at thinking about the future and thinking about the past and often with a negative tinge of worrying about things happening or feeling anxious about things in the future um and actually being present in the moment to be helpful but mindfulness is not for everyone and and that's why it's so important especially in a workplace digital mental health platform to be varied in your offering because if you're a hundred thousand person workforce some people will love mindfulness someone really not like it at all um so you need to make sure there's something for everyone which is what we try and do that's true talking about in the moment it feels like most people are probably thinking about the the moment that they're in now right locked in working from home have you have you seen there have you seen any interesting trends on on anxiety and depression or anything from the data over the past like few weeks yeah we have I mean we've so we've seen some quite interesting things um around that and particularly a couple of things interesting some some you might expect about hiding anxiety school or stress um sense of connection um is that is also elevated which is quite interesting and I think that people have commented around that kind of sense of community that's being formed through this um interesting why I'm almost speaking more to my team now than I would do I would have done normally like you need someone comes in the office you have a little chat now it's like right we've got the tpm call we've got you've got to record a video for your team it's quite it's it's very interesting yeah I totally agree and we're looking out for one another you know that that question you asked like how are you checking in I think I think for everyone I've spoken with it's become much more normal at the moment to ask people like how are you um and in the uniform way because we are so great especially in this country like it automates it like how are you I'm fine how are you I'm fine and then into business no one's engaged in that conversation normally but now I think we are we're doing a bit better with it yeah definitely because I would have said I mean no one's mentioned this for a long time but brexit um end of last year just before the election it felt like the country was you know more divided than ever right like 50% leave it don't remain and also living in London where I live again you can almost never speak to your neighbour you can get up you go to work you come back and and it can be quite a lonely place London you know if you're not if you're not plugged into into a network the wonderful thing and maybe the silver lining amongst this is it feels like the country's really pulled together and and even in my you know in my street I mean everyone's really genuinely you know how you're feeling can I get you some shopping we have a postcode whatsapp group you know if anyone needs any help and so it really feels like it really feels good you know people feel like they're in it together and it's a it's a weird weirdly nice feeling yeah I look I totally agree and um I know there's been a lot of people and I'm really I'm not commenting on this but there's been a lot of people I say this is the worst crisis since the war I think Boris Johnson commented on it yesterday and I our generation we've grown up and got quite used to hearing about like the wartime spirit um and and that idea of that center community which of course was very alien to us to your to your point like the last two houses I've moved down to in London um I've been struck by how few people I'll say goodbye to um you know and which I've always thought is very odd but but I think one of the silver linings of this um if there are those such a thing is that people are very connected and I really hope we hold on to that I don't know if you saw but the mayor of New York gave an interesting talk um a couple of days ago where he was saying like it's not about just reopening New York it's about kind of reimagining what do we want to what world do we want to go into now and I think that's a really great point you know we shouldn't just be looking at us it when are we getting back to normal it should be like what do we want the new normal to feel and look like and I hope that we retain that community spirit in that yeah no definitely the one thing just going back to the war your your war example the thing obviously I don't remember the war but the thing that always pops in my mind from the UK is that is the videos of the women working making ammunition knitting whatever like they were doing things at home because they weren't allowed to go to the front line and that would they were really positive stories about community and spirit the thing I've noticed here is just you know it's the negativity you read in the papers there's very few positive stories about how people are coming together to make PPE equipment or contributing and there's so many positive stories that you can share um it's a shame like I'd like to see more positive positive news yeah I think that's a really interesting part of what was captain Tom is it his name the guy that raised all his money for for for the NHS and then also he's had his first number one yeah that's a great new positivity story but but that's an example like and I'm not a historian but but I believe that the um it went during the war when um there was a workforce shortage and women then went into the factories and various other roles to fill the gap I think one of the societal impacts of that movement was um acceleration of the women's rights movement um and widespread recognition that actually there was a great injustice in the inequality that women face that prior to the war in the workplace um so that's a very tangible positive that came out from a societal perspective and you wonder what will we see tomorrow in the world that we didn't have yesterday and maybe it's in the UK specifically something around the NHS um again and like remembering the core value that many people in the country kind of put onto into the NHS um but we'll see yeah it's interesting it's quite humbling when mother nature tells you to stay in your room for six months so she can recover because it you know the global warming thing's interesting you know we've been talking a lot about it we're staying in our rooms and you know I'm fascinated with what the future of work is going to look like are we going to go back to you know growth growth growth and you know all this kind of stuff or are we just going to take a moment to reflect on what is important and maybe I worry about it a lot because like my sister lives my a lot of my family live down the south coast and showing a picture from Portsmouth of the sea saying how clear it was because the channel is so quiet and then you see lots of videos of like dolphins coming out where they've never seen goats going into Welsh towns and England and like that's so heartening my concern is that human beings are very driven by growth and we're aspirational creatures and therefore it's hard for us not to accelerate more so naturally competitive so one country for example accelerates again then the other countries around it will so I'm actually feeling not terribly optimistic about that but I would love to feel optimistic that the environmental kind of revelation that has been reduced human activity continues to have some sort of impact I'd love that to happen I'm just yeah I'm also not so sure that will but it's the way you and your team work going to change now like can you see a fundamental shift in in how your team are organised and work or I was talking to one of my co-founders about that the other night I think there's a lot of unknowns aren't there I think you can look at it both ways I know there's been a lot of commentary around remote working and freedom and working styles becoming more prevalent and I can understand the logic of how people reach that conclusion but I also think that I hear just as often people saying like you said earlier like I'm missing people and therefore as much as like we've probably all learned find new ways to be productive I think we've probably all learned to recognise the value of that human connection that we took granted before so I don't know which way it will swing it would be quite interesting I think probably different companies will try different things yeah and I think hopefully more people will have more choice because people are more productive in different ways and you know if you're able to choose that would be cool and then I mean certainly financially much better for companies to have less office space in London right and whether they need so much and I see that certainly as a trend yeah and as we start to go back to work over a period of time you know you have people that are like you know you can come in two days a week she can come in two days a week and so it's going to be a very interesting transition to you know the new what I said the new normal but things change so quickly now but it's and I don't know how I was talking to a founder of a company in San Francisco the other day and you could almost like hear that the kind of joy in his voice at the prospect of not having to have an office there anymore it's just so um but but you know I think that yeah I just think it's going to be a lot of learning for us and we all need to go into the very open mind basically um the idea of choice is a nice idea that that is retained sometimes yeah how have you found recruiting at the moment um well it's interesting because of course it's harder in some respects because again to your point like you when you're actually in the presence of someone you get so much more than when you're on zoom right or video call whatever it might be because you can we're so we're so clever at reading body language um often unconsciously just picking vibes up and that determines when you're growing company and you're wanting people to join it's not just about competence it's about character and culture of it and all of those kind of things um and harder to work out on video so on the one hand it's harder on the other hand and there's a sadness in this um on a macro level um there are many companies that are struggling at the moment and letting people go um so there's a lot of brilliant talent on uh looking for new and exciting roles um so the talent pool I think has opened up quite a lot for companies that are still growing at the moment like online um there are there are so many exciting people to speak with um but I recognize that's a that's a sadness for many many people um so I'm not being believe no no no we've just had a shift I run an executive search firm and the sad thing is I have hundreds of people messaging via LinkedIn or whatever a day just asking for help um you know how do I find a job in these times can you give me some advice you know things like that so we've dedicated an hour or two every day to get back to everyone that's that's got in touch with us and we've seen really yeah well people need help now I mean it's you know it's it's such a tough moment overall you know and every industry is a bit different I mean some are doing great you know you guys are hiring Amazon have hired 175,000 people in the last six weeks or something so there's obviously pockets and overall it's a really tough moment and we've we've now moved from um call it a seller's market so it's been very candidate led right if you're it's been hard to find great people for companies and now we've seen um you're seeing a big shift into a kind of a buyer's market um particularly in some areas or yeah I think overall I definitely there's a trend now towards um if you think about every the next you know the next six months to a year um you know as the furlough scheme ends people will make more redundancies unfortunately um different industries are affected different more differently and we'll see how that that goes over the next six months to a year um you know some some have been fine I mean some of these technology companies such as yourselves you know a strong um um kardo amazon things like that um retail obviously very difficult financial services generally okay health care again fine I mean it's it's really variable there's obviously some also underlying trends that have been affecting um companies such as digitalization and you know cost basis going down so there's a lot of other trends going on but I think this is going to be uh quite substantial unfortunately I think it's interesting to think about those trends and what one of the trends that we are definitely part of but are noticing globally is this um movement from digital mental health services uh being considered a kind of novelty part of an overall health care solution to now a widespread recognition that they are an integral part of the future of health care um and I think physical health as typically you see right the physical health world was slightly ahead of the curve from where the mental health world was so we we've all got used to like digital doctors um that's become more common place in even within the national health service but I think now the kind of digital movement on mental health especially for corporates um has reached a tipping point and and will you know be considered as an essential component of all well-being strategies right from here on in oh definitely every every big company I speak to has has is offering something and it's it's been on the agenda and it's top of the agenda on almost everywhere um and especially when you have scenarios like this where you know it's it's an event you can't control and so many people let external factors affect how they feel and how they think um which is not very productive but easier said than done right a lot of people need help in just you know just decompressing a little bit from these things yeah that's absolutely right yeah so it's very interesting well look great to speak to you it sounds like you're doing some brilliant things um hopefully we get to meet in person one day who knows yes and some of your hands should be very long but I know really good to speak to you and good luck with everything thank you and you too and thanks for having me on pleasure