Slingshot launches country’s first leadership wellness programme

According to Slingshot, many organisations around the world are creating a “wellness culture” within their companies. Harvard University says enterprises with this culture have more advantages in terms of business growth. So in responding to high demand, Slingshot says, it has launched the first-of-its-kind “Leading Well, the Leadership Wellness” programme – a course that focuses on the sustainable growth of leaders, teams and organisations. 
The company has teamed up with Aro Ha Wellness Retreats, a renowned wellness lifestyle centre and the winner of the World’s 10 Best Wellness Retreats of 2019, guaranteed by 17 international awards. The programme targets groups of leaders, senior executives, HR chiefs and SME business owners, and hopes to become the front-runner wellness leadership consultant in Thailand, confident that the firm will witness growth of 30 per cent this year.
Slingshot chief executive officer Sutisophan Chuaywongyart said the human resources development consultancy business is changing rapidly. 
“As a consultancy firm, Slingshot Group has been a provider of leadership and organisational development for 15 years. The company has provided consultation to more than 100,500 leaders and has helped them move successfully through transition periods. This year, the company has launched its new leadership wellness programme, the first company to do so in Thailand,” she said. 
“The programme is expected to help the company grow by 30 per cent this year as current leaders are starting to take an interest in their wellbeing. According to statistics, the health market is one of the businesses that grows faster than the overall world economy. However, most of the market seems to be focusing on beauty and anti-ageing (25 per cent), followed by healthy food and the weight loss business (16 per cent) and the health-tourism business (15 per cent). For leaders’ wellbeing within the workplace the focus is just 1 per cent. With this insight, Slingshot Group decided to penetrate this new market to spread the word and raise awareness,” Sutisophan said.
Harvard University has said that organisations emphasising on employees’ health and wellbeing have an advantage in this era. Companies in the Americas, Europe, Australia and New Zealand have turned their attention to a culture of wellness as well. The study by the MDA Leadership Consulting Institute combined with forecasts of future science found that the new role of future leaders is to create a culture of wellness, which is one of the strategies that can enable organisations to achieve sustainable success. Therefore, it is a trend that cannot be missed. In order to successfully lead the wellness culture, leaders must act as role models and adopt a healthy lifestyle to create sustainable success, Slingshot said.
Slingshot is now gearing up to provide consultation to high-level leaders, who are the essential part in driving company policies and leading the organization. 
According to the company, many firms are experiencing rapid change, causing leaders to face various obstacles that directly affect their performance. The research regarding leaders and stress found that: 66 per cent of leaders believe they have been stressed for more than five years; 88 per cent say work is the main cause of stress, especially in their leadership roles; 60 per cent think companies do not provide enough tools or methods to help them cope with stress; and 80 per cent believe that having a coach or a group of friends can help them manage stress and lead a healthy lifestyle.
Manthana Raksachad, managing director of Core Business, Slingshot Group, said that according to research from Aro Ha Wellness Retreats, after being coached for six days by the institute, 16 per cent of the leaders who participated in the programme have had a better quality of life and are happier a month after joining the course. Based on the results of the study, 13 per cent of the programme’s participants made an impact at work, while 22 per cent could feel an improvement in terms of physical health. In addition, the research mentioned that stress affects one’s decision-making ability by enabling the use of emotions rather than making a decision based on information, which could lead to wrong and costly decisions for any business.
Based on information from the United States, people who try to create a wellness lifestyle for themselves have an 80 per cent chance of failure. Therefore, the majority of people are looking for consultants to coach them and help them create a healthy lifestyle. 
The first programme launched by Slingshot is a leadership development course for executives who want to have a lifestyle of wellness over a period of 12 months. The highlight of the programme is the coaching of leaders in order to change their attitudes. The course also expects the executives to create a policy of wellness within their companies and apply the model to create a strong organisation.
“The programme covers all six areas of wellness, as it is more than just possessing good physical health,” Manthana said. “They are emotional wellness, physical wellness, spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, social wellness and environmental wellness. The highlight is the emphasis on creating an organisational wellness culture through leaders to bring about sustainable behavioural change. We give the formula to leaders and guide them through activities, a first-hand experience which will create real and long-lasting changes.”
Slingshot says wellness leaders can expect to see results in two aspects – an increase of efficiency within the organisation resulting from an improvement in the leaders’ performance, and better physical and mental health, which helps decrease business risks that stem from a leader’s illness, or even death from stress and health problems. For example, a London Business School study says companies that were named the most desirable places to work in have a 50 per cent higher share value than others.
Slingshot expects 100 top-level executives to join its wellness programme by 2020.