Radio Show #526: How to realise a competitive advantage through mental health and wellbeing in a workplace

Special Guest: Geoff McDonald: Geoff McDonald Consulting Limited

Geoff’s background in teaching, HR, marketing, communications and sustainability is considerable. His experience during his 25 years with Unilever (a global corporation with a turnover of £50 billion and 170,000 employees in 90 countries worldwide), has taken him around the world, working across Africa, the Middle East and Turkey, Australasia and Asia, Europe and the Americas.

His HR experience has spanned leadership and talent development, organization change, capability development with a particular reference to marketing, and business transformation with purpose at its core. Early in his career he was responsible for graduate recruitment and development, talent, acquisitions and development across Unilever’s emerging markets. Under his leadership he developed Unilever’s global talent and leadership centre of expertise. More recently he devoted his time, energy, and effort to leading ground-breaking work where the HR function has played a central role in transforming Unilever’s business model with purpose at its core.

Geoff’s work today is truly global, and he is a very much sought-after speaker, strategic advisor and consultant. He inspires and provokes organizations around the world to put purpose and wellbeing at the centre of everything they do. His experience in Unilever, under the pupilage of Paul Polman, allows him to provide very practical insights and to speak on how to go about truly embedding PURPOSE and how to address the taboo associated with wellbeing (particularly mental health) within a large global multinational organization. With this experience comes some real learning on what may or may not work.

Geoff is devoting a significant amount of time to consulting to organizations, helping them define and embed Purpose as a driver of growth and profitability. He also advises companies, organizations and global multi-nationals in the area of Mental Health and Wellbeing. He consults on how to address the stigma linked to depression and anxiety in the workplace, and on how to elevate Wellbeing to a strategic priority in the Boardroom.

Join us as we discuss mental health in the workplace.

Host: Jo Moffatt