Hacking wellbeing for engineers #1
In this lunch and learn session Jan Peters and Jo-Anne Tait on 8 May 2025 explored if and how low wellbeing can be tackled with engineers. Do the standard approaches work? Are engineers different? They shared the insights from their respective research. Jo-Anne from her PhD research based around interviews with engineers exploring why they tend not to seek help and support for wellbeing until they are at crisis point. And Jan offerred insights from a literature review undertaken for Warwick Manufacturing Group at Warwick University.
Here are notes captured from AI so you too can gain insights and maybe decide to watch the whole webinar.
Unlocking Wellbeing for Engineers
26 June 2025 Birmingham Workshop
It’s curious that until 2020, very few papers explored wellbeing among engineers. We wanted to know: Do they not experience this? Are they such great problem solvers that they have the answer to not feeling great?
The reailty is not this. And it’s also not great. It’s becoming more widely appreicated that engineers are not seeking help and support until they are at crisis point – or as Jan said – “It’s life altering or life threatening”.
While Tait found greater empathy for others than themselves, it’s apparent engineers need more tools in their Toolbox.
Our June Workshop will give you those.
The next LinkedIn Live in this series is on 11 June 13:00 hrs BST and will explore strategies developed at Katalytik and RGU
Key Takeaways
- Engineers are often reluctant to seek help for mental health issues until problems become severe
- There’s a need to incorporate wellbeing skills and awareness into engineering education and workplace cultures
- Individualized, strengths-based approaches show promise for helping engineers develop resilience and thrive
- Collaboration between academia and industry is key to driving systemic change around engineer wellbeing
Topics
- Current State of Engineer Wellbeing
- Graduate students 6x more likely to experience mental health issues vs general population
- Engineering culture often celebrates stress, views it as normal/necessary
- Students reluctant to seek help due to stigma, fear of appearing weak
- Lack of referrals to support services from engineering departments
- Challenges in Engineering Education
- Curriculum still heavily lecture/assessment-based with little room for wellbeing
- Students are changing but education methods are largely unchanged since the 1930s
- Need to co-design interventions with current students
- Difficult to systematically incorporate wellbeing into the technical curriculum
Promising Approaches
- Strengths-based tools like CliftonStrengths to boost self-awareness
- Mindfulness/meditation exercises integrated with engineering projects
- Teaching reflection skills and providing space to practice them
- Helping students develop personalized wellbeing strategies
Industry Perspectives Needed
- How workplace cultures impact wellbeing long-term
- What skills new graduates need to thrive in high-pressure environments
- Ways to retain talent by supporting mental health
Next Steps for Systemic Change
- Incorporate wellbeing into accreditation standards (e.g. UK AHEP)
- Collaborate across academia and industry to drive cultural shifts
- Continue research on effective interventions for engineers, specifically
Katalytik is holding a workshop exploring strategies ot hack wellbeing for engineers. 26 June 2025 at Conference Aston.