When you are in good mental and emotional health, you approach your job with confidence. You’re adaptable, flexible, and tough. You can deal with difficulties. Your contributions to your team are significant, and you are happy in both your personal and professional life.
When it comes to boosting employee well-being at work, proactive alternatives that help people develop and maintain their mental health on a daily basis are essential.
Everyone comprehends the importance of good mental health; people prioritize mental health support in the workplace as not just a nice-to-have, but rather a necessity for the employees. As a result, organizations/companies seek effective wellness solutions providers to help their employees precisely improve their mental well-being.
However, with the recent developments post-pandemic, the companies that offer online programs integrated with counselling mental wellness experienced robust growth—ensuring convenience and reliability for their clients.
This is where Soulmio excels in the limelight with its online Mental Wellness training space enabling countless psychological and self-development topics for its clients. Under the exemplary leadership of Simona Zabrzova, Founder and CEO, Soulmio is empowering personal development and preventing mental health problems for a better living.
In an interview with Insights Care, Simona Zabrzova sheds light on the professional tenure of Soulmio—highlighting its core values, vision, and her opinions on the future of the company in the industry.
Simona, please brief our audience about your company, its mission, and the key aspects of its stronghold within the virtual care services niche.
Soulmio is a comprehensive online program designed for employees’ mental health care in companies.
We focus primarily on prevention which we see as crucial in the long-term work with mental well-being. We also provide online counselling with psychologists and psychotherapists who consult with our users on various topics and life situations.
We help prevent mental health problems in both personal and professional life, promoting employee loyalty and productivity and job satisfaction.
We also realize webinars and most wanted topics these days. Last but not least, we are educating HR and managers to incorporate well-being and employee mental health.
Tell us more about the offerings that give Soulmio a distinctive edge to stand out from the competition?
Our main advantage is the comprehensiveness of the program and, therefore, the coverage of various life moments and situations in which employees find themselves. Through education, we can effectively help prevent mental health issues from arising.
With our high-quality online psychological counselling service, we can address problems of different kinds that our clients and their employees may be facing.
We offer:
– Online Psychological Counseling
– Mental Wellness Prevention
– Company Webinars
– Consultations for HR
We organize the popular event Mental Wellness Days. Two days of lectures who pass on their knowledge and try to break down barriers around mental health care. At the last time, we had a lecturer like one of the best psychologists- Paul Bloom.
We also host regular Online HR Roundtables on various up-to-date topics. We have many companies that love this discussion table “and share experiences.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, what challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them while ensuring the safety of your employees?
To be honest, the COVID pandemic has helped us quite a bit to destigmatize the topic of mental health and the need for care in this area. The public started to listen more and understand better. And so has the management of the companies responsible for human resources.
Because one of our missions is to respond immediately to what is happening in society. We have been able to prepare rich educational content and provide highly experienced psychologists and psychotherapists who have been and continue to be as available to our clients as possible.
In Soulmio, we are working fully remote. So, the challenge in our company was (is) to maintain regular and healthy communication and support team spirit no matter where we work from.
With continuous development in technologies such as AI, what is your prediction about the future of the virtual care services market?
From my point of view, the development of new technologies can be beneficial, primarily in terms of assessment/diagnostics and, therefore, early prevention of serious mental health problems. Improving accessibility, particularly among the younger generation, is undoubtedly a significant advantage too.
I believe that the clever combination of quality human resources with AI can be a game-changer. But I don’t think that new technologies will completely take over the competencies and roles of professionals in mental health care anytime soon.
As an established leader, what would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the HealthTech space?
I would advise them not to be unduly influenced by their fears and surround themselves with experienced senior people who will be equally enthusiastic about their idea and have the competence, knowledge, and experience that they can apply in business.
It’s also definitely good to listen to the market, what people really need, how I want to solve their pain with my solution and what value I add over the competition.
How do you envision scaling Soulmio’s operations and offerings in 2022 and beyond?
Our main goal is to expand the forms and types of quality educational content, extend the use of new technologies to simplify the use of the program and strengthen the education of HR departments and company managers.
We want to maintain continuous growth in our team and maintain our position as one of the leaders in the mental health industry.
Provide us details regarding the awards and recognition that your company has achieved thus far since its inception.
Our company has been awarded:
- Innovators 2020 – well known Czech online magazine Czech Crunch and renowned newspaper Hospodarska noviny voted Simona one of the top 20 creative, inspiring, and successful personalities who helped change the Czech Republic and the world in 2020.
- 3rd place for Digital PR of 2021 (WebTop100) for our educational PR activities.
Exemplary Leadership
Simona Zabrzova, Founder and CEO of Soulmio, worked in senior management positions all her life. And because of the challenging nature of those positions, she herself experienced being overwhelmed with work, feelings of tiredness, exhaustion, and went through burnout syndrome as well. Twice even.
Simona has been in business for 15 years. She has worked as CEO at four Czech companies. For the last three years, she has been fully committed to Soulmio, a startup focusing on companies’ mental health care.
She is the founder of MentalWellnessDays.com and the author of a comprehensive program for mental health care and prevention in companies. According to Hospodarske noviny and Czech Crunch, Soulmio is one of the top 20 innovative projects in the Czech Republic.
At the time, she struggled to find the appropriate tools and help she needed, and that’s why she came up with the idea of Soulmio—developing a comprehensive program that can help people with similar experiences or states of mind and actively address the underlying causes. She knows both sites as a client and as a boss who wants to help their employees.
