Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group is launching a mental wellness course as its staff gradually return to its reopened hotel and spa destinations.

The company is creating a four-week course for colleagues – called Inner Strength Outer Strength – to encourage new habits which instil physical vitality, mindfulness, emotional resilience and positive psychology, and to help them come back to work even stronger.

Jeremy McCarthy, Mandarin Oriental’s group director of spa and wellness, is a strong believer in the importance of mental health and has been instrumental in helping form the company’s strategy as the world recovers from the pandemic’s impact.

He recently described how he believes trauma can make people stronger and applied it to COVID-19, explaining that the pandemic has empowered people because it’s made them more aware of their own mortality and developed a focus on health and wellness.

The vision for the newly launched programme is to help staff bounce back even stronger in a post-COVID-19 landscape.

“This course is designed to help our colleagues stay strong, both physically and emotionally, to support them during the pandemic and to help them to come back to work being at their best and ready to be of service to others,” McCarthy told Spa Business.

The four-week course is split into four modules: body, mind and character, managing stress mindfully, self-compassion and loving-kindness and bringing strength to personal missions.

Mandarin associates will be taught in-depth about physical vitality and exposed to concepts around nutrition, exercise, breathing and other wellness practices to help them keep physically robust and resilient to illness.

Meditation and other mindfulness practices will be introduced to help develop skills for controlling attention and managing anxiety to be more effective, even during times of crisis.

In addition, the course will help students better understand their own strengths and learn how to employ those strengths in pursuit of their most important values and goals.

Mandarin Oriental has announced that it will also offer a similar course for guests.

The company has also recently announced that it will celebrate Global Wellness Day 2020 by offering ‘24 Hours of Wellness’ on 13 June 2020, with a 24-hour Instagram livestream highlighting myriad wellbeing experiences at its hotels around the world.