The last three months have been unlike any other time we have experienced in recent history. A pandemic swept over the world, suddenly changing our everyday lives to a “new normal” that includes “physical distancing.” This sudden change has impacted everyone in one way or another, yet each person has reacted to the pandemic in their own way as a result of their unique resilience threshold – their capacity to recover quickly in the face of adverse circumstances. The pandemic has tested our ability to cope which has, in some instances, had dire effects on our overall mental health.  Recognizing that our employees are our most valuable asset in our organization, PBA Group felt it was important to invest in the latest mental health technology which empowers our employees to successfully overcome the challenges of adversity and build resilience at their own pace.

About eighteen months ago PBA Group was one of the first real estate development companies in Canada to pilot a new mental health application called headveristy. headversity is a resilience training app which provides various training programs to companies to strengthen their employees’ resilience skills and support their overall mental health. At PBA Group, this pilot project provided our team with a tremendous opportunity to learn more about the power of digital mental health. By collaborating with headversity’s phenomenal team on the overall development of the platform, our team was provided with insightful tools to help manage positive mental health. Offering our PBA Group team the latest in mental health technology was critical to successfully supporting our team to overcome the challenges that each of us could potentially face. This program is particularly useful given it is easily accessible, at any time, and from anywhere. Having completed the headversity pilot project prior to the dramatic changes the pandemic brought on, we knew, unquestionably this was the support our community needed to utilize during the pandemic.

At PBA Group we believe in living our core values. This means we consider the impact of our decisions not only on our community, but also on developing mutually beneficial relationships. Connection is the fabric of PBA Group’s DNA; it drives our team and is imperative to building community. Connection allows us to collaborate with others to truly understand their needs, provide solutions that will help them and provide a better understanding of how to innovate. By providing headversity to our tenants and strategic partners early on in this pandemic, it allowed us to connect, help others, and to contribute to supporting their overall well-being. Further to this, the headversity app provides people with the ability to build their resilience. This allows our tenants and strategic partners to remain calm, responsive, and proactive in adverse scenarios and to successfully navigate the challenges we all continue to face as individuals and as organizations as a result of the pandemic.

Our CEO, Patricia Phillips, developed resilience through overcoming the many challenges she has faced throughout her career as a high-performance athlete as well as a female professional in male dominated industries. This life training provided her with leadership skills to be a successful CEO and to really understand the importance of resilience for an individual and a team to overcome obstacles. Acknowledging that not everyone has had the opportunity to develop resilience, Patricia views headversity as a means to do this for her team and wider community.

As we move from the response phase of the pandemic to the recovery phase, it is vital for us to remain agile and further adapt. Stress and anxiety are natural responses to these changes. Having access to a training program such as headversity is imperative to developing and maintaining resilience when facing these difficult circumstances. These elevated stressors in our lives have made it more important than ever to build our own personal resilience.

Click on the video below to watch the 10-minute interview between our very own CEO Patricia Phillips and Dr. Ryan Todd, the founder and CEO of headversity. They further discuss the importance of building resilience in relation to the pandemic and how the headversity app can support people through it.