Tell us about yourself and your background
Qualifying as a lawyer in 2005 I started out in litigation and moved into commercial property. I have been a business owner since 2011 when I started my family and couldn’t have the career and family life I wanted inside a traditional corporate world, at that time.
After working long hours to build my first business and then hearing devastating family news, I realised I was suffering from chronic stress and was almost burnt out at the age of 35. I learnt how to come back from these symptoms and to restructure my first business. I went on to create Authentically Speaking a training and coaching consultancy in 2016 and became the co-owner of a law firm in 2022.
What is it that you currently do?
With three boys (aged 14, 11 and 7) I am involved with football quite a lot. My law firm sponsors one team, and my wellbeing company sponsors the other!
I run support groups online and networking groups in person, coach a small number of senior professionals and train organisations on the creation of psychologically safe workplaces as well as being Head of Mission at Legal Studio Solicitors responsible for recruitment, training and business development.
I love to write and my own book The Authentic Lawyer was released in 2022, I have also contributed to a number of coaching books over the last few years.
How did you initially find your passion and turn your passion into your career?
Discovering that I could be a lawyer, a business owner and a Mum without chronic stress, was a turning point for me. I’d worked so hard to love my career and life, I didn’t want to settle for surviving. Once I had created this for myself, I wanted to share it with anyone else feeling trapped and without choices. I trained as a coach because it sounded interesting but then found I was quite good at it! Speaking and training is my big passion. I see myself at a catalyst. The starting point. If hard working, high achieving, perfectionist professionals can hear that stress and burnout doesn’t have to be part of their lives, there is another way, and if organisations can see that happy healthy employees make more money, then I’ve done my job!
Why is Mental Health and wellbeing so important for corporate employees right now?
Chronic stress and anxiety across all age groups is rising very quickly. Post pandemic burnout is happening and will continue to happen, especially in the corporate world. Traditionally these environments have championed hard work, long hours, sacrificing family and health, always being “switched on”. Not only are many people realising they don’t want this way of life, failing mental and physical health is stopping people in their tracks. For corporations to see that by having healthy thriving employees, everyone benefits, we will start to see a change.
Why do you believe the mental health and wellbeing of employees is so important in the journey to companies reaching their objectives and full potential?
Without action, we will see more failing mental and physical health, more burnout. Higher costs of sickness absence, recruitment costs and damage to reputation in the marketplace. The pandemic started to remind people that their health, their family time and their life might mean more than their job. Without taking action, many organisations will struggle to recruit, retain talent and have a pipeline of future leaders/managers.
How can investing in mental health and wellbeing in the workplace lead to increased productivity and a reduction in wasted cost?
Happy, healthy, emotionally regulated employees are productive and effective. Rising stress levels mean more dysregulation, more procrastination, inferior decision making, mistakes, conflict with colleagues and clients and ultimately leaving the business. Even perfectly healthy and happy team members seeing other colleagues go down this route without being supported by the organisation, damages trust and can impact staff turnover, motivation and loyalty to the business.
What are your top THREE tips for organizations to promote a culture of psychological safety?
Good leadership, honest open communication and transparency. A open door policy whereby team members feel they can speak honestly to their manager about their concerns without fearing rejection or reprisal.
Role modelling, senior members of leadership or management showing staff that taking their physical and mental health seriously is not only accepted, but encouraged by the business.
Great training for managers and leaders in emotional intelligence and having those tricky conversations around performance issues, mistakes or mental health concerns. Making these conversations a natural part of the day to day operations, normalises peoples experiences making them feel safe to be themselves.
Globally, there is a culture of always being on, of needing to check emails constantly and always being available for meetings in the morning, afternoon and evening which can lead to burnout etc. How do you think this should be tackled for workplace wellbeing?
Hard working perfectionist types will always try to be available, to be responsive. It may take them a long time (with the support of a professional) to change these habits of a lifetime built on fear – fear of not being good enough, of missing something, of not being as good, or as committed as their colleagues. Role modelling the behaviour of switching off by senior leadership and team leaders is vital. Enforcing these boundaries in some way might be controversial, but is possibly vital for real change.
What steps can busy professionals take to organize their lives to achieve work-life balance?
Any activities they can do to bring down their resting stress levels will be beneficial in terms of becoming as productive and efficient as possible. By getting done what they need to get done more quickly, they should have more downtime available. These activities might be mindfulness, meditation, running, reading, music, whatever works for that person. What helps them to feel relaxed and peaceful, even for a short time. Schedule this in to the week (even if only minutes at a time) and work on increasing it slowly.
Deciding on what to say no to is also vital. Firstly starting to say no to the things we don’t want to do, then moving on to saying no to things we might want to do, but if we’re honest with ourselves we just don’t have the time or energy for at this point. I put my book launch on hold for a year through lockdown because I didn’t have the bandwidth for it alongside home schooling and running two businesses. It turns out it was released at exactly the right time!
How should businesses be focusing on the mental health of their employees in 2025?
Businesses need to realise that what they have been doing isn’t working. Yoga at lunchtime, fruit bowls and desk massages, aren’t enough. These things are activities to improve mental health but real protection of mental health and wellbeing needs a belief, a mindset. Many hardworking professionals naturally have the complete opposite mindset. Once of achievement, sacrifice, going above and beyond. We need to change this and it takes time. We can encourage, support, role model and ultimately put in place methods to enforce switching off, taking breaks and holidays – while the new mindset embeds.
What are your goals for the next 5 years?
Getting The Authentic Lawyer Book into the hands of 10,000 readers/listeners globally.
Training on psychological safety and stress management all around the world inside and outside the legal profession.
Where can readers find out more about you?
I love to hang out on LinkedIn – Hannah Beko and also am getting more active on Instagram! You can also find me at www.hannahbeko.com and read more about my journey, tips and tools in Amazon Best Seller The Authentic Lawyer Book.
