It pays to invest in wellness.

There once was a time, long before my career in Higher Education started, in which I thought R’n’R stood for Rest and Recuperation. Of course, today, as a long-time member of that UK HE community, I know better. In fact, Recruitment and Retention (of both students and staff) has never been more on my mind than it is now.

With colleagues across our sector having spent up to 18 months reaching, meeting, assessing and admitting our latest batch of students, amidst what is arguably the most challenging acquisition environment ever seen by UK Universities, we’ll all soon be moving into a mode of how to retain them and help them achieve, which is not only part of our sector commitment to those learners, but vital for our own institutional success, reputation and longevity.

The transition to university life marks a significant milestone for these arriving students, and we know that their first term of study is often fraught with difficulties. Suddenly sandwiched between the allure of brand-new social situations and the commitment demanded by academia, all the while carrying new personal responsibilities in domestic and financial areas, these new learners can experience high levels of anxiety and low mood during some of our darkest, shortest days of the year. They can perform poorly in assessments and even drop out of studies completely, particularly around the Christmas period.

What makes this situation all the worse is that universities and colleges find themselves operating with very limited analytics on students during this period, often with little to no baseline for a learner’s behaviour, engagement and capability; making it difficult to intervene and provide timely support to those who might need it most, or even to know that there’s a problem in the first place. We’re told that our youngest learners, in particular, find it more difficult than ever to proactively reach out and talk to us about these issues, and so we should all be aware that the era of the ‘quiet quitter’ is definitely upon us.

The result is that some students leave our education environments much sooner than we would have hoped, with the stigma of having failed at something that was so planned for and so important. Consequently, institutions are bearing the significant financial losses and reputational damage associated with this kind of attrition. In the case of the quiet quitter, they are also often throwing good money after bad, continuing to allocate resource (whether that is space in a classroom or tutorial time) for a student that isn’t there and mightn’t even be creating revenue.

This is not a new situation of course. Past performance indicators released from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) have highlighted the extent of non-continuation in the sector. However, in times when purse strings are already tight, and when some independent institutions are smaller than the average publicly funded University (and so have less ability to absorb the impact of these matters), all of this can be a difficult reality to cope with.

HESA’s performance indicators also told us that students from low participation backgrounds are disproportionately affected by these kinds of matters.  We therefore have many reasons (both benevolent and commercial) to do something about this problem.

Of course, education institutions do not have the ability to wave a magic wand and fix issues of wellbeing and mental health with one flick, but many have been doing a lot to try to support students in crisis and keep them engaged with their studies (for as long as that is the right and appropriate thing to do in the circumstance), all the while signposting to healthcare partners such as the NHS and charities like Mind who are set up to provide longer term support.

A whole variety of proactive activities and targeted interventions are regularly programmed by such providers across the sector, because no one activity represents the solution. On-site activities such as pets-as-therapy go down well with the student population, and online wellbeing resources such as Togetherall (formerly Big White Wall) are a fantastic way of showing an institution’s commitment to wellbeing as a whole.

Institutions are also increasingly employing or contracting counsellors, psychotherapists and coaches to provide person-centred services to those that most need it. However, the truth is that when it comes to providing this kind of clinical expertise to address student-specific issues and deal with moments of crisis, resource is not easy to secure, and neither is it cheap.

Today, we’re presented with an amazing opportunity to create change in this landscape, bridging the gap between those general activities we’re currently programming, and the targeted interventions we’re deploying on a student-by-student basis. Doing so should provide a new level of support for learners in need, whilst safeguarding person-centred counselling, therapy and coaching for those that most require it.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has long been recognized as an effective method for managing stress and anxiety, but recent studies have demonstrated the potential of VR (Virtual Reality) as a way of delivering an MBCT based course, to not only help students who are experiencing low mood and anxiety, but proactively provide all students of an institution with the kinds of resilience tools that were previously only possible when delivered by counsellors and coaches.

This technology is not only helping to improve the wellbeing of students engaging with it, but it’s also improving their academic performance. In a recent initiative led by a London University, for example, 100 students trialled a course of hypnosis-based relaxation techniques, ahead of their exams.  Half of the students participated in the trial using VR technology, whilst half participating using standard 2D screens. Before and after every session, students were asked to report how calm, stressed and anxious they felt. Amongst the students using the VR technology, their levels of perceived stress and anxiety fell, whilst their perceived readiness for their exams rose; whereas those using the traditional 2D screens did not experience the same benefits.

So spurred on by such studies, and with that need to move from a mode of recruitment to retention fast approaching, I’ve recently been working with my colleagues at The Harding Hub and our partner Tend VR to bring this technology into use by more providers in the Higher Education space. Tend’s combined hardware and software offering provides two distinct kinds of activity, both based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. The first is a series of relaxation sessions that can be undertaken by anybody at any time, and the second is a 40-part course that delivers learning and resilience to those who require specific support with their wellbeing. Hardware can be used on-campus or deployed to students for use at their own locations, and Tend’s operational teams are there to support institutions throughout the process.

One of the benefits of such a technology-led approach is that the institution’s specialist staff are freed up to focus on the students who really need their need clinical expertise most. However, those counsellors, psychotherapists and coaches are not easy to secure, and neither is that kind of resource cheap to maintain year-round, especially when demand is not consistent across an academic year.

My colleagues and I at The Harding Hub have therefore also been working hard to identify ways of institutions dialling up and down their provision of clinical expertise more easily, according to student demand at any one particular time.

Our new service offering makes those clinical specialists more accessible by providing access in ways that learners are telling us are most preferred by them. In total, support is available via a free phone call, live web chat, WhatsApp, SMS, and even email.

We can work in conjunction with and alongside, or independently and in lieu of an institution’s own in-house counselling, wellbeing and student services teams, and we can offer ‘in the moment’ support for those who need crisis intervention there and then, as well as triage, onwards referral and emergency escalation on a 24/7 basis, as well as put regular scheduled counselling in place for the students who need it.

For international students for whom English is not their first language, we can provide options for support in over 240+ languages via LanguageLine interpretation, as well as direct counselling in 35 of the world’s most commonly spoken languages.

As you would expect, there are robust risk management procedures in place for all of these services, along with a host of reports that are made available to institutions about service utilisation.

While student wellbeing is critical, it’s equally important to recognize the ongoing pressures faced by the staff working in our sector. The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to our colleagues, necessitating rapid adaptation to new teaching methods and modes of delivery. Many of them were left to manage increased workloads and navigate the emotional toll of these changes in the workplace alongside maintaining the lives of their own family units and dependants, all while ensuring their students remained engaged and supported. The lasting effects of this period are still being felt across higher education institutions. Staff members are not only responsible for their primary roles as educators but are often also involved in student support, administrative duties, and research activities. Such multifaceted roles can lead to significant stress, colleague burnout, and diminished job satisfaction, which in turn affects the overall performance and morale of the institution. By making Tend’s VR technology and our scalable counselling service available to staff, too, you’ll be solidifying your commitment to their wellbeing, improving your employee value proposition, and enhancing your ability to recruit and retain staff in the same way we considered possible for your students. Institutions can help their employees manage stress, improve mental resilience, and perform their duties more effectively.

In increasingly difficult circumstances for learners, staff and institutions alike, emerging technologies like Tend VR and scalable counselling services like the ones we are offering can make life that little bit easier. Investing in wellbeing can protect your institution’s revenue, safeguard individuals and improve performance indicators across the board. With a new academic year starting, and with that the requirement to move from a mode of recruitment into retention, there are plenty of reasons for you to act sooner, rather than later. If you’re interested in our work in this area, we hope that you’ll make contact soon.