We recently connected with Katherine Melton and have shared our conversation below.

Katherine, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

[Also Mentioned On Next Page]

Integrated Wellbeing Consulting utilizes SAMHSA’s 8 Dimensions of Wellness as part of our approach as we recognize that all areas of wellbeing impact one another, hence “Integrated Wellbeing” being part of our name. Like spokes in a wheel, when one area of our wellbeing is unsupported and experiencing challenges, it can cause the whole wheel to be unbalanced. Through a comprehensive approach to wellbeing, better outcomes can be seen when working to support a culture of wellbeing and recovery friendly workplace.

Katherine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Katherine, and I’m the owner and consultant at Integrated Wellbeing Consulting. I’ve been working within the mental health, public health, and education sectors for the past 12 years working to help support the mental and physical wellbeing of both students and employees. My personal and professional passions naturally led me into consulting with organizations to help them develop and advance the wellbeing of employees within the workplace. While I provide support through Integrated Wellbeing Consulting around overall wellbeing, much of my focus has focused around creating a culture of wellbeing and a recovery friendly workplace.

Integrated Wellbeing Consulting, which leans heavily on SAMHSA’s 8 Dimensions of Wellness, comes alongside organizations to assist in identifying local, state, and national resources to help advance the work that they are doing, develop resources and programs that help create a culture of wellbeing and a recovery friendly workplace, and identify sustainability strategies in order for the programming and culture being developed to continue to grow over time. Integrated Wellbeing Consulting utilizes SAMHSA’s 8 Dimensions of Wellness as part of our approach as we recognize that all areas of wellbeing impact one another, hence “Integrated Wellbeing” being part of our name. Like spokes in a wheel, when one area of our wellbeing is unsupported and experiencing challenges, it can cause the whole wheel to be unbalanced. Through a comprehensive approach to wellbeing, better outcomes can be seen when working to support a culture of wellbeing and recovery friendly workplace.

Integrated Wellbeing Consulting began to focus heavily on creating a recovery friendly workplace for a multitude of reasons. Finding your way to recovery, and living out your recovery journey on a daily basis, is not always easy, but it is always worth it. At Integrated Wellbeing Consulting, we strongly believe that the workplace should not be a place where an individual in recovery feels unsafe or that their recovery is in jeopardy at any point. Through a collaborative approach, Integrated Wellbeing Consulting works with organizations to help them develop a culture and workplace that supports individuals in recovery. This can include trainings on proper terminology, ways to create workplace cohesion and social connectedness without alcohol on premise, and create sustainable change. We believe that everyone deserves to feel safe and supported at work at all times. Beyond the basic need and right to feel safe in the workplace, we also know that creating these safe environments is an excellent strategy for leadership to adopt in order to help improve recruitment and retention of healthy, happy, and supported employees.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

While Integrated Wellbeing Consulting (IWC) is a small consulting business, we pride ourselves at IWC on the authentic, compassionate, and individualized relationships and approaches that we have with each client we work with. We meet the client where they are at, we get to know the client as a person and as an organization, we hear from the client and their team regarding what their needs and hopes are, the challenges/barriers being faced, and then we activate from there using evidence-based theories and approaches. We keep the client and their team at the center of what we do to ensure that they are being supported. Change can be hard. It requires vulnerability, a willingness to unlearn some aspects, and a desire to learn new components. Throughout this, we create a safe and non-judgmental environment for the client to process the changes being made, ask questions that they need to ask, and grow together as an organization.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

At Integrated Wellbeing Consulting, we do not believe that we could provide the best support possible without being willing to pivot. As we begin to work with a client, we know and recognize that what works for one client might not work for another. We may recommend a strategy or program for the client and find through ongoing discussions that the recommendation may not end up being the best fit and that alternative strategies are needed. This is okay and something that we are prepared for. If we were unwilling to pivot and make adjustments based on the needs of the clients, there would be gaps remaining with regards to support that could have been filled leaving employees and organizations unsupported and/or underserved. We will always pivot and adapt as needed at Integrated Wellbeing Consulting to ensure that we are providing the best support possible. If the needs are outside of what we can provide, we will always work to link the client with the next best resource.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.integratedwellbeingconsulting.org
• Instagram: @integratedwellbeing_consulting
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/integratedwellbeingconsulting
• Linkedin: N/A
• Twitter: N/A
• Youtube: N/A
• Yelp: N/A
• Other: N/A

Image Credits
We do not currently have a portfolio of images for our services – hence the duplicated image. At this time, the majority of the work that we have provided to clients have either been in private settings that cannot be documented, or have been remote support due to the pandemic and proximity to the client. I’ll see if I can pull some images!