“Work it, work it, non-stop" – event industry employees’ unconscious application of the Five Ways to Wellbeing

Purpose: This paper explores mental wellbeing in the events industry. We argue that mental wellbeing is often difficult to achieve in the stressful and deadline-driven events industry, and that better awareness and understanding of specific actions for employees to flourish at work is needed. Design/methodology/approach: We used in-depth semi-structured interviews with event professionals in the UK to investigate their individual coping strategies. To contextualise, we used the Five Ways to Wellbeing framework as an analytical tool. Findings: Our findings reveal that event professionals currently unconsciously engage in a variety of actions to maintain and enhance their mental wellbeing outside of work, but not at work. Out of the Five Ways to Wellbeing, specific actions to Connect, Be Active and Take Notice were most important to event professionals. The remaining two ways, Keep Learning and Give, were also identified in the data, although they were less prominent. Practical implications: We present recommendations for event professionals to more consciously engage with the Five Ways to Wellbeing and for employers to develop mental wellbeing initiatives that allow their employees to flourish. Originality/value: In event studies, the Five Ways to Wellbeing have thus far only been applied to event attendees, volunteers and the local community. Our paper highlights how event employees can also benefit from engaging in some of the actions set out in the framework to enhance their mental wellbeing at work.