Developing A Mentally Healthy Workforce
Advocating for a proactive, rather than reactive approach to mental ill-health and creating a mentally healthy working culture
How It Started
Paul's Early Career
Paul started his career in 1993 in young people’s mental health, drug and alcohol services where he was trained and practiced as a counselor and a street-based outreach worker and service leader in South West London.
Whilst teaching drugs education and harm reduction workshops in public and private schools, he worked with hard-to-reach socially excluded young people.
He successfully introduced them into counseling to help them break the cycle of drug use with the aim of reintegrating them into mainstream society.
In early 2000, Paul joined the UK National Health Service initiative to develop evidence-based, supported employment services in London. This is where the idea of Phoenix Works started to grow its wings.
Rebuilding Working Lives
Paul spent the subsequent years working with organisations and businesses all across London, helping their employees survive and thrive at work and help them to overcome or manage the adversity of experiencing severe and enduring mental ill health. This was and is something close to home for Paul.
No longer were people too sick to work – they could manage their health and their work together. Paul was helping thousands of people learn the tools which they needed to balance and manage their mental health.
In 2013 Paul became an NHS lead overseeing the implementation of evidence based vocational rehabilitation services across SW London where his teams went on to support thousands more people within organisations.
His team successfully integrating mental health work and well-being strategies while also specialising in complex job retention cases, conflict resolution mediation and recovery coaching in conjunction with evidence based clinical mental health services and treatment.
Paul was recognised for his NHS work in 2019 when he won the NHS Mental Health Trust Chief Executive’s Leadership Award as well winning the International Coaching for a cause Award 2019 for services to the mental health worker well-being in industry.

Winning Awards Along the Way
Influence
Phoenix Works now provides workshops, training, consultancy, and public speaking events internationally to private, public and corporate industries.
With training, workshops and events including standardised Royal College of Psychiatry accredited I-ACT mental health and wellbeing for managers and frontline staff, International Stress Management Association Accredited specialist stress management training workshops, and the Neuroscience and Coaching Psychology based Specialist resilience training SHAPES toolkit as well as our own Surviving and Thriving at Work toolkit trainings, we have products and services to suit all needs, while remaining an expert consultancy and training service for evidence based vocational rehabilitation services across the UK.
Passion
Paul’s passion for public speaking helps to dispel stigma, promote hope and understanding that positive mental health and well-being is a reality for organisations and the people within them.
From professional content and bespoke speaking engagements to inspirational speaking where Paul shares his own story of overcoming adversity associated with mental ill health from a young age and why he devoted his life to this industry, Phoenix Works has adaptable training, workshops, events and packages for businesses small and large.
Phoenix Works
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