Kicked off – Mental Health & Resilience Workshops for Aviation Engineers

We’ve officially launched our national workshop series: Mental Health & Resilience Workshops for Aviation Engineers – strengthening New Zealand’s aviation engineering workforce.

The first sessions in Palmerston North and Auckland featured Katherine from Growforte, who provided a clear understanding of mental health along with practical strategies to support day-to-day wellbeing. Dan from the Better Sleep Clinic followed with an evidence-based presentation on the impact of sleep, fatigue management, and common sleep myths.

Thank you to everyone that came along and participated, the turnout for both workshops was great and allowed for meaningful collaboration and conversations to occur.

“Why? Why is it something that two o’clock in the morning, when it’s going around and around in your head, you can’t clear it? It won’t go away, will it? And it just seems to get worse and worse. You blame yourself until the results of the investigation come out”

“What do we do as engineers? We blame ourselves. We all tend to do it until we all go down the path, whether it was routine maintenance or we overhauled something or replaced something, we all tend to think that it was our fault until proven otherwise. As engineers, none of us go to work every day to make a mistake. We all want it perfect”

Karl West, from West Aero, shared his powerful experience, opening the doors for safety and vulnerability of the participants to share and connect. Karl remains committed to being available at any time for anyone in distress. Message us to connect with Karl. 

“The reality of our industry is full of stress, fatigue, parts shortages, customers threatening legal action, being accused of overcharging when you’re barely covering costs, watching aging aircraft need more and more inspections, with fewer and fewer licensed engineers to do the work”

It’s such an investment for an organisation to take time out from their important work, sending staff for professional and personal development, the results of which will ripple through their entire workforce. We thank those who invested in their team, and would value your feedback on.. what next? After these workshops conclude, an app will be developed for ongoing use and support by aviation engineers.

This series is part of a wider effort to improve mental wellbeing across the sector. We have three more workshops planned across the country – Queenstown (23rd Oct), Christchurch (30th Oct) & Hamilton (6th Nov).