Helping people flourish since 1992

New Leaf was founded to create the space that would enable people to flourish by overcoming the issues that can affect their working life, their relationships, personal well-being and the ability to contribute positively to their community.

  • We help businesses and their employees flourish by raising awareness of mental health in the workplace and deliver high-quality and relevant services that meet the needs of the local business community.
  • We ask for, value and publish feedback.
  • Our vision and purpose has a strong emphasis on ‘giving back’ to the local community and engaging in work with true meaning.
  • We have established a caring and collaborative ‘green ethos’ that drives all business decisions and is underpinned by a Sustainability and Procurement Policy.

Over the last 30 years, New Leaf has grown from a small one-to-one counselling service to a well-known and well-regarded, innovating pioneer of Workplace Wellbeing. We help to enable some of Somerset’s largest employers serve the mental-health needs of their employees creating healthier workplace cultures. Our range of services are suitable for both small and large employers and include Mental Health First Aid accredited training, EAP Employee Counselling and Life Design Coaching.

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Employee Counselling New Leaf Somerset
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Life Design Coaching Becky Wright New Leaf

We believe in piloting new approaches to create a more equitable and humane way of working. Founded by Becky Wright in 1992, we have always sought a sustainable business model that serves the wellbeing of everyone connected to New Leaf, running an Associates Model for many years. More recently, we have embraced the concept of ‘Next Stage Organisations’ – which has no model – but whose principles of wholeness, evolutionary purpose and organisational self-management dovetail beautifully with our long established collaborative approach to business.

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“For me as founder, there always has to be a direct connection between my work and my surrounding environment. I believe this gives me strength and a vision to build connections between the people, organisations and environment, resulting in so many of the achievements of New Leaf Workplace Wellbeing.”

New Leaf is a Next Stage Organisation

Inspired by Frederic Laloux, author of ‘Reinventing Organizations’, we have engaged in a process over several years to become a ‘Next Stage Organisation’. Supported by Nick Park – RSA Fellowship Reinventing Work Network – we have pursued this new approach to business organisation and been recognised as a leader in this field, winning an award for ‘Innovation in Business’ at the Sedgemoor Excellence in Business Awards 2019.

The idea is that all individuals who are needed to operate a business become self-organising and contribute to, and benefit from, the business without the traditional hierarchical structures. There is no model to follow – the whole point is that individuals take responsibility for themselves and organise in a way that works best for themselves, the business, those the business serves and the wider community in which we all operate.

The result is that New Leaf Workplace Wellbeing exists as a uniting identity, connecting together a series of collaborations, each contributing to the overall success of the customer, whilst maintaining their own creative freedom and automony. Each supporting and strengthening the others.

This is business evolution – increasing our strength and scope, providing personal and social impact and growing the economy, all whilst creating a working culture of inclusivity and collaboration. The point is to make work more enjoyable, more productive and profitable for all.

New Leaf founder Becky Wright explains:

“This has been a truly exciting, but sometimes scary journey to make. We have achieved a self-managing structure so we don’t have a hierarchy in the conventional sense, but a far more fluid system. There is still a sense of leadership but the people who make up the heart of the company can be themselves and work towards a shared purpose beyond that of competition. Once you begin to think about how you can do things differently, your perception changes. Yes, there is still ambition but it is not the destructive driver it so often becomes, instead it is replaced by cared-for and shared challenges.”

The organisational structure has an organic nature, able to grow in relationship to the environment … always looking for where the light is and enriching the soil in which we are anchored. We are not one single company, but many, collaborating under a united identity. This is captured visually in the following diagram which you can download as a PDF here for improved legibility.

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Working with forward-thinking organisations

Since adopting the ‘Next Stage Organisations’ approach, we are engaging with more and more businesses who value the way we work. Our collaborating teams bring increased satisfaction and support to each other and we are enjoying the new found freedom that comes from losing the shackles of traditional management, instead embracing the fresh free-thinking that has become our new driver.

Those organisations who appoint us to deliver work with their employees benefit from this beautiful energy, contributing to an evolution in business organisation, demonstrating a commitment to their employees to create a healthy workplace culture that supports wellbeing, and indirectly supporting the many community and environmental projects that we are involved in.

Our ambition is no small thing. With increased awareness of mental-health and its correlation to environmental health, more and more organisations recognise the value in a heart-centred compassionate approach, realising that support for a person’s internal and external reality creates a healthier, more creative and productive culture for all. The limits of the human imagination are endless, we have the ability to creatively solve our problems, we just need to learn to care for and nurture the best of what each individual has to offer. New Leaf has been instrumental in the creation of industry evolving conferences, in both construction and farming, where attitudes towards mental-health are in need of much work. We continue our commitment to support employers create more conscious workplace cultures that their people will want to spend time in and give their best to.

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Find out about the many ways we engage in Conscious Social Responsibility here, or check out a few favourite projects below.

The Well of Wellbeing

As part of New Leaf’s conscious social responsibility, Becky had wanted to create a place of wellbeing that people could visit and engage with. Whilst following a babbling brook near the side of a lane on a steep hill, she stumbled upon a long forgotten well house that was obscured by brambles in the corner of a field near Cothelstone. Backed by grants from the Quantock Hills Sustainable Development Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the local council, Becky partnered with the Huntspill Project and Bridgwater College to engage and benefit local young people from the experience of conserving this local landmark, working on its restoration and communicating its provenance to visitors.

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Debbie McKenna became the project lead and helped to develop a key outcome of the restoration project – the development of a free app that tells the story of the well and the project’s vision for its future via film and sound. Alongside the recorded stories and a video of the final ceremony, a ‘sound walk’ of the journey up to the well and the surrounding area was recorded by Alex Roland from Your IT Now (which provides care and support for people with learning disabilities) with one of his clients who is an expert in 360-degree filming. Check out a short video here.

Through the raised profile generated by the project, St Agnes Well is now included in the Cultural Secrets of Exmoor listings and has since received a Certificate of Commendation from the Historic England ‘Angel Awards’ for ‘Best contribution to a heritage project by young people’.

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This beautiful place became our first well of wellbeing – please see the facebook page www.facebook.com/wellobsessed or download the well promotional leaflet.

You are invited to download the free App and visit the well … listen to the stories and history and follow the sound walk. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/holy-well/id1139540831?mt=8

Rural Life Design Project

Wanting to increase our service offer to SMEs and develop a rural mental health service, we required a site to operate from that met with the needs of our clients. With grants available to help small rural enterprises flourish, our Rural Life Design Project was supported by the European Union ‘Leader’ programme for rural business.

At that time, we had only ever rented offices, initially in doctor surgeries and then in Wellington, Taunton and Bridgwater. Never had we had a much desired rural space to work from.

Made possible by a 40% grant from Somerset Levels and Moors LEADER Programme, we now have a purpose-built rural office nestled in the Quantocks. Our initial grant application in 2015 was unsuccessful, but with help from Marsha at Miles Consulting we resubmitted a full proposal in 2018 complete with build proposition and this time secured the funding.

Around our wonderful new office we wanted to build a mental health garden, so introduced a wildlife haven with pond (now home to rare Great Crested Newts), bee and bird friendly shrubs, wildflower areas and butterfly planting. A moon-garden is also planned,  designed to support nocturnal pollinators.

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To help us with the design and planning process we engaged Julie Layzell, a local CMLI Chartered Landscape Architect. She designed the space with us and helped with planning the office build. Jon Guard, a local gardener, completed all the landscaping and planting. We commissioned Creative Garden Studios, based in Devon, to build our new office.

With an internal floor space of 9.24m/sq the timber frame building was constructed with an environmentally-friendly mindset in regard to the choice of materials. The end result is a lovely rural space where we can focus on developing rural mental health services for the local agricultural industry and providing counselling and wellbeing services for rural SMEs.

Leader Funding New Leaf Somerset

Somerset Bee-Keepers

The recent decimation of bee populations caused by the over-use of pesticides heralds significant environmental concerns brewing on the horizon. We want to support the bees, and those who work with them, and who educate and encourage others to do so too.

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We decided to offer our customers an opportunity to play a role. When our customers employ us to deliver Bee Happy Talks, we donate a percentage of profits to Somerset Bee-Keepers, helping their valued work with our buzzy and very busy winged friends.

For more information or to discuss your particular requirement call or text New Leaf today on 07590 684888 or email Becky Wright directly on [email protected]