The Frontline Restore · staying well in frontline work

You already know this. You teach it to clients. This time, it is for you.

Frontline staff are the best in the business at prescribing wellbeing, and often the last to take their own prescription. The Frontline Restore is a two hour online workshop that gives your team four simple tools for staying well, and the method to actually use them on themselves.

Online · teams of 5 to 20 · paper and Post-its, nothing else

Book a call

Or email warrenbain@gmail.com

The idea

Frontline staff regularly give the advice: notice your stress early, look after the basics, don't carry what isn't yours. The Frontline Restore builds that advice into four simple tools frontline staff can use on themselves. Not a wellbeing poster for the staffroom wall. Nothing that needs a spare hour, because those are hard to come by. Four things simple enough to use.

“I knew all of this and still hit the wall, because knowing isn’t applying.”

Warren Bain

What turnover costs

$17,800 to $23,900

to replace one frontline staff member

That is direct hiring costs alone, before the caseload someone else absorbs, the client relationships rebuilt from scratch, and the months back to full speed.

NZ average cost per hire: $17,841 mid level, $23,860 across all roles (HR Industry Benchmark Report, 2022). Direct costs only.

The two hours

Four tools. Small enough to keep using.

Body scan

Two minutes of checking in with your body, which registers strain long before your head admits to it.

The three circles

An honest mark of where you are. Visiting the outer ring is human. Getting stuck there is burnout.

The Post-it

A fast stocktake of where things stand.

Worry journal

Somewhere to put what is yours to carry, what never was, and what you can do something about.

These are not one-off exercises. The scan gets used before a hard meeting, partway through the day, at the end of it, whenever it is needed. The circles and the Post-it track where someone is sitting personally, mentally and at work. The worry journal sorts what is in their control from what is not, and what they can do next. Your team leaves with four things they keep using on themselves, rather than four things they did once in a workshop.

How it works

The workshop

Two hours online, teams of 5 to 20. Every tool practised in the room, not read about later.

ii.

One month on

A short anonymous survey goes to the team, and you receive a written report: what shifted, what stuck, and where your team still needs support.

Everything your team writes down stays with them. Nobody has to read anything out or explain a score. No role plays, no breakout rooms, no going round the room. Nothing that spikes anyone's cortisol.

The obvious question

“We already have EAP.” So does almost every team I work with, and I am one of the counsellors on the other end of it. I am the person your staff see once it has already gone wrong. This workshop is what I wish they had known six months earlier.

Book a call

Or email warrenbain@gmail.com

What teams say

“I’ve prescribed similar approaches to clients for a decade. This was the first time anyone made me use them on myself. And it’s sticking.”

Social worker · child protection

“Three months on, our team still uses the circle question.”

Team leader · kaupapa Māori service

“Finally, a facilitator who has actually done the job. The room could tell it came from experience. Practical, and it works.”

Area manager · community mental health

Who's running it

Built from real world social work and counselling, not a textbook

I'm Warren. I've been a social worker since 2012, across Scotland, Australia and New Zealand: child protection, youth and family services, mental health and housing. In both frontline and team leader roles. These days I work as an EAP counsellor and clinical supervisor, which means I'm usually the person people in this work talk to once they have run out of room to keep going.

This workshop exists because I often only get to help good practitioners once they hit the wall, instead of before it. And because I've been there myself.

I live in Taranaki. Outside work I surf, freedive and practise film photography. These four tools are how I keep making room for that, and how I catch myself when I stop taking my own advice.

Background

BA (Hons) Social Work, Robert Gordon University
Registered in New Zealand (SWRB) and Australia (AASW)
14+ years frontline and team leadership
6+ years EAP counselling
Clinical supervisor since 2018
Dip. Social Services Supervision, ACT trained
LinkedIn profile

The cost

$1,695 +GST

per team · up to 20 people · everything included

The two hour workshop, written instructions for the four tools that everyone keeps, and a report at 30 days built from anonymous team feedback. No per-person pricing, no add-ons.

Average cost of replacing one frontline staff member: $17,800 to $23,900.