Looking after your wellbeing with your membership

There are many ways in which your Royal Society of Chemistry membership can help support your wellbeing, including through our careers team, through our Chemists' Community Fund, and through volunteering opportunities.

In March 2019, we held our annual Twitter Poster Conference, which is held entirely online and brings together members of the scientific research community to share their research, network and engage in scientific debate. The Audience Participation prize – for the poster that receives the most tweets – was awarded to Dr Zoe Ayres for her poster focusing on the mental health of PhD students. This article looks at how you can use your membership to protect and look after all aspects of your wellbeing throughout your studies and beyond.

The Chemists’ Community Fund

Your membership gives you access to our Chemists’ Community Fund, who are there to support you and your family when life gets challenging. Getting good advice is always the first step to protecting your wellbeing, and the Fund has many services members can take advantage of. In early 2019, the Fund added a selection of books on health and wellbeing to our library in London. The books cover topics such as overcoming depression, improving sleep quality and how to better manage finances – these are available for our members to read and borrow. Don’t forget that if a trip to our London based library is inconvenient for you, our books can be posted to you – this is a service that covers all of our borrowable library books.

Our local sections deliver workshops entitled ‘Improve your understanding of Wellbeing and Resilience’, which are supported by our Chemists’ Community Fund. These three hour sessions aim to help you better understand the signs and symptoms of mental ill health, and give you the tools to effectively communicate with those you are concerned about. The session also offers tips on stress management and staying well.

On 14 May 2019, our Chemists’ Community Fund hosted a webinar on Building Personal Resilience alongside Jo Twiselton. Again, the webinar included hints and tips on how to help yourself, especially during periods of change. The recording of the webinar can be found on YouTube for you to view anytime.

The Fund also offers a range of personal services, such as health and wellbeing guidance – if life’s challenges are affecting your emotional or physical wellbeing, advice and legal information – if you are facing a complicated legal situation or financial support – if you find yourself in a difficult situation financially. All enquiries are treated as strictly confidential and are responded to personally by one of the team. To contact the Chemists’ Community Fund, or to find out more about the support they provide, visit our webpage.

Our Careers Management Team

Your membership also grants you access to our qualified team of career management specialists, who work in partnership with you to manage every aspect your career – from identifying your transferable skills or areas for development to helping you prepare for your retirement.

As we have said earlier in this article, getting good advice should always be your first step and the same goes for looking after your career development, whatever situation you are in. Every month, our careers team run a webinar that focuses on different topics and can provide you with advice from experts in their field. They are available to all our members. Topics on our YouTube channel include ‘Creating an effective CV’, ‘Starting your own business’ and ‘How to get published’. We also run webinars on careers in specific sectors of industry as well as academia or teaching. Additionally, we have webinars on how to effectively prepare for your retirement.

In 2015, we set up our mentoring scheme in response to feedback on how we could best support diversity. For those who are Associate Members, Members or Fellows with us, you can take control of your professional and career development by working with one of our mentors to increase your confidence in the workplace, learn how to start your own business or even learn how to develop and maintain a good work/life balance and many other topics. If you are a Member or Fellow, you can become a mentor with the scheme and training will be provided to build your confidence as a mentor. We run training sessions across the UK, but also offer training via webinar when appropriate.

Members in the Associate Member, Member or Fellow categories can also speak to one of our career advisers on a one-to-one basis. In the past, the team have helped members get back into the job market after unemployment or parental leave, provide support through redundancy, offer re-training advice or progress into management. Browse our careers management team’s full range of services browse our webpage.

Volunteering

Being a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry also allows you to give back to your local chemistry community, stand out from the crowd professionally, build new skills and meet new and friendly people. It’s also a lot of fun.

We have many options for those who are looking to get involved volunteering for us. From one-off volunteering opportunities – such as helping your Local Section write and send their Christmas cards or getting involved in some outreach – to offering some peer to peer support such as becoming a CChem mentor or sitting on your Interest Groups’ committee, there is a volunteering opportunity to suit you.

To look at our suggestions for ways you can volunteer and get involved please visit our webpage.