Avail is a wellbeing, resilience and support assistant. I had a chance to cross paths with one of the co-founders, Daniel Benin who you will also see pop up from time to time on the app.
Being a high performer throughout his life, Daniel co-founded this company with the experience and awareness of how mental health play such an important role with our well being and being at peak performance - where we connected around the topic of burnout that many entrepreneurs experience, and even more prevalent in our modern more digitally transformed workplaces.
My first interaction with Avail is it's pleasant to use, with a friendly interface and use of soft colors and fonts definitely gives me a sense of warmth and trust.
At a deeper glance it offers some pretty useful and not overwhelming features:
- Weekly Check Ups using an evidence based process to provide recommendations
- A Care Center with resources, guides and contact points with professionals you can reach out
- Personal Support Network where you can invite your own peers and friends to reach out to if needed onto the app
Weekly Check Ups
This is a really powerful feature, and I enjoyed the simplicity and speed of it. Within two minutes and a few questions it helps you to spend a moment to acknowledge how you measure yourself in different areas of your life.
My first go at it took me less than 40 seconds and I was almost craving for more!
The challenge here for some is you really have to be honest with yourself, and even I was tempted to shrug off some answers as me being more “okay” than I really was. I just had my traditional Chinese wedding this weekend, and definitely conflicted and exhausted - but I wanted to fool myself by ignoring it especially for my first assessment.
Like any introspection work, it's a situation where you will only cheat yourself if you’re dishonest - now at the same time, not panic and see your world as doom and gloom. It’s definitely a fine balance that I’m sure will adjust itself overtime.
Personally, as a weekly Monday exercise, I review my week, work on gratitude and celebrate my previous week accomplishments. It helps me to set the stage for the week so I keep focused on the trajectory of my medium to long term goals.
What I love about this app is its use of a very powerful and simple concept for those who model high performers and achievers: “It’s the small things done consistently that makes the biggest difference”
In other words, it’s about developing good habits.
This is what this app allows because these quick weekly check ins don’t overwhelm you with big changes, but helps you to be aware of the tiny things that you can adjust that makes a world of a difference on the long term. It’s about developing mental fitness.
I’ve added it to my weekly routine - literally as a setting: On Monday at 10am the app will remind me to do my check in without being a jerk-face.
Care Center
Once you finish your first assessment you’ll be kindly greeted by some friendly faces of professionals that can assist you with taking action to improve your mental health and wellbeing if needed.
From therapists, social workers, psychologists to even massage therapists, the app has a growing list of local health service providers that can help you. What I enjoy about this app is the recommendations. It’s not just a directory - it is recommended from the relationship with your own self assessment as a baseline.
Did I mention that they also highlight if it might be covered by insurance? I think it’s a thoughtful feature especially since this app is targeted at professionals in the workplace that usually have some form of employee benefits.
For those who like to do-it-yourself, they offer some guides and a resource center where you can learn more about specific mental health topics. Also, tucked away in the bottom are emergency resources in case you need help which was a nice cherry on top.
Personal Support Network
This is by far my personal favourite feature.
Being a mental health service provider myself, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having a personal support network. It made me consider in different areas of my mental health that was identified by the app, I would actually have different people to support me in those areas.
For me, I can reach out to colleagues for work related conflicts for a listening ear, and friends and family around personal matters. I’ve short-listed my family, friends and peers that would help me in specific situations - and for me, I wouldn’t have even considered it if it wasn’t for this app.
What would be really cool….
I also had a chance to share some of this feedback with my conversation with Daniel, so it has been something that is considered by the team:
Integration with Wearable Technology
With wearable devices like the Oura Ring that have open APIs to share health data like Heart Rate Variability and Sleep Performance, it can provide some pretty nifty metrics to associate and even deepen the self-awareness and introspection from the weekly check ins.
Especially as a platform targeted at companies, it would be a very real and meaningful supplement with employee engagement tools.
Taking a preventative stance, at first use can recommend mental health first aid all the way to improve the collective mental health and wellbeing of an organization and community.
Added Personal Support Network Intelligence
While probably not intended to be a social networking site or to maximize that viral factor, I found this feature to be very powerful.
Having some very simple rules and agreements between those invitations with auto-notifications might be a very useful feature to enrich and set action the development of trust and social capital that we lack so much in our society today.
We have a tendency to hide behind our screens, and with this app, no different - however, it can create and deepen social connections which are a vital and missing component in many of our lives and move the dial on the loneliness epidemic.
If you’d like to reach out to the folks at Avail to bring it into your organization, you can reach out to: daniel.benin@avail.app
Website for more information: www.avail.app
Here's a quick showcase of my own account in action:
About the Burnout Clinic
The Burnout Clinic is committed to the practice, education and providing of expert care for people who struggle with burnout to restore balance in their lives. We believe your career and work is an extension of who you are and the talents you embody to make a meaningful difference in your organization and the world.
We specialize in Burnout Retreats and Therapeutic Vacations where we support leaders who struggle with burnout with our clinical two-day burnout intervention process. By combining leading edge clinical processes that are fast, painless, have little to no remission and doesn’t require reliving any memories with the vacation model; clients can experience a truly life transforming experience.
At the more extremes of burnout, our clinically proven processes has been used for over 40 years effectively with depression, high anxiety, PTSD, fibromyalgia, and insomnia, migraines and life enhancement.
You can learn more at: www.theburnoutclinic.com/resources
While we truly appreciate the struggles of burnout and how it can be a dark and traumatic experience, we also know that breaking through it is a deeply life changing experience. Our clients come out regaining control of their lives, with a deep clarity and the freed up internal resources to lead more effectively without sacrificing the things important to them.
Our mission at the clinic is to redefine the workplace as a vital community to elevate humanity, with our goal to help leaders overcome burnout one vacation at a time.
Want to find out how you can bring therapeutic vacations into the workplace
We would love to hear from you, your needs and how we can help your organization rapidly overcome employee burnout.
A little about me... Hi! I'm Duncan So, Executive Director at TheBurnoutClinic.com. I’ve been a child of corporate burnout that has led me into the field of human flourishing for over a decade. I’ve been a social entrepreneur and change agent ever since, on a mission to create a more passionate world building systems and programs for companies and communities on the path of making social good.
Want to breakthrough your burnout and creating meaningful work for yourself or your organization?
Start here at: www.theBurnoutClinic.com