roundtable
This roundtable was organised by The Business Magazine and hosted by the Cardinal Clinic, Berkshire’s only mental health private clinic. Tim Wickham reports on …
Attitudes to mental health in the workplace
Participants
Dr Shaun Davis: Global director of safety, health and wellbeing, Royal Mail
Dr Martin Carroll: Clinical Psychologist, Cardinal Clinic
Nick Holland: Founder and software developer, Limbick Labs
Ali Bird: Office manager, Savills Reading office
Gary Swanwick: Managing director, Epoq IT
The Roundtable team
How we deal with mental health issues has been gaining a lot of attention. But how can employers best support their employees? The panel discussed what’s being done, what needs to be done, as well as barriers that can hold back progress on improving employee wellbeing.
A growing problem
Professional services firm EY decided addressing mental health issues was so important it made a significant commitment in 2013 by setting up an employee-led mental health network. Cathy Wilkins, who co-chairs the network in the UK and Ireland, said: “It was a pioneering approach for us. The firm had an emphasis on physical wellbeing but not on mental health. It was a gap we felt we needed to fill.”
Stress at property professionals Savills can increase from constantly maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction said Ali Bird, office manager at the firm’s Reading office. “It may sound obvious, but keeping customers happy can be stressful. They often want immediate responses and results and they can seem very demanding. Sales employees especially risk burn-out, particularly younger staff who may take time to adjust to the pressure when they first join.”
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Limbick Labs develops technology that can contribute to good mental health and wellness, especially in young people. Founder Nick Holland said he had witnessed stress increase in employees when he was working at large tech companies. “You see it especially in people working long hours. But I think to an extent you have to be responsible for your own wellbeing, especially in areas like sleep, diet, exercise and renewal. If you put your own well being first, you can perform at a much higher level, which ultimately inspires others to do the same.”
Epoq IT has a high proportion of younger people in its workforce. The company puts out a very clear message that ‘it’s okay not to be okay’. “For us, it’s okay to talk about mental health issues. But as a business, we also have to support demanding customers and face lots of pressures, so it’s a question of how we balance these,” said managing director Gary Swanwick. “There’s a growing awareness of mental health issues with many public figures sharing stories which is positive.”
Royal Mail faces challenges running a business that operates every day of the year with 140,000 full-time staff and 20,000 temps who work over the
Cathy Wilkins: Co-chair UKI Mental Health Network, EY
Nick Wilson: Consultant, Working Minds Matter
David Murray: Founder and publisher of The Business Magazine, chaired the discussion
Christmas period. “We are a regulated business that has been around for over 500 years, so there are big expectations on us. I’m interested in the idea that there is a certain trendiness about mental health at the moment – and I am keen to get underneath the real, root causes. We have to guard against treating it as trendy and appreciate it is a very complex and multi-faceted aspect of health,” said Dr Shaun Davis, director of health and wellbeing at Royal Mail.
Army veteran Nick Wilson set up Working Minds Matter to provide consultancy to businesses on dealing with workplace stress and mental health. He said: “Mental health can be sector dependent and be affected by your clients and line supervisors. Research shows that the financial and legal sectors have the most mental health issues but spend the least per employee tackling them. While millennials are talked about a lot, we have an ageing workforce and need to look after both young and old. You
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – JULY/AUGUST 2018
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