HEALTH, SAFETY AND WELLBEING WORKPLACE WELLBEING:
Organisations need to be taking strong and positive action to support employee mental health. En says Joe Gaunt, CEO
In the UK alone, wellbeing issues affect one in four people, which in turn costs the economy over £57bn a year in lost productivity. The global wellbeing market is estimated to be worth $4.2tn and it is a subject moving up the boardroom agenda; influencing not only HR but the wider commercial strategy too.
More awareness around our overall wellbeing is creating a societal shift, which in turn is impacting the place of work, businesses and companies alike. As a result, organisations need to respond and adapt. As companies have previously harnessed other societal shifts such as the power of social media to reach their target audience, businesses are now realising the significance of awareness and understanding around mental health and wellbeing.
If you are embarking on a new strategy to look at health and wellbeing of your workforce it’s important that you know your starting point so you can measure its success. A survey or a discovery report is the perfect place to start. It will give a snapshot of the current levels of wellbeing - ideally looking at mental, social, physical and financial health as well as attitudes towards these. But be warned, this can, for some, reveal some uncomfortable information. If the follow up is well managed and there are implementable solutions to help your employees overcome any issues you can turn any negatives into positives.
Wellness in the workplace needs to be championed from the top and filtered down. If the top of the tree - i.e. senior team and management takes it seriously, those beneath will follow.
Just as important, managers are critical to the success of your programme. They have daily direct exposure to your employees and so it’s vital that you train them to recognise a shift in someone’s behaviour and how to better support that person is key to having a strong wellness programme in place. Your managers can advocate your strategy and programme, they can direct team members to the relevant advice and support as well as updating them on any in person events such as seminars, one-to-one sessions. This is a great place to start and begin to tackle workplace wellbeing proactively.
One in four people have mental health illnesses, which works out at around eight million employees in the UK. That’s eight million people who, at some point, might need time off work or just some extra time to do their job. Typically, these individuals are in need of some empathy and understanding from their managers and the wider team, which is why we advocate training all managers in Mental Health First Aid to teach them how to spot changes in their teams.
What is mental health first aid training? In this training, managers learn how they can support their teams at any given time. But just as importantly, we use this to help them understand their own capabilities too.
24 | TOMORROW’S FM
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