MENTAL HEALTH, STRESS & WELLBEING
BECOMING MORE
MINDFUL Alison Pay, Managing Director,
Mental Health at Work explains how organisations need to develop a
strategy to help employees with their mental health in the workplace.
According to a recent report, mental health issues cost employers directly between £33bn and £42bn each year. Commissioned by the Prime Minister, the report recommended that the Health and
Safety Executive (HSE) should do more to increase employers’ awareness of their duties to manage mental health at work. Mental health is too often seen as a poor relation to physical health in terms of government funding, despite the fact that poor mental health costs the UK economy up to £99bn annually.
The report found one worker in six suffers from a mental illness and 300,000 people with long-term mental health problems lose their jobs every year.
Everyone’s health exists on a continuum from healthy through to illness and mental health is no different. But whilst many workplaces have embraced the importance of protecting, supporting and even enhancing physical health, progress to bring parity with mental health has been slow. A recent study entitledMental Health at Work, from Business in the Community in conjunction with Mercer, highlights that 46% of employees are not comfortable talking about mental health in the workplace.
Although progress has been made and many companies today would assert that they see mental health in the workplace as important, some organisations are not fully engaging with the issue. According to the report, 85% of managers see wellbeing of their team as part of their responsibility, yet only 30% of managers have taken part in mental health training.
Unhappy workers usually don’t deliver the best results for either employer or customers. The report mentions issues such as workplace bullying, which can affect work performance, and often results in losing a good employee, which could be avoided.
So, what steps can organisations take to help employees experiencing mental health issues at work? The simple answer is that workplaces need to create environments where mental health is normalised, and where conversations about it can be
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open and authentic, without fear of discrimination. However, this isn’t always straightforward, as each organisation is different in terms of their starting point, the working environment and the existing support systems in place.
The Mental Health at Work report found that, while the climate for discussing mental health is improving, many employees avoid raising the subject with colleagues or managers for fear of discrimination and victimisation. And this concern, in some cases, is justified, with 11% of respondents who disclosed a mental health issue subsequently facing disciplinary action, demotion or dismissal.
Some organisations, however, are making inroads in this area, including, for example, media agency MediaCom and building surveying consultants Malcolm Hollis. Creating awareness and education around mental health issues together with innovative and bespoke training, particularly for line managers can go a long way to gradually changing the organisational culture, and by removing the stigma through normalising the discussion around mental health.
Tackling mental health in the workplace centres on building confidence to have open conversations and providing the right signposting and support at the appropriate time.
The answer for most businesses is to set targets around mental health and then develop a plan over the coming months and years. The aim is to build understanding and action through awareness and training initiatives to develop skills until this becomes a ‘business as usual’ activity throughout the employee lifecycle. Organisations should invest in a programme of training, and increase literacy around mental health, equipping managers with the skills and confidence to manage it.
By taking a bespoke and long-term strategic approach, built around a framework that can be measured and embedded into processes across the employee lifecycle, organisations can better secure their own long-term health as well as that of their employees.
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