MENTAL HEALTH & STRESS
A CULTURE OF TRUST
Phil Floyd, Head of Investigations at workplace relationships specialist CMP, explores how trust, communication and the ability to speak up can help protect workplace wellbeing.
Workplaces are making more people ill. Seriously ill, says the International Labour Organisation. More than 840,000 employees die each year around the world because of health conditions relating to heart problems and poor mental health that have been made worse by work pressures: factors such as long working hours, job insecurity, feelings of being unappreciated, harassment and bullying.
The ILO points to the recent impact of digitalisation, threats from AI, more remote working and less secure employment models. Whatever the causes, there’s clearly a need for finding a new balance for workers and workplaces. The ILO argues for the need to manage the psychosocial risks of work by looking at job design, performance systems and workplace culture and their impact on wellbeing. Job design and management approaches, it says, need to be included as part of occupational health safety systems.
WHY PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY MATTERS
Rather than the details of job roles and concessions around work patterns or even long hours, what really matters is feelings of control and trust in management and colleagues: the levels of psychological safety. The reports of rising stress and poor mental wellbeing, can all be linked back to people feeling unable to be themselves, do their job the best they can and speak up about problems.
It’s a situation recently flagged by Mental Health First Aid England. They found that 43% of the 18- to 24-year- old employees they surveyed did not feel it was safe to speak up about workplace issues; around a third were thinking about leaving their job because of a lack of psychological safety.
The reality is that the sources of workplace stress can be very simple – and will be straightforward to address, but only when problems are talked about openly and in constructive ways. When a US university looked at the causes of workplace stress over a period of 60 years among 800,000 employees, they discovered the biggest culprit was a lack of clarity over expectations. All the sleepless nights, conflict with colleagues, unhappiness and walk-outs – because of that.
BUILDING TRUST AT WORK
Occupational health (OH) should be leading on building feelings of trust and psychological safety as a powerful platform for wellbeing, whatever challenges and insecurities are being faced. That means broadening OH strategies to include attention to workplace environments and the systems and practices that affect everyday experiences: such as whether employees feel able to speak up and have difficult conversations when they need to, as a means of moving forward and dealing with what might be a simple misunderstanding, a
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minor cause for unease, that can either be easily cleared up – and not be allowed to fester over years into de- motivation, disconnection and ill-health.
TURNING CONVERSATIONS INTO ACTION
Practical approaches include making sure there are safe and trusted channels for speaking up and access to in- house services like mediation – not as a last resort, but a constructive means of dealing with grievances and issues before they can escalate into long formal processes that are both time-consuming and stressful. There should be particular attention to levels of conversation skills throughout an organisation, ensuring that line managers in particular are able to deal with difficult conversations in the best ways, based on qualities such as listening, curiosity, empathy and self-awareness – allowing for diverse perspectives and welcoming all ideas equally, not resorting to blame or judgement. Tools like neutral assessment or Psychological Safety Index are valuable ways of understanding dynamics within teams facing issues with stress, to see how they’re working, the root causes of problems, and track the impact of OH measures to resolve them.
Ultimately, psychological safety is built through everyday conversations. When people feel trusted and able to speak up, problems can be addressed before they escalate – protecting both employee wellbeing and organisational health.
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