Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions published a report in 2017 called At tipping point? Amongst other things, it highlighted some of the challenges in improving workplace mental health and wellbeing. On revisiting those and other challenges, we look to understand if they still exist today.
Priorities
There are probably no words to describe how difficult these last years has been for those who have suffered loss and hardship because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Organisations are also finding it extremely tough. Unemployment rising, with redundancies on the increase, then staffing shortages as we try to figure out what normal looks like again. Cash flow under increasing pressure and uncertainty around every corner.
Is mental health still a priority? Arguably, yes. When we answer the question in isolation.
We see more organisations than ever looking to improve working conditions. Many large organisations signing an open letter in The Times, to pledge commitment. Others quietly making improvements out of the public eye. Awareness has never been higher with VIPs such as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at the forefront of TV campaigns.
Our challenge is this.
Are you doing the right thing? Are you laser focussed on employee wellbeing or are you following a tick box exercise because everyone seems to be doing it? It’s not enough to just be doing something, you need to be doing the right thing.
What is the right thing? Gaining insight into what is happening in your organisation is the starting point.
Insight
When we ask organisations if they know the state of their organisation’s mental health, they may say a range of things:
- Our engagement score has improved
- Absence levels are manageable
- Staff turnover is normal for our industry
- We’re as productive as we can be
- We do loads of team building and fun things
In other words – no. None of these tell you whether your employees are coping with workloads, feeling supported by management, lacking motivation or feeling stressed and anxious about anything work related.
Insight must be gathered by asking the right questions. If you are serious about doing the right thing and doing things right, make sure you invest in gathering insight. A wrongly or obscurely worded question can make the company look great, but it does nothing for wellbeing. Make sure you involve employees, ask the scary questions, and listen to the answers objectively.
Proactive v Reactive
It’s key when looking to improve mental fitness that you consider preventative measures first. Too many times we see organisation publicising EAP take up and Mental Health First Aiders. These are not proactive measure, they are supportive yes, but they are not preventing the issues in the first place. Ideally you should never need either of these because your policies and practices should prevent the type of decline that requires them.
What are we talking about here?
Work related stress, anxiety and depression is now the leading cause of absence in the UK (hse.gov.uk) with over 50% of all cases and 12.8million days lost in the last year. Around 70% of these cases relate to workload and lack of management support.
No amount of Mental Health First Aiders can change those statistics.
Until you allow employees to talk about their work concerns without fear of repercussion and tackle the root causes, things won’t change. This starts with leadership role modelling behaviours consistent with a mentally healthy workplace. It includes active listening, constructive dialogue, two-way trust and positive working relationships.
Return on investment
When resources are as tight as they are right now for organisations, why would you invest in mental wellbeing without understanding the return it will provide?
To work out a return you need to know:
- The objective, problem, or opportunity
- The potential benefits
- The cost / the investment itself
- The impact on day to day operations and resources
These elements are interlinked but must start with an understanding of the objective, ask yourself:
- Why are you considering taking measures to support workplace mental health?
- Is there an issue in your organisation?
- How do you understand the problem better?
Once you understand the problem you want to solve or opportunity you want to take, you can consider the benefits and of course, the cost of investment should never outweigh the benefit unless you are thinking about it form an efficiency perspective.
For this and other considerations check out our previous article – The business case
Best Practice
What do we know about what works?
There are guides pointed at individuals, how to best manage your own mental health. There are guides for all sizes of organisation and for leadership. There are organisations similar to Mind & Mission out there to support you every step of the way. How do you know what is “best”?
Organisations tend to benchmark, it is the tried and tested way of measuring performance of products, services or practices against those of another business. Is benchmarking relevant when it comes to mental health?
We would argue there is no such thing as best practice, only best practice for you and your organisation. You are unique and have unique individuals working for you. What they need from you will be different to any other organisation so why waste time trying to measure up to and mimic others?
The measure of successful mental health policies and practices should always be an internal one. Internal clarity of purpose and a vision based on what your employees need to perform at their best with trust and respect for you as leaders.
A can of worms?
Opening a can of worms – “to create a situation in which doing something leads to many more problems.”
This is a phrase we are hearing more and more in the last few weeks.
Leaders are hesitant to delve too deeply into what mental health difficulties employees are facing in their own organisation because of the fear that the result will be many more problems to resolve, on top of the many problems that exist.
It’s completely understandable. We are wired to avoid difficulty, our mind does this automatically, sometimes we have little control over it.
In today’s circumstances though, there is no doubt at all that many are suffering from mental health decline. Every time we open a paper or scroll through social media it’s all over the headlines.
What type of employer do you want to be?
One who avoids the unknown, only for it to surface with a vengeance at the worst time and cost the organisation an unknown toll? Or one who faces it head on, is clear about the issues and risks faced and is equipped and prepared to proactively tackle what lies ahead?
We hope it’s the latter because your people need you to be that leader.
Where do you start?
The answer is simple – yourself
How you respond to mental illness, everywhere around you, on the TV, in the daily press, at work is what matters first and foremost. You have your own unconscious bias, your own judgements which define you as a person.
You own belief system as an individual is imbedded in your leadership style and the organisations culture and values.
If this isn’t something you recognise in yourself, then consider some coaching to gain that self-awareness.
Once you know where you are in your own mind, you can then start focussing on the minds of your employees. Talk to them, find out how they feel about work. If you are leading a larger organisation seek help in the form of specialists (such as Mind & Mission) who can support you to ask the right questions and gain insight.
Without insight you will be making assumptions and simply guessing at the answers. Having the right information sets a baseline from which improvement targets can be set and tracked.
Limited resources
There is little doubt that resources, while always finite have become more so in the last few months due to lockdown and the ongoing restrictions facing us.
For some businesses, spending precious cash on workplace mental health just doesn’t seem like an option.
Our question is however, can you afford to do nothing?
Doing nothing, increases the risk that your employees are suffering without your knowledge: they may not even realise it themselves. This could lead to presenteeism, absence or worse, long-term absence.
There is much you can do without spending physical cash, such as simply listening. If you have a good relationship with your employees, they are likely to tell you the truth about what worries them at work and otherwise.
If you run a large organisation, do a listening session every day for a month and invite your people along in groups to voice any concerns.
If you can gauge concerns and do something about it without having to bring in outside expertise, then all the better. The solutions may be simpler that you realise. It may also be the case just feeling heard improves the situation for your people.
If you do feel you need support, call us at Mind & Mission. Our services are for all budgets and are specifically tailored to give you the best outcome for your spend. We also work with clients on long term projects where the cost can be split over several months.
