Why manage mental health?
Approximately one in six employees in every organisation is having mental health problems at any one time.
Although employers cannot control all the factors that affect mental health they have a key role in managing the working conditions that can have an influence on stress and mental health, as well as ensuring people with mental ill health have the support they need and are not discriminated against or stigmatised.
This will help employers to:
- Retain valuable, skilled, and experienced staff, saving time and costs
- Reduce sickness absence and create a healthier workplace
- Enhance safety and increase productivity
What do you need to do as an employer?
- Develop and publish a Mental Health at Work Policy. Ideally this should be part of an overall wellbeing strategy.
- Train managers to spot the signs of employees having psychological or emotional difficulties and to know what help is available.
- One form of training for line managers and certain other members of staff could be as mental health first aiders. These employees could also be trained to deal with the aftermath of a traumatic incident. The procedures they must follow should be clearly set out in the Mental Health at Work policy.
- Identify any work-related factors and make reasonable adjustments to support people, both while they are at work and upon returning to work after a sickness absence.
- Promote awareness of mental health issues and create a culture where employees feel they can talk about their concerns. Suggestions on how to do that include the following.
- Nominate “mental health champions” to build an open culture and destigmatise mental health issues, e.g. through awareness days, surveys, posters, talks.
- Offer a range of options for support and ways that people can ask for help (managers, HR person, mental health champion, mental health first aiders, so different people can be helped in different ways.
- Communicate all these options to the workforce through as many different points and media as possible.
- Furnish managers and trained staff with clear information on how to respond (i.e. the options of where to refer staff, the company policy on days off work, who they are allowed to discuss the employee with, etc).
