Employee Mental Health Matters

It always has and it always will and thankfully now, it is becoming more talked about by celebrities and the general public too, some taboos and stigmas are being broken down, and the more people that are happier being more open about their struggles with poor mental health, and how it affects them and what they do to try and improve it. It’s certainly getting more attention and understanding as the whole world is for the first time,  sharing quite a similar experience of displacement, disruption and emotional and psychological distress right now. Employee mental health is being tested and challenged like never before. Employee engagement and the employee experience will also be impacted, it goes hand in hand.

Mental health is of course also directly linked to our emotional health and then our attitudes, resulting actions and behaviours. Like luck, and our physical condition, mental health can be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Do we always spot where we are on the scale though of bad to good or unwell to well? Quite likely not. It manifests itself in increasingly bad habits, or lack of self care or poor performance in any number of our lives, such as our relationships with others and how well we perform at work.

Workplace, any place. when home becomes the office and also your place of work such as the case is for many during the Coronavirus crisis, who is responsible for a persons mental health, when that person is also an employee?

Much like Health and Safety in or outside the workplace, it is both the individual and the employer who has a duty of care to the individual. Employers, have a legal duty of care to their employees. This means as an employer, you’re required to take all necessary precautions to ensure the physical and mental well-being of your staff. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1992 requires employers to assess mental health work-related issues to measure the levels of risk to staff.

Demonstrating concern for the physical and mental health of your workers shouldn’t just be seen as a legal duty – there’s a clear business case, too.  It can be a key factor in building trust and reinforcing your commitment to your employees, and can help improve staff retention, boost productivity and pave the way for greater employee engagement.

Legally, employers must abide by relevant health & safety and employment law, as well as the common law duty of care. They also have a moral and ethical duty not to cause, or fail to prevent, physical or psychological injury, and must fulfil their responsibilities with regard to personal injury and negligence claims.

Requirements under an employer’s duty of care are wide-ranging and may manifest themselves in many different ways, such as:

• Clearly defining jobs and undertaking risk assessments
• Ensuring a safe work environment
• Providing adequate training and feedback on performance
• Ensuring that staff do not work excessive hours
• Providing areas for rest and relaxation
• Protecting staff from bullying or harassment, either from colleagues or third parties
• Protecting staff from discrimination
• Providing communication channels for employees to raise concerns
• Consulting employees on issues which concern them.

An employer can be deemed to have breached their duty of care by failing to do everything that was reasonable in the circumstances to keep the employee safe from harm. Employees also have responsibilities for their health and well-being at work – for example, they are entitled by law to refuse to undertake work that isn’t safe without fear of disciplinary action.

 

Workplace Mental Health First Aiders (MHFAs)

A growing trend has been for employers to train MHFAs in the workplace. So how does that translate in to practice when the normal workplace is disrupted like in the Coronavirus crisis where many employees are working at home, in different environments and under different pressures? Typically a reputable MHFA training course such as that from St Johns workplace mental health first aid training would cover a wide variety of important mental health topics including;

• Action planning for using MHFA
• Alcohol, drugs and anxiety disorders
• Alcohol, drugs and mental health
• Alcohol, drugs and psychosis
• Bipolar disorder
• Cognitive distortions and cognitive behavioural therapy
• Crisis first aid for acute psychosis
• Crisis first aid after a traumatic event
• Depression in the workplace
• Eating disorders
• First aid for anxiety disorders
• First aid for depression
• First aid to assist a suicidal crisis
• Impact of mental health issues
• Non-judgemental listening skills
• Personality disorders
• Recovery and building resources
• Risk factors for depression
• Risk factors for psychosis
• Schizophrenia
• Self-care
• Self-harm
• Stigma and discrimination
• Suicide figures
• Symptoms of depression
• The Mental Health First Aid action plan
• Treatment and resources for anxiety disorders
• Treatment and resources for depression
• Treatment and resources for psychosis
• Warning signs of developing psychosis
• What is an anxiety disorder?
• What is depression?
• What is mental health?
• What is psychosis?
• Why Mental Health First Aid?

Mental health, much like physical health has many many facets and specific conditions, from mild, to moderate to chronic or acute. Each condition or affliction or combination can negatively affect or even debilitate an individual and their ability to function. It has a direct correlation to how much they are able to have a productive and healthy life either inside and outside the workplace. Reaching your potential is severely impacted when poor mental health is left unaddressed and at the extreme end of the scale can result in self-sabotaging and destructive behaviour and at the extreme, even suicide.

Remember persona is Latin for personality. Each of us presents different sides of our personalty as we wish to at any one time and to whom we choose.  It is just a facet of our personality and just a moment in time.  We are not able to spot mental illness simply by looking at someone, the countless stream of social media posts prove that every day, with their filtered and optimised representations of great, so called happy, successful moments of peoples lives.  The face of depression is one we also often don’t recognise, even in close family members, which means it must be even harder for an employer to identify mental health issues as the spend different quality of time with individuals in a work persona.

If you want to better support your employees, remote, home working or in any workplace setting, try our employee mood monitor with or without our counselling mental health first aider well-being programme services and do your bit as an employer and as an individual to #SaveLives

 

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Engage & Prosper is a UK based privately owned Employee Engagement Consultancy and Social Enterprise, on a mission to help organisations develop a highly productive and fulfilling workplace culture, with their people, through enhanced employee engagement strategies, fabulous and effective internal communications platforms and tailored reward and recognition programmes.

For more information on Engage & Prosper or to discover how we can help you achieve your organisational and people goals please call +44 (0) 330 223 0464 or find out more at www.engageandprosper.com