How to support mental health at work

How can employers play a greater role in supporting the mental health of their employees?

Events like Mental Health Awareness week are helping more people to broach the subject of mental health. But we still live in a world where people face challenges getting the help they need.

Work is a big part of most adults’ lives – and therefore the workplace is a key setting for understanding and addressing the problem.

Many workers are still reluctant to talk about their mental wellbeing. For instance, 45% of employees who take time off work due to their mental health give another reason for their absence.¹ There may, therefore, be a greater need for employers to appreciate how to manage mental ill health sensitively. This requires taking a different approach than they might with other forms of illness.

When employers create workplace cultures where people can be themselves, it is easier for people to speak about mental health concerns without fear. If companies can also offer support through their employee benefits packages, it is likely that mental health problems will be dealt with before they become more severe. This could cut down on suffering as well as save money in treatment costs and absenteeism.

As part of their cover, many ‘employee assistance programmes’ (EAPs) offer cognitive behavioural therapy or counselling to support psychological wellbeing. These programmes can provide invaluable support to those with one or several issues, whether those relate to work, legal matters, relationships, money or health. Moreover, proactive and preventative services provided through EAPs have been shown to be highly effective.  Employee benefits provider Unum says that counselling provided through its programme improves mental health for 92% of its users.² 

Deloitte calculates that the return on investment in workplace mental health intervention averages £4.20 for every £1 spent.³

Offering this kind of support should be combined with providing managers, and employees themselves, with the skills and autonomy to deal with the causes of stress within their teams, so as to improve employees’ health, job satisfaction and productivity. But perhaps the most important insight for employers to recognise is that there is no single solution to the problem. No two employees – or indeed organisations – are the same, and therefore responses need to be tailored to the specific risks and needs of a workforce.

There are several steps employers can take to address the causes and symptoms of stress in the workplace:

Culture

• Develop a mental health policy – having a concrete policy reassures employees that their company cares about employee wellbeing.
• Create a culture of openness and awareness by encouraging people to talk about mental health.

Working practices

• Encourage staff to take regular breaks away from their desks and get out of the office to reduce stress.
• Review job descriptions to make sure these set out clear and realistic expectations of staff. If not, this gap might contribute to, or even cause, distress amongst employees.
• Where possible, allow flexible working, and accommodations for all staff to work from home – during a period of stress or worry, coming in to the office could aggravate illness. Give employees the option to work from home if they need to be in more relaxed surroundings.

Communication

• Use staff newsletters, posters in communal areas, and other internal communications to raise awareness of mental health.
• Conduct regular staff surveys to take a temperature check on wellbeing and feed back the results and any progress to staff.
• Make sure staff know what support is available through your intranet, noticeboard or employee handbook and find opportunities throughout the year to remind people what is available and how to access it.

Managers

• Provide training and resources for managers or a member of your team to empower them to spot the signs of mental ill health. If employees know someone is knowledgeable about mental health matters, they may feel more comfortable in coming forward to discuss any problems they have at work, or even at home.
• Make sure managers spend time with staff and get to know them – this makes it easier to spot when they’re struggling or behaving uncharacteristically at work.

Internal support

• Provide accessible guidance on how to manage stress.
• Create a peer-to-peer support system so people can talk with colleagues about their concerns.
• Consider providing an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for additional support for staff if they’re having difficulties, whether inside or outside the workplace. EAPs can offer a range of services, often including face-to-face counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy.

¹ Mental Health Foundation, Unum and Oxford Economics, Added Value: Mental health as a workplace asset, November 2016
² www.unum.co.uk/media/counselling-provided-by-unums-eap-improves-mental-health-for-92-percent-of-users, March 2018
³ www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/public-sector/deloitte-uk-mental-health-employers-monitor-deloitte-oct-2017.pdf, October 2017