The 10th of October 2022 is World Mental Health Day, with the ultimate aim to make mental health and well-being for all a global priority. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of prioritising employee mental health and wellbeing and there are many business benefits to making mental health matter at work. A national survey of employees found that almost half would look to move jobs if their employer didn’t provide enough support in relation to their mental health. Mental ill health costs UK employers approximately £56 billion each year through absenteeism, staff turnover & presenteeism. And we have all heard and seen data that demonstrates that happy & healthy employees are more productive and committed within their roles. In an ideal world, each organisation will have a comprehensive employee mental health & wellbeing strategy, but if you don’t then there are many ways to still positivity impact in this area.
Simple ways that employers can support employee mental health in the workplace can be:
- Stay connected to your people. Employees are more likely to open up about issues they are facing if they feel they have a close relationship with their manager.
- Promote healthy living at work. Take employees for a meeting outside, deliver good food and drinks to meetings, make sure regular breaks are being taken by all.
- Encourage openness around mental health.
- Train managers to support the mental health and wellbeing of their teams.
- Create a Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy.
- Make sure that mental health illness is regarded by all as equal to physical illness in the workplace.
Mind offer a resource that offers guidance on how to support staff who are experiencing a mental health problem resource4.pdf (mind.org.uk) and the Mental Health Foundation have published a guide to supporting mental health at work How-to-support-mental-health-at-work.pdf (mentalhealth.org.uk)
