Q2 2021 | 13 Mental Health in the Workplace • Introducing temperature checks or wellbeing check-ins to meetings. A simple activity in which you begin a meeting by sharing your wellbeing on a score of 1 to 10. This can help your colleagues and manager to understand how you are doing and what support you might need, alongside a similar understanding of your own colleagues. • Introducing Wellness Action Plans or similar wellbeing conversations, as well as oneto-one or supervised meetings with staff. A Wellness Action Plan provides a simple framework to shape wellbeing conversations with your staff to discuss and understand the factors that impact their mental health and wellbeing; how this manifests itself, how it might impact their work and performance, what they as a staff member can do to proactively manage their mental health, and what support you as a manager can provide. It is an incredibly useful self-reflective tool for staff and for managers who are less confident in having conversations around mental health, as it provides the structure to hold such a meeting. However, good mental health is not just about employee satisfaction. In fact, poor mental health in the workplace can have a huge knockon effect for your business. The average cost of poor mental health to employers per employee in the private sector is £1,716 and while the number of days taken off work due to any type of illness is around 25% lower than a decade ago, various studies suggest that presenteeism is increasing year on year. According to Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Index results, having an unmanageable workload can mean people are up to twice as likely to have poor mental health, often resulting in staff struggling to concentrate; finding it more difficult to juggle a number of tasks or competing priorities; putting off challenging tasks; having difficulty in making decisions; or taking longer to complete tasks. It couldn’t be more clear - no matter where you work and what you do, paying attention to mental health in the workplace has never been more important. Mental Health at Work, a website curated by Mind, the mental health charity, is your first stop to help you find what you need for better workplace wellbeing. The website is also a key enabler for organisations as they implement the Mental Health at Work Commitment and embed best practice into company culture. With plenty of tools and real-life stories, the website makes navigating the workplace mental health landscape easy. You’ll find original content that includes a range of tips, ideas, examples, and thought pieces on workplace mental health as it relates to different issues, people and industries. Everyone’s experience is different, and by shedding light on these struggles, the website seeks to normalise mental health, and support organisations of all sizes in making a positive change.
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