Education and understanding: key to supporting mental health in the workplace
We gathered 160 business leaders, mental health experts and sporting personalities to look at how mental health affects employees, and what businesses can do to better support them.
We looked at the key barriers to supporting mental wellbeing and how to address each one. Five key barriers were identified and we’re going to look at each of these over the coming weeks. In this article we focus on the first one: education, literacy and understanding of mental health.
Encouraging openness
We know that an important step in addressing a problem – whether it’s emotional, physical or practical – is to be able to talk about it. Employers believe their staff will talk to them if they had a mental health problem, but in practice they don’t.
Our research showed that 78% of employers believe their staff would talk to them, yet only 4% of employees who have experienced depression and 5% who have experienced anxiety said they feel able to.
And that’s a problem.
The problem: fear of negative perception from others
Business leaders at our mental health event looked at the reasons why employees won’t talk to their employers. The main reason is because they fear the response.
Employees worry that their managers won’t think they’re up to the job if they say they’re struggling with their mental health.
They fear discrimination, subconscious bias from their manager, their career being affected, being seen as a failure and not belonging. They worry their colleagues will treat them differently, will feel they have to pick up the slack and end up resenting them. They believe their issue will be seen as a personal issue and not the responsibility of their employer.
Some of these fears may be founded. While none of us would think twice about enquiring how someone is recovering from a cold or an injury, many of us would be less comfortable enquiring after a person’s emotional wellbeing. There is a taboo, and where there’s a taboo, there’s misunderstanding.
The solution: education
As with all taboos, the answer is in education. If we improve our understanding of mental health, we feel more comfortable talking about it, and are better able to help.
The workplace is the perfect place to implement such education. The Government’s commissioned report ‘Thriving at Work’, found that the number of people forced to stop work as a result of mental health problems was 50% higher than for those with physical health problems. So employers are directly affected.
Not only that, we know that it’s good for people to work, and work can actually support mental wellbeing. If we can mitigate the likelihood of absence from mental ill-health, support those that are unable to work, and can make it easier for them to return to work if they have been absent, it’s a win-win for them and the workplace.
Education needs to start at the top. When senior managers are on board with supporting mental health, the company follows.
Line managers help set the tone in an organisation. Formal training can give managers the knowledge to better understand mental health, identify when an employee has a problem, and know how to signpost employees to support.
In practice: training
Training is one of the most effective ways to educate people about mental health, as well as how to support it.
Key areas that are helpful to cover are:
- Teach line managers the practices and behaviours that are required to create an environment that is conducive to promoting positive mental health.
- Dispel the myth that mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety are weaknesses. Instead illustrate the scientific evidence that these are illnesses.
- Help employees recognise symptoms in themselves and others.
- Provide guidance and knowledge on how best to manage employees that become ill.
- Learn how to reintegrate someone back into work after returning from illness: often a key component of recovery.
Prevention is better than cure. Work can be a key cause of stress, but there are a number of simple steps that can be taken to minimise the chance of it taking hold in the first place. For example, discouraging employees from looking at emails in the evening, setting an example of not working habitually late, encouraging staff to take their annual-leave entitlement.
Specialist mental health training can help a company identify key stressors in their organisation, provide practical ways to minimise the effect, encourage positive mental wellbeing, and give managers the confidence to deal with issues should they arise.
The employee benefits industry has taken mental health seriously for a long time, and there is a wealth of direct support for employees and companies attached to many benefits such as private medical insurance, employee assistance programmes and Group Protection insurance. It’s a good starting point to look at what’s already offered within any existing products, and make use of them.
For those that don’t already offer such benefits, if and when they are considered, it’s a good idea to ensure that support for mental health is included. When assessing employee benefits it’s always worthwhile knowing what can be covered and how support is provided.
Start the conversation
The first step is to encourage a conversation. A work environment that enables employees to raise concerns about their mental health, and where a manager feels confident in how to respond, is one that will thrive.
An open conversation followed up with the right action, can prevent escalation, expedite recovery and remove the stigma around mental health. When mental health is viewed without stigma, in the same way that physical health is, then we’ll be making progress.
To read more about our mental health forum, and the challenges and solutions in dealing with mental health in the workplace, please download our report: Mental Health in the Workplace: Challenges and Solutions.
This article was supplied by Legal & General.
In partnership with Legal & General
One of the UK's leading group protection providers with over 85 years' experience.
