Key components for a mentally healthy workplace

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) recently wrote about how workplaces can ensure that they have everything in place to properly support employee mental wellbeing.

The CIPD is a professional body for Human Resources, learning and development. Rachel Suff, the lead on Health and Wellbeing in its Public Policy team, broke down three key ways to effectively manage mental health in the workplace.

1) Prevention is key

Mental ill-health is a growing concern for employers and organisations this past few years, particularly this side of COVID, with 76% of CIPD research respondents in the last twelve months reporting some form of stress-related absence from work.

Heavy workloads topped the list, with ‘management style’ being the next one down. This highlights the importance of good quality management at every level, thus (hopefully) preventing workloads and other problems from spiralling out of control.

2) Prioritise resources for maximum benefit

Historical research shows that many organisations reactively deal with mental health and other healthcare issues, putting their efforts into support after illness rather than attempting to keep it from becoming an issue in the first place.

Both of these things are necessary in an effective working environment, as sometimes it can be possible to prevent an issue from manifesting itself. Whereas on other occasions it may only be possible to support a member of the team who has become ill for a large variety of reasons.

This means fostering working conditions that can prevent or lessen the impact on wellbeing, offering acceptable and manageable workloads, and encouraging a healthy work-life balance.

Rachel Suff writes:

“Education, training, and awareness-raising for individuals on mental health issues are all positive steps, but they need to be part of an organisational framework that is focused on prevention and early intervention.”

The Health and Safety Executive has some useful resources on stress risk assessments here for small businesses to utilise.

3) Work alongside line managers

Line managers are vital in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of staff. As well as overseeing absences and returns to work, they are also responsible for their workloads and managing policies such as flexible working, which are two example components of employee wellbeing.

However, the CIPD research shows that fewer than half of workplaces train managers to support employees regarding mental health matters.

It is important that line managers have the training they need to properly emotionally support their staff, as managers themselves are likely to be under exactly the same kind of pressures as the staff they are managing.

When mental health matters often encompass personal circumstances as well as working ones, it often falls on managers to deal with complex individual cases. Therefore, training and competence, as well as time to be able to deal with such matters is critical for all concerned.

Further reading

Stress at work claims – Oakwood Solicitors

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