Keebles' Employment team recently hosted their HR Network event, 'Mental Wellbeing - looking after yourself and your team', which focussed on how employers need to effectively manage the mental health and wellbeing of themselves and their team.

To help mark Stress Awareness Month, Charlotte Middleton, Associate Solicitor, from our Employment team shares a guide to ensuring your workplace culture promotes positive mental health and wellbeing.

What is mental health and wellbeing?

  • Mental health is part of our overall health and is linked to our physical health.
  • Our mental health and wellbeing affect how we feel, think and behave, and affects our perception of how we see the world. It affects our work life, home life and relationships with others.
  • Having a good mental health and wellbeing will help us have a more productive life and enable us to enjoy our lives at work and at home.
  • Mental health can change over time and various factors can affect it. With the right support and treatment, your mental health and wellbeing can improve.
  • Everyone has a different threshold and capacity for dealing with stress.

Looking after yourself and others

You must look after yourself first before looking after others. It is not selfish to ensure that you are okay first before looking after others.

  • What are the current causes of stress in your life? - e.g. balancing work and home life
  • What are your coping strategies? - e.g. exercising, sleeping, eating healthily, your support network
  • Which are helpful?
  • Which are less so? - e.g. drinking alcohol, working too hard
  • Team activity - e.g. group walks, group exercising, team challenges and activities

Language and culture around mental health

When discussing mental health, we often find it easier to associate it with negative words rather than positive words. That is because there is perceived to be a stigma around the term, 'mental health'.

Be mindful of the language you or others use and call out or challenge anyone who uses derogative terms.

Be aware of associative discrimination (this refers to discrimination based on an individual's association with another person belonging to a relevant protected group and with mental health, this could be a disability).

Factors influencing mental health and wellbeing

There are many factors that influence mental health and wellbeing including childhood, education, gender, and ethnic origins. It is important to familiarise yourself with the full list of factors when understanding an employees' individual mental health.

Looking after your team

How to notice if someone in the team is struggling:

  • Performance drops/mistakes
  • Personality changes
  • Appearance
  • Working relationships - colleagues, clients, customers, service users
  • Disengagement
  • Absenteeism/presenteeism

Employees may be off sick due to mental health but will say it is for a different illness as they do not want to be judged or stigmatised.

Managers and HR professionals are encouraged to be curious - ask them:

  • How are they?
  • What's going on for them?
  • Is something happening at home?
  • Is there a new employee that they do not get along with?
  • Is there a new manager and they cannot adapt to the new managerial style?
  • What can we do to help them?

Before beginning the formal procedures regarding the performance or capability issues, satisfy yourself that you have asked the above questions.

Get the employee on your side. Ask them privately and offer to talk to them - let them know that you are there for them.

Acknowledge that they may not want to talk to you, but is there someone else they can talk to such as another line manager, or someone that they are closer to in the team? Refer them to their GP or Occupational Health.

Consider the different options that are available to your member of staff and think about how you will talk to them - face to face, by telephone or video call, in a private room or out of the workplace?

The important roles of HR managers and people managers

Consider encouraging the following:

  • Taking a break during the working day
  • Try and get away from the desk
  • During winter months, encouraging staff to take a longer lunch break so they can eat and go out for a walk when it is still light
  • Be conscious of the time you are sending emails
  • Try to separate home and work life
  • Eating well and exercising
  • Development and talent management - will build employee's confidence and self esteem
  • Recognising performance and rewarding will have a positive impact in your staff's wellbeing

The business reasons to encourage the above:

  • Attraction and retention - if you look after your staff well, they feel more valued and there is a less turnover rate.
  • Happy and healthy staff are more likely to be engaged, motivated and productive, and more likely to come to work therefore lower staff absence and turnover rate
  • Happy staff = happy clients
  • Staff who are unhappy and disinterested in their job will impact upon customer service, which will ultimately impact upon the business

The five pillars of wellbeing

  1. Connect - connect with your staff
  2. Be active - encourage team challenges and activities
  3. Take notice - notice that people are struggling
  4. Learn - new skills will give confidence and improve self-esteem
  5. Give - support each other, family members and communities. Get in touch with others to check they are OK

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.