Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace
When looking at managing mental wellbeing and stress from an organisational perspective, there are two key aspects you need to consider:
- Preventing mental ill health caused by work.
- Dealing with mental ill health when an individual is at work (whether or not the cause is work).
Duty of care to employees
Employers have a duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) to protect the health, safety and welfare of all employees at work, which includes from psychological hazards. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has identified six key areas of work design that, if not properly managed, are associated with poor health, lower productivity, increased accident and sickness absence rates and can cause stress in the workplace.
Contact UsThe Management Standards are:
DEMANDS - workload, work patterns and work environment
CONTROL - how much say the person has in the way they do their work
SUPPORT - amount of encouragement, sponsorship and resources provided by the organisation, manager and colleagues
RELATIONSHIPS – promoting positive ways to avoid conflict and dealing with unacceptable behaviour
ROLE – whether people understand their role and ensuring no conflicting roles
CHANGE – how organisational change is managed and communicated
Preventing and Managing Mental Health in the Workplace
Have a good mental health policy in place.
Ensure employee wellbeing is integrated into other policies where appropriate.
Consider wellbeing strategies, such as lunch and learn sessions, wellbeing champions and wellbeing campaigns.
The organisational stress risk assessment should be communicated with employees and reviewed regularly to ensure that risks are well controlled.
Have a positive culture. Good leadership and management behaviours are important. Lack of managerial support is the most common reason cited for stress, anxiety and depression due to work factors.
Consider having an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)/Mental Health First Aiders for support to help employees before their health deteriorates or if their health has already started to deteriorate.
The role of the line manager and good communication is important as this has a direct impact on how employees feel. It is important to be able to have: open and honest dialogue; the manager is likely to identify changes in behaviour that could be indicative of problems; the manager should act as a role model; the manager is the gatekeeper to be able to take action and provide appropriate support to reduce the risk of ill health occurring.
Encourage and promote healthy lifestyles and healthy work practices, such as healthy food options available, flexibility to adjust working hours to be able to go to the gym or exercise during the day, meditation sessions and screen breaks.
Conduct an organisation-wide stress audit. This looks at the HSE management standards (the six key areas of work pressures identified by the Health and Safety Executive). This involves employees answering questions on the six areas. Ideally this should be done in teams, so that hotspots can be identified. The idea is to spot trends to help prevent problems for all employees, rather than identify specific individuals that have a problem. Once the key areas of pressure are identified, an action plan needs to be written to identify possible solutions. This ideally should have each team member’s input. The HSE have a number of tools to assist with this.
Supporting mental health in the workplace
- Training line managers to identify when there may be a problem and how to manage it.
- Use and promote an EAP/Mental Health First Aiders. An EAP helps employees deal with personal problems that might adversely affect their work performance, health and wellbeing.
- Perform an individual stress risk assessment if an employee is struggling at work due to mental ill-health.
- Identify possible temporary adjustments that may help an employee, such as reduced hours, flexibility, more breaks to manage symptoms, reduced responsibilities, longer deadlines and working from home. Talk to the person – they may be the best judge of what would help them at that time.
- Occupational health referral to understand fitness for work or appropriate adjustments to support the employee at work.
We can help support you with managing all aspects of mental health at work. We can provide help with:
- Mental health policy development
- Organisational and individual stress risk assessments
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Counselling or wellbeing support for employees
- Mental Health First Aid training
- Management training on mental health issues in the workplace
- Stress management and resilience training for employees and managers
- Workplace wellbeing programmes
Find out how we can support you in managing mental health in the workplace.
