More Than a Duty of Care

As stated in our last article How Common Are Mental Health Problems the health and wellbeing of your workforce should be a priority because it’s the right thing to do and not because it’s a duty.

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  • Man sat in a chair smiling with a post it note on his head.

While it might require initial commitment in time and budget the longer-term benefits to your employees now and those of the future is huge.

  • In 2017/18 stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 44% of all work-related ill health cases and 57% of all working days lost due to ill health.
  • The main work factors cited by respondents in the Labour Force Survey as causing work-related stress, depression or anxiety were workload pressures, including tight deadlines and too much responsibility and a lack of managerial support.

The facts shared above show how mental health impacts business productivity and how ‘work’ can impact an individual.

It’s worth mentioning that work is not the only stress factor or cause of mental health problems which can come about because of a bereavement, relationship problems and money worries for example.

What can you do to support your workforce?

  1. Place as much emphasis on health and wellbeing as you do safety. Incorporate into your business ethos and normalise helping to remove the stigma.
  2. Offer a flexible working environment. This can be challenging particularly for small businesses and those with an invaluable and small team. You may need to be creative in your thinking and leave the 9-5 mindset behind.
  3. Create a healthy working environment and culture. This may require you to introduce new policies and more importantly implement and follow them through.
  4. Provide ways for employees to de-stress by introducing a corporate gym membership or inviting local therapist to provide chair massage.
  5. Show them that you care, and this can be done by simply providing free fruit in the office.

Be creative and even better get your valuable employees involved by asking them what they want. Give someone the responsibility for coming up with ways to bring fun into the office. Depending on the size of your workforce you may consider setting up a Health and Wellbeing group.

Looking after the mental health of your employees can be as simple as putting them first, an excellent place to start.

In relation to creating policies and procedures What No Safety Ltd is here to help. It’s why we’ve introduced the Mental Health in the Workplace training. A two-day course that will give you as the business owner and your managers the ability and confidence to support your valuable employees.

Call 01722 326 390 if you have any questions relating to the training or mental health in the workplace generally.

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