What do employers need to know about mental health?

Costing employers an eye-watering £2.4 billion, 70 million work days each year are lost due to mental health problems. Stress, depression and anxiety alone account for 12.8 million lost work days each year, nearly double those lost due to the common culprit of sick days – musculoskeletal problems.

Your approach to mental health matters for many reasons. Obviously there is a huge absence management connection. However, it also impacts productivity, as well as your reputation and more. Yet mental health is often still seen as the elephant in the room.

Absence Management

Posted 28/04/2020

An employer’s responsibility for mental health

Yet you cannot shirk your responsibility for the mental wellbeing of your staff.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1984), which is usually well understood in terms of physical wellbeing, you also have a ‘duty of care’ regarding mental health. The same duty on an employer to assess risk in the workplace applies to mental wellbeing, as well as physical.

What’s more, a mental health issue may be considered a disability under the Equality Act (2010).

How should an employer tackle mental health in the workplace?

We understand that mental health in the workplace can still feel taboo, but nonetheless it should be faced head-on and with a strategic approach which tackles things from 3 angles:

Promotes staff wellbeing
Addresses the causes of work-related stress and mental ill health
Supports staff experiencing mental health difficulties

Promotion of staff wellbeing and addressing causes

Prevention is always easier than cure. By identifying the causes of mental health difficulties in the workplace, you can work to minimise these. Employers need to look at different areas to identify potential problems:

The role: is the employee suitably skilled and are deadlines reasonable?
The physical working environment: does the employee get natural light and do they have all necessary equipment?
Workplace relationships: is the workplace a supportive and inclusive environment with positive teamwork valued by leadership? Do managers cultivate relationships where employees can share personal problems they are facing, and the impact they may have on their work?
The culture: can employees express concerns and can they challenge inappropriate behaviour from colleagues in a safe and supported atmosphere?
The organisation: are there support policies in place with training for management and are records of sickness absence utilised to understand reasons?
Development: are employees encouraged through fair appraisal structures, with opportunities for training and development?

Simultaneously working to promote staff mental wellbeing ensures that your staff are mentally fit and better able to manage issues as they arise. Wellbeing programmes should be tailored to the individual business, but may include occupational health services, employee assistance programmes, as well as workplace mindfulness and sport.

A high-profile PricewaterhouseCoopers study revealed the numerous employer benefits of health and wellbeing programmes. These included retention, reduced absence, higher productivity, employee satisfaction and more.

How to support a member of staff with mental health difficulties

ACAS provides excellent advice regarding how an employer can support employees. Much of the advice centres on having good communication to support the employee. Actions for an employer to take may include reasonable adjustments and keeping in contact during time off.

We are highly aware that coronavirus and homeworking during lockdown are adding additional challenges to employers managing the mental health of their staff. You can find out what to do to support staff, mentally, during coronavirus from Mind.