Why it’s important to support mental health, wellbeing and stress prevention at work

The past few years have been particularly challenging. We’ve experienced multiple lockdowns and extreme restrictions, and now, just when we were beginning to recover, a cost-of-living crisis forces many of us to make almost impossible decisions around necessities like food, heating and hygiene products.

There is a lot of anxiety around the future, and our society is experiencing widespread poor mental health. Many people are reaching crisis point. The scale of this crisis cannot be overestimated.

Promoting good mental health and adapting policies and practices to suit the needs of your teams can help prevent staff from reaching crisis point. Photograph: Mind / Leigh Anderson

We spend more than a third of our lives at work. So, employers have a hugely important role in supporting their staff – creating mentally healthy workplaces where people can thrive should be at the top of every employer’s priority list.

Research shows that employees with supportive managers are twice as likely to report good mental health than those without, and three times more likely to report being happy at work (Mind, 2022).

There is also a legal duty for workplaces to support staff with stress and psychological safety.

We know that:

• Recent estimates put the annual productivity costs of poor mental health and wellbeing at around £53–56 billion for UK employers (Deloitte, 2022)
• Poor mental health was the fourth most common cause of sickness absence in the UK in 2022, with 18.5 million working days lost (ONS, 2023)
• Most employers acknowledge they have a responsibility to manage workplace mental health, but most have not formalised their strategic approach towards it (ERC, 2023)
• Presenteeism (working while unwell) has increased sharply and has now surpassed pre-pandemic levels. The most common reason given for presenteeism is the need to meet deadlines or client demands (ERC, 2023).
  But we also recognise that there’s an ongoing challenge around collecting the evidence of what organisations are doing to support people at work.

This is where the Mental Health and Productivity Pilot (MHPP) comes in. MHPP is a collaboration of Midlands universities and other partners working together since 2019 to support Midlands’ business communities and their employees, to improve workplace mental health and to reduce the impact it has on sickness absence, presenteeism and productivity.

Ashleeka Mandil: "The Mental Health at Work Commitment is the only roadmap you need to follow to achieve better mental health at work."

We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 employers. We know from our research what employers need and want help in this area, but there are so many options to choose from that often they don’t know where to start. We are currently working with organisations through a mental health plan, to help us establish the successes and challenges workplaces face. These findings will be coming out in early 2024, so watch this space.

It’s important to start off small and create consistency, as Crystal Specialist Finance, one of our MHPP employers discovered. Tara Hanratty, executive assistant, said “We had begun to conduct wellbeing and mental health activity, both internally with staff and externally within the mortgage industry, during lockdown as a way of keeping in touch and offering support during a difficult period for everyone.

“However, the activity was ad-hoc and we wanted to develop it into a structured, long-term commitment within the business, with organised and targeted activity. We felt the Mental Health & Productivity Pilot and the Mental Health at Work Commitment could help us with this. For a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) like ours, we don’t have huge amounts of resource, but it just shows what a difference you can make with only a small team and some guidance.”

How can you begin to tackle those stigmas and create real change?

Promoting good mental health and adapting policies and practices to suit the needs of your teams can help prevent staff from reaching crisis point. It is paramount that employers prioritise the mental health of their employees, and focus on introducing proactive, preventative measures that keep people healthy.

This is where the Mental Health at Work Commitment can support. Designed for organisations of all sizes from all sectors, the Commitment is a simple framework that builds on what we know about good workplace wellbeing. Underpinned by six clear standards, it’s the only roadmap you need to follow to achieve better mental health at work. These standards are based on what best practice has shown is needed to make a difference, and to better equip employers to create an environment where employees can thrive.

To help you put the Commitment into action, Mental Health at Work have developed a series of free resources as a starting point, including our Mental Health at Work website, email journey and soon to be released interactive guide taking you through how to achieve the Commitment standards. You can also join our peer platform to link up with other employers on the same journey for additional support.

The Mental Health at Work website showcases original content that includes a range of tips, ideas, examples, toolkits to help you achieve each standard, and thought pieces on workplace mental health as it relates to different issues, people, and industries. There are thought pieces from employees with lived experience of mental health challenges and case studies from employers tackling the challenges of making organisational mental health improvements in their organisations.

Take a look at the resources below, to work towards improving psychological safety, wellbeing and reducing stress in your workplace.

It’s World Mental Health Day on 10 October. There’s plenty of resources to help raise awareness and spread the word to encourage conversations around mental health.

Sign up to the Mental Health at Work Commitment and newsletter in order to receive free resources, guidance and toolkits on how to implement a mental health strategy within your workplace.

Have a look at Mind’s Wellness Actions Plans, a template to help you start a conversation with your staff around their mental health and wellbeing.

Ashleeka Mandil is employer engagement officer at Mental Health and Productivity Pilot (MHPP).