Paul Farmer chief executive at Mind: now is the time to prioritise mental health
Paul Farmer chief executive at Mind will be joined by Dame Carol Black; Vish Buldawoo, VP – global benefits and wellbeing at Centrica; and Nicola Wells, global director reward at Unilever to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on Wednesday 23rd September at the virtual Employee Wellbeing Congress.
During these unprecedented times, we can take some comfort that workplaces have made real progress in recent years in improving mental health, so we have a strong foundation to build upon.
In 2017, Thriving at work: The Stevenson/ Farmer review of mental health and employers was published. This review, commissioned by the prime minister and led by Lord Dennis Stevenson and me, set out to identify how employers can better support all employees, including those with poor mental health or wellbeing, to remain in and thrive at work.
The report found that 300,000 people who experience long-term mental health problems lose their job every year – with updated figures from Deloitte highlighting the cost to employers rising to up to £45 billion per year. Included within the recommendations of the report were six ‘core mental health standards’. These include implementing a mental health at work plan, developing mental health awareness, encouraging conversations about mental health, improving working conditions, promoting effective people management and monitoring employee mental health and wellbeing. The report acted as a clear call to action and since then we have seen hundreds of employers begin to build a culture of openness. However, there remain areas we still need to see urgently prioritised.
As part of the Thriving at work review, we recommended that a Leadership Council be set up by government to maintain the momentum built up by the review. This launched in January 2019 with representatives from 25 organisations, large and small. These senior business leaders developed the Mental Health at Work Commitment, a framework detailing six streamlined standards for developing a comprehensive approach to managing mental health. The framework sets out the importance of leadership at all levels within an organisation – in daily interactions through line management, but especially the importance of senior leadership.
The scale of the challenge we face to improve mental health in the workplace cannot be underestimated but, overall, we are heading in the right direction. Employers have made great strides, in the past few years, indicating a commitment to creating mentally healthy workplace cultures. We want to reach a point where all workplaces recognise the value of recruiting and nurturing a diverse workforce of talented employees, including those whose mental health may have prevented them from working previously.
Our response to our employees in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak has been impressive. That over a million people have downloaded Mind’s information on how to look after mental health during the pandemic is a sure sign we are all thinking more about our mental health. But the biggest test is yet to come.
We have all had to explore new ways of working, communicating and staying connected. As we reflect on that which no longer suits our world of work, now is the time to interrogate the work we do to support employee mental health in our workplaces (and at home) and commit to a different way of working, going forward.
The author is Paul Farmer, chief executive officer at Mind.
This article is featured in REBA’s Employee Wellbeing research 2020, in partnership with AXA PPP healthcare.
