There are many excellent initiatives out there to help combat mental health and wellbeing issues. As well as brilliant organisations dedicated to this and dedicated to encouraging open discussion and reaching out for help.
We can of course, always do more.
There is still a stigma around these conversations, and particularly so in the construction industry.
To help shed a light on what organisations can do themselves, we spoke with our Human Resources expert about his approach to mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
Andrew Campbell-Critchley has over 15 years’ experience in HR and has spent most of that time in senior positions. Here is what he had to say:
The best approach
When I think about the importance of talking about mental health in the workplace, I try to think about the mental health and wellbeing of everybody in the organisation as I think there is a place for everybody to have a conversation.
In order to encourage people to talk about their feelings and their perspectives and their thoughts, the pressures in their lives, the challenges, the positives, whatever that may be, we want to encourage a culture in which it’s easy for people to talk.
The most traditional and best route for that to happen, is from the line manager to the employee, because the line manager is the one who has the most opportunity to help resolve and fix problems for an employee. So, I encourage line managers to speak to their employees about mental health.
There are different types of conversations line managers will have with employees, and we must separate them out. You don’t want to simply bolt onto the end of a performance conversation: “oh how are you feeling?” You need to have a separate conversation. Go for a coffee, or at this time, have a virtual coffee together. “How are you feeling today?” “How are you doing?” “Is everything ok?” Just ask some basic questions, some open questions, to encourage your employee to talk. And again, this is separate from any sort of performance conversation, or other conversation you may have in relation to work.
What this achieves
This does two things. Number one, even if at the start, the conversation feels a bit difficult and stilted, it is simply making a start, and you have to start somewhere. Starting, is the most important thing to do. And then continuing is the second most important thing to do. This way you’re creating a culture. The goal is to make it commonplace where an employee might think to themselves: I might speak to my boss about that next time.
Number two, by doing this you’re gaining a really important insight into how that person is feeling, and you can take action on that. Watch out for those flags in those conversations. For example, someone might mention that they’re too busy to take a break during the day. That’s a worry. If someone says that
to you, help them to schedule their day accordingly, to take a bit of the pressure off and give them the space to have a break.
The next steps
There might also be opportunities within those conversations to go into more detail about some of the pressures or worries that they have, particularly when it concerns their mental health and wellbeing. Most managers will be nervous about that, understandably so, prepare yourself for those conversations. There are plenty of free courses online you can go and seek help and support with. You might have a mental health expert in your workplace or go and speak to your HR department. Go and prepare yourself for those conversations so you might know what to expect.
I would also encourage line managers to speak to their boss. Manage upwards and have the same conversations with their boss, about the challenges and pressures they are facing. This way, line managers can understand and appreciate what it feels like from the other side. That should help them to make sure that they are able to listen empathetically, or sympathetically, to help understand the situation and offer support and where possible try and resolve it.
Of course, sometimes people just want to be able to talk to you, and that’s as important as working towards a solution.
There are occasions where people don’t feel comfortable speaking to their line manager about that sort of thing. So as an organisation we have to make sure that we have a collaborative network of people. You might call them ‘mental health allies’ or ‘listening buddies.’ Nominate people who employees can talk to outside of the line management chain.
A lot of companies now have Artificial Intelligence (AI) chat bots to reach out to their employees to check on their mental health and wellbeing. I’m a big fan of things like this, particularly when you have a very large organisation as it’s very difficult to reach out to everybody. With this mechanism you can reach out to everybody very quickly, and you can use the AI in the system to help flag people who might need deeper conversation, I think that’s fantastic.
Of course, this can never replace the human contact which is so critically important.
Final word
In conclusion, my top tips on talking about mental health in the workplace are this:
Number 1:
Create that culture, bottom up from the organisation where people feel comfortable to talk to each other. Whether that’s about work challenges or personal challenges.
As a line manager go and open up those conversations separately from your normal performance conversations with your people and give them the opportunity to talk to you. Ask them open questions and give them the chance to speak. Also, speak to your line managers, and understand how it feels to talk about these things from the other end.
Number 2:
Make sure that you have other opportunities for people to reach out and speak to someone in confidence. This might be a HR team or a mental health ally within the company, or indeed put in place another way in which employees can reach out, and flag when they have concerns, whether that’s an AI chat bot, a regular survey, or an open-door policy.
Those would be my top tips on talking about mental health in the workplace. I think this is the most important starting point. Even if you’re a small company and perhaps you haven’t got all the resources a larger company might have to put into mental health, there are still all these things you can do.
Just having open conversations with people will help to give you some amazing insight into your business about how people feel and how they cope with pressure and situations, and how their situations outside of work impact situations inside of work. Additionally, you can use that insight to help shape initiatives and supportive programmes for your people.
If you’re struggling with mental health, you can find many resources on the Time To Change Website to explore. Make sure to reach out and help end the stigma around mental health.
