Mental Health Month
The Need for Effective Support for your Employees
It’s time not just to talk about mental health and well-being but to make a real commitment to look after employees and provide effective support and solutions for all employees.
The current pandemic, lockdowns and subsequent health and economic crises have accelerated existing trends of mental ill health in the workplace. For many employees, the merging of the personal and professional day with home working has created significant new challenges which have impacted negatively on mental health and wellbeing in a number of ways. Employers need to respond proactively to this new working environment and seize the opportunity to build trust and confidence with their employees.
Prior to the pandemic, a leading global accountancy firm estimated the annual cost of mental ill health to employers in the UK to be in excess of £45bn. The lockdowns have resulted in a realisation that mental health and peoples’ susceptibility to changes in circumstance or difficult events mean that more effective mental health support is needed.
The current pandemic has hastened the demise of the recognised business model. New risk factors have emerged as people face the challenges of remote working and constantly changing demands and schedules. Many face ‘virtual fatigue’ from back-to-back online meetings and the restrictions imposed by the pandemic mean that it will be harder to connect with others for quite some time to come.
In this dynamic, employers need to fully embrace their role as a protector of employees. Establishing a working regime to fit with the new normal will require careful thought and preparation and recent research indicates that a “psychological pandemic” will follow in the wake of the current physical health crisis. Employers need to signal that mental health and resilience support is a top priority and provide solutions to support employees in all parts of their lives.
Mental health and wellbeing has become the most talked about subject in the workplace and the subject appears in the media virtually every day. Now is the time for employer action. Holistic solutions already exist and can be implemented for all employees in any size of organisation at a very affordable cost.
