Staff personal mental health? It’s personal isn’t it?

So should employers take a proactive approach when they have staff who struggle?

Put bluntly: Yes. Because their mental health affects the health of your business; both financially, but more importantly (in my opinion) as a team unit. So doing what you can to support your team back to peak performance is going to be a wise investment.

Financial benefits of improved mental health

Let’s look at some numbers:

In the year 2022-23, approximately 875,000 working people suffered from depression, stress or anxiety stemming from workplace issues. The numbers rocket when you take into account problems emanating from outside of the workplace! This alone resulted in about 17.1 million lost working days!

These are big numbers, and there are probably very few businesses who have escaped this.

Now bring in the time that is lost by “presenteeism”, when you have no medically-justifiable reason to not attend work or when you just feel unable to put the effort in, but you don’t know why. Happens a lot more than we realise and that doesn’t often get measured!

So, financially, there’s a huge justification to reduce the number of lost days.

The “Soft” benefits of increased productivity

What about the less tangible benefits?

The average employee spends around 22% of their time on work-related activities (compare that to 29% asleep – some might argue that the two activities sometimes overlap, but we’ll not go there!). That’s a significant period when an employer has a responsibility for someone, so making that feel a morally safe and welcoming environment boost a person’s productivity.

Absences upset the balance of a team, and constant change is disruptive and involves repeated, and potentially unnecessary, training of new personnel.

A high-stress environment might create the impression of a fast pace, but actually decreases creativity is favour of just processing actions to deadlines. When you’re looking for innovation and new ideas, constant pressure is likely to just suppress those new lines of thinking.

A business that develops a reputation for taking care of their employees is likely to attract longer-term and higher calibre staff as well as being sought-out by clients.

Taking care of employee’s mental wellbeing usually results in greater commitment from the team.

A concern that can be avoided is less disruptive (and usually cheaper to resolve) than having to address a problem when it lands.

Is it morally or legally appropriate to get involved?

Under legislation in the UK (the Equality Act 2010), the employer has a duty of care towards their employees to prevent discrimination. This includes making reasonable accommodations to enable an employee to fulfil their duties, whether through permanent disability or a temporary and partial incapacity. If a health condition gets in the way of an employee fulfilling their duties, then, yes, it is absolutely legally right that the employer should make reasonable and appropriate support available.

For many businesses, this may be in the form of providing private healthcare packages, external occupational health, in-house healthy catering (depending on the organisation size) and access to counselling services. Other considerations they often make are policies on compassionate grounds and flexible working. However, most of these are passive, to be driven by the staff themselves. It would not be overreach to take a more proactive approach to check on the welfare of your team, in confidence to find out what support they might need.

The biggest barrier is likely to be whether there are moral grounds to become involved.

Every employee is a person, and they have a life outside of the workplace. Like it or not, what happens outside of work will affect what happens at work, and vice versa, and it’s almost impossible to separate the two. So, realistically, the two are intertwined and it would be foolish to pretend that homelife is on a completely different planet!

The employer is obliged to provide suitable training for an employee, under the Employment Rights Act 1996 – not only to enable them to undertake their jobs, but also to enhance their careers. Surely providing access to support, training, therapy or counselling to help overcome something like stress or trauma, falls under the scope of coaching and training so that the employee can develop themselves and add value to the company?

The bottom line

If the softer, moral and legal arguments fail to convince that taking a proactive part in addressing the mental health concerns of staff, take a look at these figures:

  • According to Deloitte in 2023, there was a cost to employers of £51 billion per year relating to poor mental health of employees.
  • For every £1 invested in the mental health and wellbeing of their employees, employers reaped about £4.70.

That’s not a bad return on investment at all.

What are you doing about it?