Mental Health Awareness - Employers

Poor mental health is one of the top reasons for sickness absence in the UK. With one in four adults suffering from mental health issues in any given year, it is still thought to be underreported, the stigma associated with poor mental health being the biggest barrier to preventing people from seeking care and treatment. With so many days lost to absence and the associated costs into the millions, the impact in terms of productivity and profitability on an organisation are well documented. However, this data can provide employers and the industry with insight to effectively allocate resources, promote early intervention and improve the overall health of the workforce. Below are some basic requirements and a little information on how to ensure your organisation can support employees.

Comparisons have been drawn between safety and mental health within the energy industry, for example, when working on an offshore installation, we are provided with the tools, training, and equipment to do our jobs safely. The purpose is obvious: we understand the risks and we take proactive steps to identify them early, prevent them from causing injury or at least reduce their impact. Otherwise, we would simply be waiting for the inevitable to happen. So why wouldn’t we be just as proactive when it comes to maintaining our mental health? Early and proactive action can be taken to support employee’s mental health including; training for managers to be aware of key risk factors, monitoring of teams for early signs of distress, proactive information, support and facilities These all encourage early identification and intervention of poor mental health and therefore an opportunity to mitigate any problems and begin to breakdown the surrounding stigma.

Management of a remote workforce can be a formidable task, where traditional monitoring and assessment is not practical. But these core standards and below suggestions, are routine management tools you can easily adopt to help identify and tackle the mental health needs of your workforce.