The impact of employee mental ill-health on business is now well-established. It costs employers somewhere between £33 and £42 billion every year, with 70 million work days lost due to people calling in sick as a result of mental ill-health. Contributor Ali Grodzki, Associate – Herbert Smith Freehills.
Worryingly, 300,000 people with a long-term mental health condition lose their job every year. These figures are staggering, particularly given the focus on mental health in public discourse in recent years.
This begs simple, yet pertinent, questions: are UK employers doing enough to support the positive mental health of employees, or are they just paying lip service to what is a very serious issue? And what are HR Directors doing to ensure the Boardroom genuinely takes notice?
No one doubts the moral and ethical rationale for taking action. And what’s more, there is certainly a sound financial reason. Thriving at Work, an independent review of mental health and employers, found that the associated costs to employers were reduced when they took a proactive approach to supporting mental health in the workplace. On average, the return on investment per £1 spent was an impressive £4.20.
However, according to Mind, 56 percent of employers said they would like to do more to improve staff wellbeing but don’t feel they have the right training or guidance. This is indicative of the fact that, although the will to improve employee mental health exists, more needs to be done to implement change.
Herbert Smith Freehills’ recent global banking review, ‘Culture Club’, looked at different issues affecting the banking sector. It noted that as global regulators increasingly focus on culture as a critical risk indicator major employers in the sector are beginning to respond. Indeed, according to Antonio Osorio Horta, CEO of Lloyds Banking Group, “taking action is not a nice to do; it is a business imperative.”
HR Directors constantly need to deliver the message that line managers and senior employees have an important role to play. At a structural level, they are able to help shape a business’s mental health and wellbeing policy. This could include introducing flexible working, giving employees access to an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) and providing training to line mangers to help facilitate employees seeking support when they need it most. In many ways, there has never been a better time to make the case to other senior executives for taking measures to support workplace health, improve transparency and introduce reporting in this area to achieve accountability.
At a personal level, given the right training, line managers and senior employees are also in a position to monitor the wellbeing of the employees they manage. This can, however, be a challenging aspect of management. Thriving at Work found that only 11 percent of employees discussed a recent mental health problem with their line manager. The reality is that many employees do not feel comfortable admitting to feelings of depression or other forms of mental ill-health to their manager, partly because 35 percent of people think they would be less likely to get promoted if they had depression.
The only way to counteract this narrative is by creating a non-judgmental, safe environment in which employees feel able to discuss their mental health. Good practice includes encouraging line managers to schedule regular ‘check-ins’ with employees, and to respond to possible symptoms of mental ill-health – such as frequent sick days and changes in mood or physical appearance – in an appropriate and respectful way. Ensuring that any available resources like counselling or an EAP are adequately signposted will also go a long way to making employees feel supported, as well as promoting discussion around mental health at team meetings. In our experience at Herbert Smith Freehills, one of the most effective ways of achieving cultural change has been through senior employees acting as role models by sharing their personal experiences of mental ill-health – in doing so, they demonstrate that a mental health condition need not limit your career progression. While the methods which work best for a business may vary, the statistics show that now is the time for everyone to act.
