Even before the spectre of COVID-19 had reared its ugly head, the mental health of employees was already on the business radar, having transitioned from a niche benefit to a mainstream strategic concern.
But as the global health pandemic rages on, we face the reality that the relentless task of maintaining positive staff morale in 2020 might just be companies’ biggest business challenge to date.
A poll conducted last June by the Reward & Employee Benefits Association found more than two-thirds of organisations had a strategy in place for monitoring employee wellbeing, up from 30% in 2016.
Almost two-thirds of respondents said mental health was the number one wellbeing priority in their boardroom, and 46% reported having a dedicated mental health strategy in place in 2019, up from 16% in 2018.
Zoe Sinclair, founder of Employees Matter, launched This Can Happen – a conference dedicated to mental health issues in the workplace – in 2018.
She says: “Some companies are box-ticking; some are doing less than they would like; and in some cases there are frustrated people not getting the senior buy-in they need. But without doubt we are seeing more companies coming on board.”
Creating regular opportunities for staff to raise any problems they face is key
The business response to employee mental wellbeing is not all altruistic: research published by Deloitte in January found that poor mental health costs UK employers up to £45bn a year, an increase of 16% since 2016, largely due to a significant rise in mental-health-related presenteeism, absenteeism and staff turnover.
But in the face of a new normal, medical researchers writing in JAMA Internal Medicine have set off alarms about a mental health pandemic quietly taking hold internationally alongside COVID-19, warning of an overflow of mental illness that will inevitably emerge from this crisis.
It points to the fallout of previous large-scale disasters including the SARS epidemics, hurricanes and the World Trade Center attacks, which were accompanied by increases in depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and a broad range of other mental and behavioural disorders.
Under the current unprecedented situation, leaders and managers broadly understand that personal issues loom large for everyone – from staff dealing with the ambiguity of a furlough situation to those struggling with new ways of working and the challenges of juggling professional and family commitments.
Technology has been an enabler to allowing vast swatches of people to work from home, but the ‘always-on’ culture it facilitates can add to the challenge of maintaining good mental health and make it hard for some to disconnect.
What is also increasingly obvious is that the mental health backlash of COVID-19 will have a long half-life.
Looking ahead to a return to some semblance of normality when teams are at least partially back in offices together and the onus will be on employers to help staff navigate an onslaught of mental health challenges forced upon them by bereavement, the financial impact of the pandemic and a host of other anxieties.
Emma Mamo, head of workplace wellbeing at UK-based mental health charity Mind, says creating regular opportunities for staff to raise any problems they face, whether personal or professional, is key.
“As many staff move to remote working,” she notes, “this is all the more important, with check-ins now frequently happening virtually. If you’re worried about the wellbeing of a co-worker, try to ask open questions, listen non-judgementally and try not to make assumptions about their mental health.
“Even if they’re not willing or able to talk to you at the moment, you’ve at least let them know you’re there for them if and when they need it.”
This situation is a real wake-up call to companies, warns Matthew Steans, a manager in treasury advisory at EY, who set up Stigma Statistics, an initiative aimed at providing real data on suicide and suicide attempts to help formulate suicide-prevention strategies, having confronted his own mental health demons.
Steans says middle-aged men at particularly high risk of suicide could well be the hidden casualties of this pandemic.
He is hopeful that positive changes over the past few years, such as greater openness in discussing mental health at work and more provision of support overall, including mental health first-aid training, will continue their upward trajectory. “It comes back to having open and honest conversations about how team members are feeling,” he says.
For Alex Hyde, a treasury recruitment specialist at BIE Executive, the death of his wife a few years ago sent him on a downward mental health spiral that brought home the need for employee mental wellbeing to be at the heart of business.
Hyde believes that authentic leaders who acknowledge that we all have mental health, all of the time, will be better placed to help on this issue and have more engaged, happier workers. They will also then be better placed to support those in their team if they experience mental health problems.
“If you’re asking your team not to be on email over the weekend but you do it yourself, it sets the wrong tone. There’s a huge amount of pressure on people working in treasury and I think it’s definitely harder for people further down the organisation to speak up. That’s why it’s so important for leaders to share their experiences – it makes it easier to not be OK,” Hyde says.
Amid employee concerns that admitting to poor mental health would be a career-limiting move, psychotherapist Simon Parke believes that confidentiality is crucial.
His company, The Mind Clinic, provides corporate programmes offering employee support and counselling. “Mental wellbeing is a distraction to profit for some companies,” Parke admits.
“Companies tend to want to stick a plaster over it, but that doesn’t work. Good management is preventative – it’s about making sure the mental wellbeing of your team is valued.”
Considering that even under normal circumstances managers acknowledge the need to do more but say they are hampered by other organisational pressures, the concern is that looming economic instability could result in mental health being relegated further down the list of corporate priorities.
“Everyone is so focussed on survival and adapting. The next question is, what’s going to happen six months from now when budgets are stretched?” Sinclair asks.
But for leaders and management teams to go missing in action on this matter would be a false economy. Deloitte estimates that on average for every £1 spent on supporting their people’s mental health, employers get £5 back on their investment in reduced presenteeism, absenteeism and staff turnover.
In the meantime, COVID-19 seems to have tipped the balance still further into accepting how every aspect of life can impact a person’s mental health.
“For companies to support across these issues requires a culture change and that doesn’t happen overnight,” Sinclair warns. Nonetheless, she is confident that we’ll look back on this period as a turning point for mental wellbeing recognition.
Reflecting on his own experiences, Hyde says it was the kindness of his line manager that made all the difference.
“His response was so kind. You don’t necessarily need to have an HR policy, you just need to react in a human way.”
Rachel Willcox is a freelance writer and editor
This article was taken from the June/July 2020 issue of The Treasurer magazine. For more great insights, log in to view the full issue or sign up for eAffiliate membership