Workplaces Placing Greater Emphasis on Growing Mental Health Issues
INTRODUCTION
Every morning, thousands of people wake up and get ready to head to the places where they work to earn their bread and butter. Lenora who works with one of the global companies in the finance sector is on her way to work with a big broad smile. She is happy, cheerful and is mentally and physically healthy. However, this wasn’t the situation before when she worked at another global financial company. Let’s just call her old company A and new company B.
When working with Company A, she was constantly made to work over the required number of hours, never compensated for it and moreover the company did not value work-life balance. The long hours and the intense amount to achieve unreasonable amount of expectations affected her well-being. She would constantly think about her work even when she was with family and friends on the weekend. She could not sleep well at nights and all of this just started affected her physical and mental health as well. But when she moved to Company B, the entire work culture was a complete 180 degrees.
Mental health is a widely discussed topic in Australia and one in five Australians is affected by mental illness. The age group of those affected vary vastly. Over the past five years, the discussion on mental health has taken centre stage. While the awareness level is steadily increasing the stigma of having mental health issues remains. People are still uncomfortable or unwilling to openly discuss their mental health issues.
Various experts state that over the recent years, companies have started taking things seriously. It was recently reported in a research by the Shared Value Project, that mental illness costs businesses an estimate of $13 billion a year.
According to Safe Work Australia, 33 percent of people working in the financial and insurance sector say they have suffered from mental health condition. During an interview with Sharon Leadbetter, Workplace Health Leader, WayAhead, she told me that, “It's changed a lot actually. It's growing quite rapidly from organisations not fully understanding it to what it means now.”
She is not alone in agreeing that. The Head of Corporate Affairs at ING, David Breen says, “Yes. At ING, we take the issue of mental health very seriously. Support is available to anyone who may be struggling.”
Even, Dr. Timothy Sharp, also known as Dr. Happy, Chief Happiness Officer – The Happiness Institute and Batyr, says agrees that people are speaking up more and understanding the importance of their mental well-being.
Issues and the Impacts Caused
There are a variety of issues that people at workplaces go through. A lot of them experience anxiety and depression. Asha Zappa, Mental Health Promotion Officer, WayAhead, says, “Apart from stress, people are worried about the shame and the stigma that will be attached to them since many companies still do not have a workplace where you can be honest about what you are going through.” Schizophrenia, psychosis, eating disorders are just some of the illnesses that affect a person’s mental health.
According to statistics published by Beyond Blue, approximately 2 million people per year experience anxiety and a million people experiencing depression. What is more alarming is that an overall of 20 percent of the adult population is experiencing some form of mental illness. However, Dr. Sharp and even Ms. Leadbetter say that normal issues that people deal on a day to day basis can affect a person’s mental health. During the conversation with Sharon, she clarifies that companies often mix mental health and mental illness.
While she does get frustrated by this attitude, she is grateful that companies are opening their doors to organisations such as hers that help the companies understand the importance of mental health. Similarly, Edwina Griffin, Health and High Performance Expert, Energy Evolution, concurs and states that there are lots of times that she has observed where people and companies do not even understand what is going on. She adds, “People do not have the write words in order to talk about it.”
The Health of Nation Report states eight million working days are lost each year. The primary reason is mental health. The report also states that mental health costs at an estimated value of $60 billion per year. Furthermore, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) stated in the report that mental health problems have crossed over the number of cases with patients suffering from common ailments.
Furthermore, it has also been found that due to high levels of stress and anxieties, employees are taking unplanned leaves or are practising present-ism. Dr. Sharp believes that if a company does not put a focus on the mental health of its employees is just not running the at its maximum potential. He states,” They are losing time. It is just not those days anymore; it is lost productivity.
How Are Workplaces Dealing With Mental Health Issues
According to various news articles, KPMG in a report that it published in 2018 named Investing to Save report stated that by investing $50 million in the prevention and early intervention, it would be able to earn up to $442 million in long-term savings to the national economy. However, Ms. Griffin states, “Apart from empathising with its employees, companies should train their managers and senior management on how to deal with employees who may be facing any mental issues.”
She goes on stating that when the managers who do not take the sessions seriously are seen working puts a wrong notion to the employees. It shows as if they do not value the mental health of the team and are just focussed on work.
Furthermore, Leadbetter states that companies should draft a policy in place that will help employees to understand what are the benefits that they receive.
In conversation with the Breen, he states that one of the ways to reduce down the stress is to rely on a range of solutions which cover the office environment, culture, policy, communications and training. “For example, we launched a flexible working arrangement where employees can request to work at home or away from the office in order to maintain healthy work/life balance. In addition, each employee has a REST day allocated each year – this stands for Relax, Exercise, Sleep In, Treat,” says Breen.
The company feels that in this way it will be able to support its employees by giving them an additional day on top of their annual leave, so they can take time out when needed. Furthermore, they run training sessions for people leaders to help them spot the signs and have the right conversations with their teams.
Similarly, a spokeswoman from ANZ stated, “ANZ has a number of programs in place that provide our employees, leaders and teams with the education and tools they need to respond to and manage mental health concerns in the workplace.” Being one of the nation’s biggest banks, it has developed an online training program to raise awareness of mental health with its employees globally.
This better equips its people to recognise early warning signs that someone may be struggling with their mental health. It also provides guidance on how to have conversations with colleagues around these issues and educates everyone on how to best support staff in a way that will aid their recovery.
While the global and major national companies have begun to focus their time and money on ensuring their employees get the best benefits, many of them are yet to even spread their wings in this direction.
