How Can Businesses Support Mental Health?

It has been a tough couple of years. People’s lives have been turned upside down; we’ve been isolated from our family and friends; and we are now trying to readjust to ‘the new normal’ way of living.

Now more than ever, we need to be supporting our colleagues and give them the space to open up about how they are feeling. Always remember - the greatest asset of a company is its people.

There are lots of ways that businesses can support the mental health of their people. This isn’t just about ticking a box. Whatever programme of support you decide to invest in needs time, thought and care put into it for it to really add value to your employees and your business.

Here are just some of the thoughts we’ve considered whilst looking to introduce additional mental health support at HRC Recruitment.

Ensure you clear internal support on offer

If someone is struggling, they are more likely to speak to a colleague than their manager or HR first so ensure there is a clear support structure for everyone. Choose a few Mental Health First Aiders, have them fully trained to be able to spot the signs of someone struggling and, more importantly, how to support them. Encourage open communication at all levels, with managers are checking in regularly with their team

Create a wellbeing strategy

You need to think proactively about your wellbeing strategy rather than just reactively. Yes, it’s important to have Mental Health First Aiders and have clear support for staff who are struggling, but how do you prevent your team from getting to that stage of stress and burnout where they need help?

Promote good work-life balance

The best way to prevent stress and burnout is to allow everyone in your team to have a healthy work-life balance. This should be role modelled by your senior leaders: Ensure that when individuals are off they are able to switch off from work, encourage breaks and discourage working in the evenings and at weekends. If they can’t complete their work in their official working hours then maybe their workload needs to be reviewed?

Incorporate wellbeing into your L&D program

Just like you would develop the skills in your team to allow them to do their job to the best of their ability, it is worthwhile investing in developing their skills to help look after their own wellbeing. This will help build their resilience and reduce the impact of stress. This could be on managing stress, improving sleep, self-confidence etc.

We all need to start to normalise open conversations about mental health in the workplace to encourage openness and to protect our wellbeing.

HRC Recruitment has six fully trained Mental Health First Aiders working within our teams.