6th December 2016

As experts in employment law, employee relations and people management we often hear the words ‘mental health’ ‘sickness absence’ and ‘performance’ when tackling problems for our clients. Unfortunately it’s unlikely to be a conversation like this:

“Our employees have excellent mental health; sickness absence is at an all-time low and team performance has sky-rocketed”.

We get involved when things have gone awry; when employers are struggling with the effects of a workforce which will inevitably face pressures both at work and at home. These inevitable stresses can lead to performance issues, increased sickness absence, unhappiness and strained relationships, which if left unresolved can pave the way to much more significant problems further down the line. Stress and pressure is a part of life; and some employees even thrive off it. So whilst it cannot be removed in its entirety it can be reduced and it can be managed.

The CIPD Employee Outlook (July 2016) revealed some concerning statistics relating to the mental health of the UK workforce:

• 31% of respondents said they had experienced mental health problems whilst in employment; more than 42% of which had experienced problems over the last twelve months.
• 50% of respondents who said they had experienced mental health problems at work had taken time off because of it.

Brendan Street (Clinical Lead for CBT at Nuffield Health) advised that mental health is costing employers £8.4bn per year. Furthermore he maintained that an employee who was off work for 6 weeks with mental health problems was 20% likely not to return to work. If this reaches 6 months, his research shows that it’s 80% likely that the employee won’t be returning.

Whilst employee wellbeing is not entirely based on mental health, the above should serve as a wake-up call to UK employers that this is a real, live issue and one which should be acknowledged. Poor mental health is only one of a range of issues that can impact on employee presence and performance; when you consider the potential additional impact of poor physical health and work-related stress on your employees, ignoring the issue can be damaging to your workforce and potentially fatal to organisational growth.

At Better by Design we firmly believe in the importance of our employees’ wellbeing. Our values as an organisation place strong emphasis on creating an environment in which employees are happy to work; where they feel respected and supported; where work/life balance is valued.  We have a stable, positive, productive, workforce with very low absenteeism. We don’t say we have everything right but we are working on it!

We have created the ‘Workplace Wellbeing Wheel’ (Fig. 1) as an holistic tool to help employers work with their employees to promote and achieve   ‘wellbeing in the workplace’ of which there are five components;

• Exercise and Physical Fitness
• Nutrition
• Modalities of Recovery
• Personal Development
• Mental Health

The wheel shows how each of the individual components are interconnected and support the other and we will be looking at each area in detail over the coming weeks and offering you tips and advice to help implement best practice.  Each component part will also be covered in more depth in our new resource area (coming soon!) which will give you a range of tools and diagnostics to measure wellbeing in your workplace.

If you would like further information, a free wellbeing audit or would like to find out how we can help to advance your wellbeing strategy , please contact Lauren Anderson or Simon Anderson on 0161 437 0013 or send an email to lauren.anderson@hrsbydesign.co.uk