Mental Health affects your profit – can you afford it?

If staff have mental health issues that affects them at work – and that affects your absence costs – and that affects your profit…………

Did you know…………………..

Having Accredited Mental Health First Aiders amongst your workforce will become MANDATORY!

Why should you take this seriously……….

Having trained and accredited Mental Health First Aiders (MHFA) will become mandatory for businesses.

Those Mental Health First Aiders will sit alongside other mandatory trained staff such as First Aiders, Health & Safety and Food Hygiene trained staff (where appropriate).

This is really good news so if you haven’t got your staff trained then now is the time to do it……………….before everyone else realises and you can’t get on a course!

How many trained people do you need?

The recommended ratio is 1:10 per company per site. Eg: If you have 100 employees over 3 sites, you’d need a minimum of 10, with some at each site.

How can you access this training? – Contact Sue Grogan of Joined-Up Working Associates at [email protected]. We use a MHFA Member Instructor to deliver this accredited training to businesses.

Some questions for you:

• Is the mental health and wellbeing of staff your priority?

Remember – look after your staff and they will look after your clients. Losing staff at whatever level they are creates gaps, holes in services and puts pressure on those left who have to cover their work.

• Do you have a Mental Health & Wellbeing policy?

Is it up to date and “live” or sitting in a cupboard? A policy that exists on paper alone is worthless.?If you’d like a chat about how we can help you develop, amend or improve your policies, contact [email protected]

• Do you have a Mental Health & Wellbeing Champion working at Board level?

Do you have champions across your business? The issue of staff wellbeing needs to be an absolute priority with backing from the board to implement training, support and changes needed.

?What are the costs to your business of doing nothing?

The statistics from MIND tell us this:

• The annual cost to businesses for mental health is ￡45 billion – up 16% since 2017
• 300,000 people with mental health challenges lose their job every year
• Stress, anxiety and depression are thought to be responsible for almost half of all working days lost due to health issues.
• Mental health problems affect 1 in 6 workers each year and are the leading cause of sickness absence
• Only 13% of UK HR and Business managers think they have an effective wellbeing strategy – which means 87% don’t. Are you amongst them?
• 56% of employers would like to support their staff more but don’t have the right training or guidance.

?What’s the ROI of investing in your staff mental health & wellbeing?

Deloitte say in their report “Mental health and employers. Refreshing the case for investment January 2020”

“Organisation?wide culture change and awareness raising can provide a?ROI of ￡6 for every ￡1 invested.”

“Proactive?training provides a?similarly high average ROI of ￡5 for every ￡1 invested.”

“Reactive?support, such as offering employees therapy or treatment once their mental health had worsened, although an important part of the suite of interventions an employer should offer, provided on average a?return of only ￡3 for every ￡1 invested.” (Basically, leaving things till the problem gets to the point of needing help is too late.)

This indicates that organisation?wide, preventative activities to improve employee resilience can achieve a?higher impact than reactive, individual?focused activities.

What can affect our mental health at work?

From workload, relationships, communication and bullying through money, status and coping strategies plus external factors such as family relationships, crime, housing and bereavement there are a myriad of things that can affect us.

ACAS state in their “Promoting Positive Mental Health” report:

“Managers may be concerned that by addressing mental health issues they’ll get drawn into areas they are unqualified or unable to deal with.”

This sits alongside “we don’t know much about it so we don’t talk about it so we are a little scared of it so we don’t talk about it………….”

Supporting managers to identify the factors they can control alongside the ones they can’t, alongside drawing up practical policies, procedures, having an open mind and a willingness to try and understand will go a long way towards addressing the issue and positively changing the workplace culture.

And another thing……………..

Whilst there have been many positive changes across the business sector with greater support for employees, especially in larger businesses along with a reduction in the stigma associated with mental health issues, there’s a particular issue for the younger working population, those working freelance or with short-term contracts who have an uncertain financial future. Do you have any of them working for you?

?So you see, it’s not just me saying all this to you – I’ve used information from several esteemed and respected organisations to make the case to you to:

Look at your business culture alongside your sickness data, costs and recruitment costs.

Keeping people working productively is more cost effective than losing them

I can help you, your staff and your business – starting with just a quick chat to find out what you want and what you need…………….

Just contact me in any of these ways:

Email me – [email protected]

Message on Linked In https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/suegrogan/

Set up a quick call – use this link https://tinyurl.com/y2k4daq5

Pick up the phone – 07754 150 559

www.joinedupwork.co.uk