Prioritising Mental Wellbeing at Work - Louise Aston, BITC

Our upcoming Workforce Mental Health Digital Conference equips employers to help support the mental health of their staff and build resilience in these challenging times.

In advance of this timely virtual event, one of our expert speakers, Louise Aston, Wellbeing Campaign Director at Business in the Community, discusses the growing negative impact of mental health affecting workers across the country.

Louise Aston, Wellbeing Campaign Director, Business in the Community

During the pandemic, we know that wellbeing is an issue that has come to light once again. Now more than ever, employers need to prioritise safety at work. That means ensuring their staff are both physically and mentally safe. 

According to our 2020 BITC Mental Health at Work Report, 41% of employees suffer from poor mental health. Excessive workloads, lack of annual leave, and long hours are the main causes of this. This statistic is staggering and employers must act now in terms of implementing effective ways to enhance the mental wellbeing of their staff. You wouldn’t expect your physical health to be put at risk when at work, so why should your mental health be any different?

At Business in the Community, we believe that wellbeing and sustainable ways of working are the engine of business as a force for good in society. At the start of the pandemic, we saw the agility of employers in terms of how they adapted the where, when and how of their organisations, quite literally overnight. Something which many people would have thought to be an impossible task. But now we have a unique opportunity where we can build back responsibly. This refers to my initial point of the need for employers to prioritise the mental wellbeing of their workforce as we move out of this pandemic.

We recently issued a report to the UN entitled Time to Fix Up, a responsible business manifesto designed to achieve sustainability, with mental wellbeing at work being one of the core pillars to achieving this. We feel that now is the time to prioritise wellbeing for all in the form of a very inclusive approach by enshrining ways of working that tackle the systemic root causes of poor mental health. As well as this, creating cultures of trust and belonging that everyone feels safe to speak up and be actively listened to. This ambition of putting mental health first is at the centre of Business in the Community, specifically we focus on the second of six standards set out by The Mental Health at Work Commitment:

1. Prioritise mental health in the workplace by developing and delivering a systematic programme of activity
2. Proactively ensure work design and organisational culture drive positive mental health outcomes
3. Promote an open culture around mental health
4. Increase organisational confidence and capability
5. Provide mental health tools and support
6. Increase transparency and accountability through internal and external reporting

Join Louise at our digital conference, broadcast live from our Central London studio on Wednesday 28th April, where she will lead a session on ‘Build Back Responsibly to Drive Sustainable Employee Mental Health’. You can find out more about the discussions here.

If you are a business owner and would like to sign up to The Mental Health at Work Commitment, you can do so by following this link: https://bit.ly/3kkILs7.