What does your car say about your mental health?

(Are you running a well-oiled machine or is the rust setting in?)

Imagine this – you have invested your money and your time in a beautiful car.

You’ve made sure that it has enough oil, enough screen wash and enough fuel. It’s been serviced, MOT’d and valeted. Its tyres are pumped up and the wheels have been balanced. Now, you are ready to hit the road.

What an amazing journey. The car runs beautifully getting you to your destination in style, in comfort and as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Now imagine you have invested your money and your time in a beautiful car.

To begin with everything is wonderful but you are busy and you forget to top up the oil and pump up the tyres. You’re too distracted to worry about how clean it is and the screen wash doesn’t really enter your mind. You keep meaning to book it in for a service and plan to get the MOT done at the same time but you haven’t gotten around to that yet.

Then something important happens and you need your car to get you somewhere – quickly and reliably.

The journey is awful.

It’s been raining and the dirt is constantly being kicked up on to your screen but the wash has run out so you have difficulty seeing the road ahead clearly. You want to go at maximum speed but your engine needs tuning, the tyres are not pumped up properly and you are using up more fuel just to keep going forward. Optimum speeds are impossible and soon you notice that the fuel level is  dangerously low. The car begins to cough, splutter and then it seizes. Of course it does – you also forgot to check the oil level.

It’s exactly the same car. The only difference is how you looked after it.

Now imagine you are a business leader. You have invested your money and your time in recruiting a team of outstanding employees. How they perform begins with you…..

Positive mental wellbeing and engagement is the responsibility of both the individual and the employer they work for.

In the same way that we can learn how to look after a car, we can learn what is necessary to look after our mental wellbeing. We can learn what to look for and how to ensure that we remain protected from lowering performance levels and the rust setting in.

As a leader you can ensure that your employees are fully aware of what stress is and how it can lead to mental and/or physical health issues. You can ensure that all of your managers and staff understand what poor mental health looks like and what the warning signs are. You can create a culture where it is normal to talk about, and support, mental health in the same way that we talk about, and support, physical health. You can also put measures in place to help build resilience and to promote staff engagement. Critically, you can ensure that you make regular visits to the garage to maintain your own wellbeing (nobody wants to be led by a tired old wreck!)

Armed with this knowledge and supported in this environment, your employees will be equipped to, and can take responsibility for maintaining their own positive mental wellbeing. They will know what the warning signs are, they will be armed with the tools to look after themselves and they will be open about any difficulties they are experiencing allowing proactive rather than reactive action.

Rather like a car, the human mind and body is a machine. For well-proven, scientific reasons, both require regular attention. Maintaining positive mental wellbeing simply requires basic knowledge, ongoing maintenance, consistent care and, of course, not allowing the busyness of work and life to divert your attention away from the essentials.

So, are you running a well-oiled machine or is the rust setting in?

Rachel Munns

Principal, Resilient Me

P.S. For those who like the sciency bit..

·        For every 80p spent on promoting wellbeing, ￡4 is saved on the cost of downtime losing people to stress induced illness, absenteeism, presenteeism, medical intervention and worse

·        A positive brain is 31% more productive than a neutral one

·        One in four workers in the UK suffers from at least one psychiatric disorder

·        Poor mental health costs UK employers ￡26 billion p.a. Two thirds of this cost is attributable to presenteesim (when someone is at work but is not really mentally fit to be there)

·        95% of staff who are absent due to work related stress are dishonest about the reason for their absence