Are you OK? Check up and check in on Mental Health

I’m really proud of what we’ve done during the past month at Syngenta. We’ve started a company-wide conversation about mental health – encouraging individuals to check-up on their own mental health, and to check-in on our colleagues. Taking note of the WHO’s Mental Health Awareness day held each year on October 10, we’ve dedicated the month to making time and giving permission to ask how we’re all doing. And it may not be that complex a question, but we don’t always ask it of ourselves or one another.

So, what have we done during the past few weeks? We had leader messages and endorsement. We’ve worked with colleagues to share personal stories – our experiences of the various facets of mental health. Personal stories that go deep into individual’s personal experiences of suffering and surviving depression, burn-out, grief, stress and how they’ve supported family members who suffer from mental ill-health.

We’ve shared information about how to ask a colleague how they’re doing, provided support for line managers and employees alike, and signposted individuals to our confidential employee assistance program.

We’ve held global and local training sessions; online panel discussions; and shared our top-tips for keeping boosting mental health and wellbeing on our internal social networks.

Has it had an impact?

We don’t have any hard and fast measures in place to see if that has moved the needle on how we feel as individuals.

However, the feedback through attendance at events and comments on articles and posts has been amazingly positive.

When we first started our conversation and our planning, we were scratching around looking for volunteers who would be willing to share their personal journey from health to mental ill-health and back. We were holding conversations with friends of friends to try and handle the subject as delicately as possible.

After a CEO and CHRO email to all employees, we’ve had people banging on the door telling us they’re willing to share their experiences of their mental health journey - what worked, what didn’t, and everything in between.

Have we achieved what we set out to do? Absolutely. We’ve started the conversation.

Will it stop now? No. We’ll continue to talk – continue check-up on ourselves and check-in on colleagues. Making time not only to ask, but to listen.

Thank you to all my colleagues who have been so honest in sharing, and for helping us on our D&I journey – helping to breakdown stereotypes and continue to build a truly inclusive culture that cares.