10:30am Monday 22nd February 2010
By Wellbeing At Work
We had a packed house at the last Swindon Mindful Employer Network meeting and a very lively discussion on issues relating to mental health and well-being at work. It amazes me when you get 45 people in a room talking about a matter that only a few years ago would have been a no-no ! “Stress ? Does that exist ?” would have been the cry. The change has come because people are speaking out more and more. Mental health does matter.
Geoff Windle from the Swindon Psychology Services explained what happens when employees (or anybody else) goes to their GP surgery asking for support and explaining the service is there to assist the individual back to good mental health – and back to work. Emily Leadbetter from Capita spoke about company policy on well-being and stress risk assessments. While Jonathan Naess of Stand to Reason told the audience how he had suffered severe mental distress in his life and the impact this had on his high-pressured and high profile job in the City of London. What is so clear to me is that while there is growing understanding about mental illness, there is also a wider concern about the negative effect on business performance. Absence is still a major cause of alarm with employers and the debate still rages about how to tackle it. Should bosses clamp down hard on absenteeism with ‘penalties’ or are there fundamental problems with the business structure and workplace culture ? Why do so many employees wake up Monday morning and decide to take a ‘sickie’ ? How motivated are your people ? For the sake of your business and productivity it maybe the right time to ask some searching questions. Mindful Employer may help provide some answers and point you in the right direction.
Libby Purves recently wrote an article about National Sickie Day in The Times and she finished on this : “So - while I hate to throw the ball back at employers in these hard times — if large numbers of your staff are croaking or texting “sick back tmrw” down the phone this morning it may not just be about them. It could be you.”
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