Mental health at work gets Afterhours treatment
16th June 2008
EFD members joined our expert panel at our latest Afterhours Event on mental health, held on June 12 at the Museum of Garden History, London.
The event focused on why workplace mental health is so hard to address and how much responsibility should be placed on an employer to promote mental well-being.
The event's distinguished panellists and chair were (from left to right):
- Paul Farmer, Chief Executive, Mind
- Dr Liz Miller, GP and 2008 Mind Champion of the Year Winner (front row)
- Dr Bob Grove, Director of Employment Programmes, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health
- Dr Stephen Duckworth, chair of the discussion and leading disability consultant, specialising in post-injury employability (front row)
- Dame Carol Black, National Director for Health and Work
- Susan Scott Parker, Chief Executive, Employers’ Forum on Disability (front row) and
- Neil Lowther from the National Social Inclusion Programme.
The lively debate included questions from the private, public and voluntary sectors and from people with direct experience of mental ill health.
Stephen Duckworth opened the debate by quoting that 90% of unemployed people with mental ill health want to work, 40% of people with previous psychiatric intervention are denied employment and that one in six of the working population experience stress or depression.
The panel were then asked: why is mental health so problematic for employers to deal with?
Dame Carol Black discussed the fear surrounding mental health at work and suggested that better training would ensure that line managers, GP’s and OHS teams were “acquainted and comfortable with mental health”. Bob Grove agreed that fear often made managers “back off” from employees in distress.
Paul Farmer said that mental health must make “business sense” by becoming a workforce issue rather than an individual problem. Dr Liz Miller suggested that organisations should be learning from existing cases of stress in the workforce. Early cases should be used like a “canary in a coalmine” as an overall indicator of the functionality of the entire workforce.
The debate moved on to ‘Reasonable Adjustments’ for mental health. Susan Scott-Parker felt that Reasonable Adjustments for people with mental ill health were often overlooked. The debate continued to address the pros and cons of in-house versus outsourced Occupational Health Services.
The panel were asked what they considered the attributes of a mentally healthy workplace suggestions included: feeling valued, having good companions, autonomy, flexibility, feeling useful and having a mix of all personality types.
The event also launched the key findings from the ‘Great Place to Work’ – Line Manager Survey conducted by EFD with Great Place to Work and sponsored by Unum.
The survey found that 60% of line managers underestimated the percentage of the UK population that experiences mental ill health and only 13% had received mental health awareness training in the past year.
This prompted debate around declaring mental ill health in the workplace. Paul Farmer suggested that managers could think in terms of what would happen if their “star performer” did not feel comfortable enough to disclose, resulting in a sudden slide in performance?
Neil Lowther suggested that disclosure should prompt an automatic offer of adjustment from managers. In researching for her recent Working for a healthier tomorrow report, Dame Carol Black suggested that the organisations who were best at mental health consulted with employees and in which senior staff embraced solutions.
The questions ended with a discussion around the return to work process. Recurring themes were: that the individual is the expert in managing their condition, colleagues and wider team members are crucial in supporting a colleague back to work and that the return to work process should be phased and regularly reviewed.
In conclusion the panel felt that one of the most positive outcomes of the evening was that there was little focus on the Disability Discrimination Act definition of mental health, which was often a stumbling block to individuals received the appropriate levels of support at work.
Ends
Notes to editors
Media enquiries, please contact:
Liz Nightingale, Communications Manager
Employers' Forum on Disability
Email: liz.nightingale@efd.org.uk
Telephone: 020 7403 3020
About Employers' Forum on Disability
Employers' Forum on Disability is the employers' organisation focused on disability as it affects employers and service providers. With over 400 members, EFD represents organisations that employ around 20 per cent of the UK workforce.Since its establishment in 1991, EFD has worked closely with government and other stakeholders, sharing best practice to make it easier to employ disabled people and serve disabled customers.