Mental Ill Health At Work

Is failing to manage effectively your employees’ mental wellbeing at work affecting your bottom line? According to the HSE, the answer is a clear and resounding ‘yes’.

The UK reportedly lost 17 million working days due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2021-2022, with an estimated 914,000 workers suffering with work related mental ill health, and this accounting for half of all work related ill health cases. These rates are higher than pre-pandemic levels, and are likely to increase as the costs of living crisis intensifies. Plainly improving employee wellbeing in this area should be a key focus for any business seeking to operate efficiently.

The advice from the HSE is for employers to collaborate with both employees and an occupational health service to create a healthier workplace, including preventing workload creep, regular rest breaks, ensuring staff take annual leave and creating an open culture in which communication around mental health is encouraged to enable individual issues to be addressed at an early stage.

In more complex cases, ideally what is required is for businesses to engage with individual members of staff to provide tailored solutions. Occupational health support can assist with this process by assessing someone’s fitness to work due to stress or mental ill-health, recommending workplace or role adjustments to allow an individual to be productive, helping an individual return to work after a period of absence or referring them on for clinical treatment. Occupational health assistance has often in the past been seen as a last resort, rather than a first line of action and there is a very strong argument for getting occupational health involved at an earlier stage to prevent someone becoming more significantlyunwell. The reality is that early intervention along with small, short-term adjustments can make a big difference, particularly if made at an early stage. The knock on effect is reduced sickness absence and dramatically improved employee productivity and retention.

Therefore, employers should promote occupational health as a key part within any wider approach to mental health support within the organisation.

If you have a complex situation with a particular employee, or you would like some general guidance on managing issues related to employee mental health effectively, please contact Katie Eastwell at katie@lincolnoccupationalhealth.co.uk