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Mental health responses 'must be improved'
HR News |
03/01/2012
Employers need to get staff talking about mental health issues in 2012, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and charity Mind have claimed.
According to a new report, economic woes are conspiring to create "the perfect ingredients" for a surge in mental ill health.
The organisations claim the issue of mental ill health is still being "swept under the carpet" in most workplaces, with just four in ten employees saying they would feel confident to disclose a mental health problem to their employer.
Of 2,000 employees interviewed by CIPD, 26 per cent said they had experienced a mental health problem during the course of employment.
But just 25 per cent of respondents said their organisation encourages staff to talk openly about mental health problems and only 37 per cent claimed their employer supports staff members with mental health problems well.
Ben Willmott, head of public policy at CIPD, said managing mental health at work is central to good business performance.
"Stress is the number one cause of long-term sickness absence, but it is not just time lost to absence which impacts on the bottom line," he stated.
"Our survey highlights that the majority of people with poor mental health continue to attend work and report that it can impact on their ability to concentrate, make good decisions and provide effective customer service."
Mr Willmott claimed that managing and supporting mental health at work is "integral" to good people management.
"To a large degree this is about how managers interact with staff on a day-to-day basis and the extent to which they build working relationships based on mutual trust and confidence," he added.
For example, they can do this by managing workloads effectively and providing appropriate feedback, coaching and support where necessary.
"Managers are the eyes and ears of organisations, so need to be equipped with the knowledge and confidence to enable them to pick up on the early warning signs and intervene where employees are struggling," Mr Willmott stated.
"Mental ill health is usually caused by a complex interaction between pressures at work and at home, so increasing worries about debt, home repossession and job insecurity, as the economy continues to remain depressed, may well lead to a surge in mental ill health."
Posted by Stephen Wilkinson
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