Although there is a legal requirement for businesses to have qualified physical first aiders on site, currently, mental health and wellbeing support is not regarded by many companies as a priority yet. However, it is becoming ever more apparent that this attitude must change if companies want to stay ahead of the curve. According to the Centre for Mental Health, mental ill health at work costs the UK economy £34.9bn per year, which means that mental health problems cost ~£1,300 for every employee in the UK. Therefore, forward-thinking business leaders are starting to recognise the value of investing in a robust wellbeing strategy.
At Marshall Centre, employee wellbeing is at the heart of everything they do, and recently they achieved a milestone with 100% of the management team qualifying as mental health first aiders.
We asked General Manager, Dan Edwards, why it was a strategic decision to invest in this training and how he expected this to impact the business:
“People’s mental health has been critical to the success of Marshall Centre, but for us as a group of leaders, it runs a lot deeper. When we re-launched in 2019, we decided that we wanted to create a culture that would challenge our people to develop and grow. We recognised that this was essential for the success of our business, but beyond that, it was something that could benefit our people both professionally and personally, helping to support our wider mission. Because of the nature of this we knew resilience would be critical, as constant change is never an easy or comfortable place to exist, so we made a few strategic decisions, one of which was to employ Jo Boyd as Head of Wellbeing.
"Once Jo was in place, we started to educate the business on the importance of positive mental health, what operating in a learning culture ultimately looks like, and the types of challenges they could expect to face as a result. COVID, and the repercussions we experienced as a society certainly accelerated this as we looked to safeguard and support our people through an exceptionally difficult time. We were very conscious of the fact that people where suffering emotionally, so we decided the whole business could benefit from the training. To date, 70% of the whole business has been through the training and we’re very proud of the fact that our entire leadership and management team have completed the course. We’ve even extended out to our people’s families, training the wife of one of our learning facilitators and their son as he found it so useful and inspiring, and, in the words of his wife, ‘he didn’t stop talking about it.’
"In essence it’s our way of putting our money where our mouth is. Ultimately, we hope to lead the way in what a modern, responsible employer looks like and that by putting wellbeing central to what you do can increase your chances of being successful both collectively and individually. Businesses don’t think twice about sending their workforce on compliance training such as GDPR or Health and Safety and we hope Wellbeing training becomes part of the new normal as businesses look to Stay Ahead of the Curve.”
For more information, please visit: https://www.marshallcentre.com/discover/wellbeing/