Mom always tells me to celebrate everyone's uniqueness. I like the way that sounds.
– Hilary Duff
Get Mental Health Training writes:
‘Thriving at work’ does a great job of recognising the alignment of current professional and economic thinking with the political direction of travel (a thing in itself to be celebrated)! It goes beyond an excellent analysis of the current state of the nation to making clear recommendations as to practical steps forward.
It resonates with my earlier blog on Carers and the need to be focusing our efforts and resources upstream.
Firstly it needs to be applauded for normalising mental health and recognising it as an issue that affects all of us and underlining the economic importance of our response.
Four impact statistics:
- 300,000 people with a long term mental health problem lose their jobs each year
- Around 15% of people at work have symptoms of an existing mental health condition
- There is a large annual cost to employers of between £33 billion and £42 billion
- The cost of poor mental health to the economy as a whole is more than both of those together from lost output, at between £74 billion and £99 billion per year
A couple of important recommendations:
- The report sets out workplace ‘mental health core standards’ – a framework for a set of actions to implement quickly and include:
- Each organisation to produce, implement and communicate a mental health at work plan & develop mental health awareness among employees
- It also sets out ‘mental health enhanced standards’ to reach 46% of employees of all public sector employers and the 3,500 private sector companies with more than 500 employees which include:
- To provide internal and external reporting on mental health
- Ensure provision of tailored in-house mental health support
Now a thought from the report:
‘The Lancet has published findings from a study in the Australian Fire Service which found that a manager mental health training programme lead to a significant reduction in work-related sickness absence, with an associated return on investment of £9.98 for each pound spent on such training’.