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‘We’re humans every day’: how to prioritise mental health all year round

Petra Velze­boer, CEO and founder of men­tal health con­sul­tan­cy PVL, shares her thoughts on how organ­i­sa­tions can proac­tive­ly pri­ori­tise men­tal health and well­be­ing


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Why is it so impor­tant for organ­i­sa­tions to pri­ori­tise well­be­ing every day, not just when staff face dif­fi­cul­ties?

Because we’re humans every day! Not just once a quar­ter, or once a year, or when­ev­er the ini­tia­tive days are. Those are great for build­ing aware­ness among peo­ple who don’t know much about it and I’d always say that’s a great place to start, but we’re humans every day. We’re deal­ing with chal­lenges every day and our men­tal health moves up and down every day. So, why are we not talk­ing about men­tal health every day?

That does­n’t mean every day we have to do three hours of deep ther­a­peu­tic tears or med­i­tat­ing on a hill. It means tak­ing advan­tage of the small oppor­tu­ni­ties every day that just allow us to show up as who we are.

Is there often a dis­con­nect between what organ­i­sa­tions say about their stance on men­tal health and the actu­al cul­ture?

There are many com­pa­nies that are doing won­der­ful things and there are many com­pa­nies that are say­ing they’re doing won­der­ful things. They’ll say: “We’ve got this ERG [employ­ee resource group], we’ve got this com­mit­tee, we’ve got men­tal health first aiders.” It looks like they’re tick­ing all the box­es and hav­ing it cov­ered.

But with­in five min­utes, I can scratch beneath the sur­face and say: “I’m real­ly curi­ous. When you have those ERG meet­ings or when you have those cham­pi­on get-togeth­ers, do any of them check in about each oth­er’s men­tal health or talk about it?” And they’ll say: “No, no, nobody talks about it.” 

I’ll say: “Have you ever accessed the resources?” And if there’s a minor­i­ty that says yes, many say no. Then I’ll ask: “Does any­one know that?” They’ll say: “Oh, no, I haven’t told any­one.” These are the signs that I notice. You’ve got all the bells and whis­tles, but it’s how you show up. If it’s still deeply uncom­fort­able to do any of those things, that tells me that you’ve got a bit of a way to go.

If many peo­ple still don’t feel com­fort­able open­ing up at work, what are your tips for busi­ness­es to cre­ate a more approach­able and open cul­ture?

The way to cre­ate a more open cul­ture is, first of all, to get the buy-in from the top. You need senior-lev­el lead­er­ship to get it, to under­stand the busi­ness case. And if they have expe­ri­enced poor men­tal health them­selves, they may be extra pas­sion­ate and bring the top­ic for­ward. 

But it’s the small ways of prac­tis­ing it [that make a dif­fer­ence]. For exam­ple, when a leader, but also any per­son, is open them­selves in small ways through­out their day. It does­n’t have to be this big “I’ve got a sto­ry to tell” moment, it can just be “I real­ly strug­gled get­ting my kids off to school this morn­ing, it real­ly affect­ed my men­tal health and I’m going to try and get an ear­ly night to help man­age that.”

In the age of hybrid work­ing, how can busi­ness­es sup­port their staff when they are in the office less fre­quent­ly?

Some [organ­i­sa­tions] are say­ing you are required to be in the office from this time to this time on these days. It could be that those are dif­fer­ent days from their team, or that, if their team are all com­ing in, they’re all on video calls because of the 30% that are still vir­tu­al.

We’re los­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage in an inten­tion­al way. Where­as before it could be quite organ­ic – grab a cup of tea, have those con­ver­sa­tions in that way – these days, we’ve actu­al­ly got to put some struc­ture around it. That means wel­com­ing peo­ple, hav­ing a lit­tle bit of space for small talk, ask­ing per­haps a ques­tion or going into break­out groups.

I’m an advo­cate for the con­ver­sa­tion with your team of “let’s dis­cuss how we work, not just what we do,” and take a col­lab­o­ra­tive approach to what that looks like for you, in your team, in your indus­try. And then keep con­nect­ing on it every quar­ter to just check in. Are we still get­ting it right? How are peo­ple feel­ing? What do we need to do dif­fer­ent­ly?