Creating a world where the wellbeing of people is prioritised

Our men­tal health has been under fire over the past 12 months: iso­la­tion, fear, loss of social con­nec­tions, finan­cial uncer­tain­ty, bereave­ment, burnout and anx­i­ety all play­ing their part. We have seen the removal of the imposed dis­ci­pline of the phys­i­cal office, dri­ving us to work longer hours with few­er breaks in the day and less time out­side. Many peo­ple will also feel psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly unsafe when return­ing to the work­place.

While the men­tal health chal­lenges we are fac­ing are there for all to see, there are sil­ver lin­ings. The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has democ­ra­tised men­tal health because most of us now know what it is to strug­gle, result­ing in a greater degree of empa­thy and under­stand­ing for those who suf­fer reg­u­lar­ly. 

We have wit­nessed the rise of authen­tic and vul­ner­a­ble lead­er­ship in many work­places. It was very encour­ag­ing to read in a recent sur­vey of chief exec­u­tives by Fortune/Deloitte that 98 per cent say men­tal health and well­be­ing will be a pri­or­i­ty, even after the pan­dem­ic is over. I and many oth­ers have been cam­paign­ing for organ­i­sa­tions to make this com­mit­ment for years.

Men­tal health and well­be­ing are now firm­ly on the agen­da and aware­ness is high, but how do we move to action? The answer lies in becom­ing more inten­tion­al.

We would all ben­e­fit from giv­ing our­selves the gift of self-reflec­tion each day. We gen­er­al­ly have good self-aware­ness in rela­tion to our phys­i­cal health, but less so with our men­tal health and well­be­ing. It can be very help­ful to build up a pic­ture of what is dri­ving our well­be­ing: sleep, exer­cise, social con­nec­tions, stress man­age­ment, sense of pur­pose, help­ing oth­ers. 

Our well­be­ing is high­ly per­son­al and indi­vid­ual, yet unless we have learnt to man­age a spe­cif­ic men­tal health chal­lenge, it is unlike­ly we have gained lit­er­a­cy in rela­tion to what is dri­ving it. Once we have this knowl­edge, proac­tive­ly man­ag­ing our well­be­ing becomes a log­i­cal next step.

For employ­ers, choos­ing to treat the well­be­ing of employ­ees as a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty is just the start. Mov­ing from aware­ness to action is key, along­side mea­sur­ing the suc­cess of efforts in this space. It is encour­ag­ing to see some organ­i­sa­tions adopt­ing employ­ee well­be­ing as a mea­sure of suc­cess along­side the cre­ation of share­hold­er val­ue.  

Gov­ern­ments should also look to the well­be­ing of cit­i­zens as a basis for build­ing back bet­ter and track­ing the suc­cess of nations. At the very least, the UK gov­ern­ment could incen­tivise employ­ers to invest more in the well­be­ing of employ­ers through tax incen­tives. This should be a win-win as the result­ing increase in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty will ulti­mate­ly lead to a greater tax take due to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains and increased out­put from employ­ers.

So what type of future would you like to see? We stand at a unique point in time when we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a more human world. Do we go back to the way things were before or do we look to move for­ward and cre­ate a world where the well­be­ing of peo­ple is pri­ori­tised? Gov­ern­ments, employ­ers and indi­vid­u­als all have a choice in this and it starts with answer­ing one sim­ple ques­tion: “How are you today?”