Why organisational wellbeing is now a ‘business imperative’

From a glob­al pan­dem­ic to polit­i­cal unrest, the cost of liv­ing cri­sis to war in Europe, the events of the past 12 months have test­ed many people’s men­tal for­ti­tude. 

The work­place can be a par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ment to nav­i­gate when men­tal ill­ness aris­es. The lat­est Work­ing on Well­be­ing report from jobs site Indeed found that 59% of UK work­ers are cur­rent­ly or have faced men­tal health issues, with anx­i­ety, depres­sion and burnout three of the biggest chal­lenges. 

In recog­ni­tion of Men­tal Health Aware­ness week, Racon­teur host­ed a pan­el of men­tal health advo­cates. They dis­cussed some of the ways organ­i­sa­tions can best address men­tal ill­ness and cham­pi­on men­tal well­be­ing in the work­place.

How leaders can set the mental wellbeing agenda

As with many organ­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion projects, change needs to come from the top. Cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive and sup­port­ive work­ing envi­ron­ment has to start with those in posi­tions of pow­er, accord­ing to Rob Stephen­son, CEO of men­tal health app Form­score and the Insid­e­Out Leader­board.

“Well­be­ing needs to be seen as an essen­tial com­po­nent of high-per­for­mance organ­i­sa­tions; that requires edu­ca­tion at the lead­er­ship lev­el,” he says. “When a leader shares their sto­ries of men­tal ill health or pas­sion for well­be­ing, it cre­ates a cul­ture of per­mis­sion that cas­cades through the rest of the organ­i­sa­tion.” 

If lead­ers are unable to demon­strate their com­mit­ment to men­tal well­be­ing, it risks con­tribut­ing to the stig­ma that already sur­rounds the sub­ject, says Tere­sa Clark, founder and CEO of The Well­ness Rev­o­lu­tion.

“Lead­ers are ask­ing their employ­ees to share their men­tal health and be more open, but if they’re not pre­pared to be a role mod­el it can cre­ate dis­trust with­in organ­i­sa­tions,” she says. “We can only real­ly address stig­ma if we start to nor­malise con­ver­sa­tions about it.”

In order to encour­age open­ness in the work­place, busi­ness lead­ers need to demon­strate two key skills, accord­ing to TLC Lions founder Gian Pow­er. These are com­pas­sion and authen­tic­i­ty. 

“Being an effec­tive leader and being an authen­tic leader need to come togeth­er if we want a pos­i­tive work­place and to attract the best tal­ent,” he says. “It’s no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a busi­ness imper­a­tive.”

Busi­ness lead­ers them­selves are not immune to men­tal ill health. A recent sur­vey from the Fed­er­a­tion of Small Busi­ness­es revealed that more than a third of busi­ness own­ers (34%) have expe­ri­enced a decline in their men­tal health over the course of the Covid pan­dem­ic.

Clark rec­om­mends that lead­ers who find them­selves in this sit­u­a­tion set them­selves well­be­ing goals that clear­ly set out what to address. This pro­vides a check­list to return to, to ensure that per­son­al well­be­ing is not being neglect­ed.

“We’re all so busy and our own well­be­ing is often the first thing to go out the win­dow,” she says. “Espe­cial­ly for those in lead­er­ship roles.”

Mental health in the hybrid-work environment

Changes to the work­ing envi­ron­ment have also placed new stress­es on indi­vid­u­als’ men­tal health. The num­ber of remote work­ers that report feel­ing lone­ly is on the rise and inci­dences of burnout have also spi­ralled as the dis­tinc­tion between work and home have become blurred. 

Stephen­son says: “A lot of work over Teams and Zoom has become very trans­ac­tion­al and it leaves less space for that human con­nec­tion. Facil­i­tat­ing and cre­at­ing space for those con­nec­tions is real­ly impor­tant to con­nect us as human beings.”

Although these remote-work­ing tech­nolo­gies have in some ways brought us clos­er to col­leagues, let­ting us see into their liv­ing rooms, for exam­ple, if there is lit­tle room for dis­cus­sion about how we’re feel­ing, that sense of con­nec­tion can be lost. 

“The pan­dem­ic has giv­en us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to open up more, but just because you can see some­one’s cat does­n’t mean you know how they feel,” says Petra Velze­boer, CEO of men­tal health con­sul­tan­cy PVL. “This vir­tu­al set­ting is often char­ac­terised by back-to-back meet­ings, task-focused dis­cus­sions and very few breaks, mak­ing the work­place more for­mal.”

In order to bring this sense of con­nec­tion into the hybrid-work­ing envi­ron­ment, organ­i­sa­tions need to ensure that all teams under­stand the impor­tance of good men­tal health. 

Intro­duc­ing Mon­day morn­ing yoga isn’t enough, accord­ing to Pow­er. Busi­ness­es have to find ways to weave men­tal health into all aspects of their com­mu­ni­ca­tions and train­ing, while also mak­ing it manda­to­ry to ensure that every­one ben­e­fits.

“Well­be­ing can­not be stand­alone any­more,” he says. “The win­ning organ­i­sa­tions are notic­ing this and it helps to attract the right tal­ent to their cul­ture as well.” 

Velze­boer admits that many com­pa­nies are still fig­ur­ing out how to imple­ment and invest in well­be­ing in the new world of hybrid work. How­ev­er, the con­se­quences of not address­ing the chal­lenge can be stark. 

Accord­ing to research from Deloitte, the cost of men­tal health-relat­ed sick­ness absence reached a record high of £56bn last year. The largest con­trib­u­tor to this total is pre­sen­teeism, with UK employ­ers los­ing an esti­mat­ed £28bn as a result of peo­ple under­per­form­ing because of men­tal ill health. 

This presents busi­ness­es with a “huge oppor­tu­ni­ty” to close the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gap by invest­ing in devel­op­ing work­ing cul­tures that pos­i­tive­ly con­tribute to people’s men­tal health, Stephen­son says. 

“A com­pa­ny can have the best well­be­ing strat­e­gy in the world but if it has a tox­ic envi­ron­ment where  boss­es are com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a very neg­a­tive way or where the work demands are unre­al­is­tic, staff are not going to be well,” Stephen­son adds. “Some­times that can be seen to be at odds with the goals of an organ­i­sa­tion in terms of bill­able hours or return on share­hold­er invest­ment.”

In actu­al fact, the same Deloitte report esti­mates that for every £1 invest­ed in staff men­tal health, employ­ers can expect a return of £5.30. Yet still, despite the pan­dem­ic high­light­ing the impor­tance of men­tal health and ele­vat­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, “there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of clos­ing a per­cep­tion gap,” Stephen­son says.

Ulti­mate­ly, he believes organ­i­sa­tions should be focus­ing their efforts on answer­ing one sim­ple ques­tion: “How do we make work a life-enhanc­ing expe­ri­ence?”