When we think of mental health, we often think of it as a personal circumstance or something that employees aren’t all opening up about. We may have a handful of stories or cases within an organisation that tell us that we must start to improve the culture so that wellbeing is a key focus.
We know that burnout is classed as a workplace phenomenon by the World health Organisation. A company will work with their human resources department and check absence figures, retention of staff and you may even have a stress risk assessment.
Once you’ve got to this position and you are ready to make changes it can be hard to know what affect the changes will have when you don’t know how the majority or the team feels mentally. That is why we are encouraging you to ask the question of ‘what is the mental health of your business?’
So, to answer this where do you start? I suggest starting to look at it from what a counsellor or therapist would do when working an individual and then multiply to scale. For example, they would use a range of surveys at the start to establish the current mental health of the individual.
These surveys have been created from mental health professionals.
The surveys cover:
· Low Mood and Depression
· Phobias and Fears
· Work and Social Adjustment
· Anxiety and Worries
When these are assessed it can give you a clearer picture of a person’s individual state of mind.
These surveys of course can be scaled up to provide advice on a workforce. Now I know you may be thinking but people will not want to fill in a survey about their mental health, they find it difficult to open up. This is correct and why we recommend doing this type of assessment anonymously. Encouraging your employees to complete it anonymously will definitely give you a transparent overview, allowing you to stay objective and non-judgemental in the process.
This type of assessment will give you the mental health of your business. It can tell you if there are more people on the workforce at more risk or suicide through depression, it can identify the level of anxiety and stress within your workplace, it can also assess if people are scared or feeling under confident or struggling socially. This can be key in identifying where you are before ensuring you can take steps to improve the mental health and wellbeing of your team.
This information is a crucial first step in establishing the current status quo and planning a road map or blueprint to create change. I can tell you that it is possible to change the culture to one that does really help to create a happier healthier team. The 6 step model that the Modern Mind Group works with when working with a company is:
Discover – Find out the mental health of the business and current status quo
Decide – On the solution through a blueprint and roadmap
Communicate – Let the team know the changes with the what, the why and the how.
Implement – the new ways of working involving training, SOPs or guidelines. Take action to ensure that the changes are made.
Monitor – the performance of the mental health and wellbeing blueprint via a traffic light system to see the levels of implementation change alongside the company results and engagement surveys.
Drive – Continue to remove the roadblocks to change and drive the actions that were agreed upon.
In many cases businesses are great at applying the first three elements. It’s the last three that are the most difficult to get right as they need to be repeated on a monthly basis. This test’s buy in, belief, resilience and can only be effective when met with accountability.
Therefore, it is absolutely vital to find out the mental health of your business at the start, because it gives you a benchmark, a reason, a purpose. Something to hold on to when faced with financial conversation around budget and whether you should be spending the money on a mental health and wellbeing programme.
If you would like a free business mental health check from the Modern Mind Group then please get in touch here – Free Business Mental Health Check
Over 60% of employees identify with burnout and over 20% of employees have been shown to have suicidal thoughts in many cases. Let’s find out if that is the case for your workforce and make a plan to make a difference.
The Modern Mind Group are emotioneering human performance not engineering it.
As a learning and performance consultancy, we work with your business to identify and improve performance gaps so that you can be more profitable and professionally develop your people. Over 10 years of expertise in learning and performance with results to back it all up. Why settle for the average when there is a world of possibility when you know how to achieve it? Untapped potential - Let's go get it!