By Unipart Head of Health and Wellbeing Claire Burgess
Burnout is on the rise, with around one in three employees, including executives, constantly struggling with fatigue or poor mental health, according to a Deloitte report.
Given the theme for this week’s World Mental Health Day is ‘workplace mental health’, the Deloitte report figures couldn’t be more relevant: 28% of sick days are due to poor employee mental health, and 61% of employees who left a job in the last year, or plan to leave in the next 12 months, cited poor mental health as a deciding factor.
The main cause of stress in the workplace is reported to be workload – such as tight deadlines, too much work, and too much pressure. Finances are reported as the main stressor outside the workplace. Given the cost of living increases and uncertainty we’ve seen this is no surprise.
The British Medical Association suggests the latest estimates put the mental health waiting list at 1.2 million people (2023) with strong evidence that those in areas of higher deprivation are more likely to be in contact with mental health services. This means as employers we need to do more to intervene and engage earlier, get people on the right pathway quicker to avoid having to wait for more complex treatment.
The role of the leader in mental wellbeing
The personal behaviours and attitudes of those with line management responsibilities are likely to be a key factor in supporting people’s wellbeing.
Managers impact employees’ mental health (69%) more than doctors (51%) or therapists (41%), according to The Workforce Institute at UKG.
This research shows where a leader speaks out, genuinely lives their truth (whatever that looks like) and is open and human, the view of whether the employer cares about the mental health of their employees increases from 34% to 85%.
Employees in the UK who consider their direct manager well-equipped to hold conversations about mental health report even fewer negative feelings at work – including desire to quit.
Conversely, UK workers who feel their manager is not equipped to have supportive mental health conversations report markedly worse experiences. 49% have felt low levels of motivation (vs 37%), 29% have felt irritable or angry with colleagues or customers (vs 20%) and 35% report having felt a desire to quit in the month before the survey conducted in May 2024 (vs 18%).
That places a lot of responsibility and emphasis on the role of manager, we have to remember that they are also human, with wellbeing needs.
How can employers support positive mental health in the workplace?
At Unipart we encourage open and non-judgemental conversations in the workplace, not only between managers and their teams but peer to peer too. We want everyone to feel safe to bring their whole selves to work and participate fully. Everyone has a seat at the table, we all have a voice, and we can all be heard. We work hard to break down stigma and improve positive mental wellbeing.
This doesn’t happen in isolation though, we have to think holistically about workplace wellbeing in general, and the impact the workplace can have on our mental wellbeing. Whilst the aim remains to create and sustain a mentally-healthy organisation, we have to think about all of the working parts of what that means.
Work can be good for us, it helps us to build self esteem, give us purpose and a sense of self worth but without the appropriate organisational controls, it can also contribute to causing illness or exacerbating existing conditions.
Ultimately, we need to prioritise mental health in the workplace by making it about healthy high performance not high performance at the expense of our health. It starts with ourselves though, knowing yourself and your own capacity for stress will help you to recognise what you need, preventing illness and ensuring earlier engagement with support.
We’re really pleased the systems we put in place at Unipart were recognised with a five-star wellbeing audit from the British Safety Council earlier this year.
The volunteer mental health first aider programme we launched during the pandemic to signpost support and resources to our colleagues means our support on sites is very visible.
But we need to keep evolving the support we provide. We’re still learning and we don’t have all the answers.
We’ve recently seen the creation and inaugural meeting of the Policy Liaison Group on Workplace Wellbeing, a Westminster forum looking at the challenges we face, such as financial strain, the rise of hybrid working, and the impact of AI, which are complex.
Monitoring the output of this forum, in addition to ongoing research of government, industry and third sector reports, will help us to inform the next stage of our support for employees.
Ultimately we will continue to prioritise mental health in the workplace through designing and delivering a systematic programme of activity, which is then regularly evaluated and improved.