Mental Health Awareness Week is an initiative designed to educate and increase awareness of mental illness and the importance of tackling mental health issues. Your clients should be using this increased awareness to review their business; do they recognise the importance of managing mental health concerns and do they offer support to their staff?
Your clients need to provide sufficient training to managers so they are able to identify where staff are struggling with their work, as this can lead to a mental health condition. It’s important to address workload concerns as soon as possible to prevent issues spiralling out of control. Training managers is important because these are the main person the employee interacts with so they need to be able to positively communicate with employees, provide feedback in a supportive manner and address any concerns. Employees will not always feel that they can disclose mental health conditions to their employer so creating an honest and open communication culture between staff and managers is essential for your clients.
The law puts certain duties on your clients including the duty to take reasonable care for the health and safety of staff and to take reasonable care to prevent mental health issues occurring. All of your clients are also prevented from discriminating against staff on the grounds of a disability. Some mental health conditions fall in to the Equality Act’s definition of a disability, a mental impairment which has a substantial and long term effect on their ability to do normal day to day activities, and these staff are protected against less favourable treatment. Your clients will also have to make reasonable adjustments to reduce disadvantages faced by employees where their mental illness is a disability.
Providing workplace support is a really important step in tackling mental health. Your clients should consider providing information on available sources of help or courses and can even offer workplace counselling benefits such as Employee Assistance Programmes which provide confidential help for work and personal concerns.
