I have read a lot of material produced by consultants on primary mental health prevention in the workplace. In some cases, I sensed complexity in the proposed policies. I want to demystify and simplify workplace mental health policies. To do so, I chose to share the simple story of one of our clients, a successful entrepreneur who runs a small business, motivated like no other by the well-being at work and promoting the good psychological health of his employees.
The story of our client:
Our client is an IT business leader who has grown stratospherically from 10 to 120 employees in just 20 months. He spends an important part of his time improving working conditions and work organisation. He is also constantly looking for ways to retain his employees and enhance their well-being at work.
He is particularly concerned about mental health because he started seeing people suffering from the effects of stress at work, which is inconceivable to him. He wants to provide them with tangible help and, above all, with well-being. He deplores the existence of some stigma in his workplace and infers a need to promote mental health.
He has no knowledge of mental health in the workplace, and no knowledge of preventive measures to alleviate suffering in the workplace. He’d like a healthy work environment, wants to act in prevention, and improve the overall quality of life of his employees. Also, he wants to keep it simple. Quite a challenge!
He found us through a friend who knows a friend! At the outset, he asked us if we have an action plan to help him with his people who are showing signs of depression or anxiety. We introduced him to our personalized support program for people in distress in the workplace.
His answer: I’m interested, let’s go! His other question: How do we communicate that?
A workplace mental health policy from senior management:
We are not specialists in internal corporate communication, but we thought that by keeping things simple and clear, we couldn't go wrong.
So, here’s our approach:
Bring together the management committee with a representative of l’Escalier, in this case me, Amélie the head coach. Put on the agenda the implementation of a preventive approach to psychological health at work (presentation, discussion, awareness raisings, answers to questions, obtaining the support of employees). We spent a day in meetings. To my surprise, we were able to address issues such as productivity, work organization, workload, occupational risks, the consequences of stress, and health at work in general.
Write a short, simple and clear policy that focuses on risk prevention and the psychological safety of employees. The one we have proposed is based on four paragraphs.
Agree to speak openly about mental health from now on to "de-stigmatize" the phenomenon.
Appoint a person responsible for improving mental health in the workplace, preferably someone who could give a testimony on a lived case of depression or an anxiety disorder. As luck would have it, a vice-president took a deep breath and volunteered to discuss his burnout experience. Of course, his colleagues did not know, and once the surprise dissipated, we all realized around the table that we had just broken a taboo. Our VP becomes our program manager. He already has ideas to intervene in work organization and to prevent stress.
Train managers on how to detect signs of psychological distress and how to talk to employees about them; make our managers actors in the prevention of mental health problems.
Normalize the discussion on mental health in team meetings, and even make it a topic automatically included in weekly follow-up meetings. Talk about quality of work life and psychosocial risks, but also about people with mental disorders.
Offer the help of a private and confidential professional resource (a coach from my team); publicize their name, telephone number and email.
Provide ongoing coaching to managers on day-to-day issues. Whether it is meeting the needs of a person suffering from a depressive disorder or a person complaining of overload, we support them in their prevention function.
Communicating workplace mental health policy
Use the usual communication channels in the company:
Email
Video
Face-to-face conference
Team Meeting
Intranet
Etc.
Don’t stop there: Towards a culture of mental health at work
We can say that the implementation of the workplace mental health policy went well. It allowed for a broader reflection on mental health in the workplace and highlighted that more could be done to prevent such harmful situations from affecting the quality of life at work.
We are seeing a culture of health and well-being unfold. People want a workplace stress prevention approach. Some teams are starting to discuss psychosocial risk management, measures needed to prevent mental health, protective factors, etc. The management committee communicates to the teams the need to be concerned about psychosocial risk factors (new language in the company).
Emphasis is placed on reducing psychological risks throughout the company. Finally, a prevention training initiative for all company players is part of the plan this year. The goal is to implement a mental health promotion plan.
The watchword now: Act to prevent.
Amélie, the head coach
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