Mental health has affected nearly everyone during these difficult times. From apprentices to their assessors and even employers and tutors.
Mental health is extremely important, disturbances to our mental and emotional well-being affect our ability to do our jobs properly and efficiently. This, in turn, affects an organization’s time, resources, and eventually the bottom line. Employers should take steps to tackle work-related causes of stress, and encourage their employees to seek help at the earliest opportunity if they begin to show symptoms or are experiencing symptoms that are affecting their daily lives. Making sure to have a healthy, honest and supportive culture along with information and tools is vital for employees.
Benefits of reducing stress at work include, healthy and happy employees, improved performance and productivity, reduced absenteeism, attract new talent and reduce disputes.
It may not always be immediately obvious when someone is suffering with bad mental health – most people cover up their feelings at work, but if, as an employer you notice something early one, you can make improvements to help them. The kind of things you can look for are changes in the persons usual behaviour (mood or how they interact with colleagues), changes in their standard of work or focus on tasks, appearing tired, anxious or withdrawn or an increase in sickness absences and/or turning up late to work.
To make improvements, employers can review the persons job role, monitor their workload or conduct a stress audit.
Employers can do a lot to help with mental health awareness such as promoting good mental health within the business, let potential employees know what you’re doing around mental health, work with line managers and nominate mental health ambassadors.
For more mental health advice, visit https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/nhs-voluntary-charity-services/charity-and-voluntary-services/get-help-from-mental-health-helplines/