On World Mental Health Day (Tuesday 10 October) ISS UK & Ireland initiated an employee wellbeing campaign to raise awareness of the importance of mental health in the workplace and to promote supporting each other as colleagues and friends.The initiative follows evidence suggesting 1 in 4 of us are likely to experience mental health problems in any year.
In launching the Mental Health campaign, and to show support for World Mental Health Day, ISS has created a weekly schedule of activities for the rest of the month of October, with each day of the week having a specific hashtag and with ideas, tips and support being communicated and shared amongst all employees.
The hashtags are:
The firm is encouraging employees to share photos of something that is important to them, such as a special place, a hobby or a pet, to show what makes them happy.
ISS began to engage with Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) nearly two years ago, with speeches at conferences and a pilot two day course run in February 2016.
Since then, the firm have trained several hundred people in either the full MHFA course or a half day stress management course. The provides a firm base for being a first responder, identifying signs of mental health problems, signposting people to someone who can help and how to look after your own mental health.
Stephanie Hamilton, ISS director of people and culture UK and Ireland, said: “At ISS, we believe that healthy people create a healthy business and we hope that this campaign will help to lift the stigma attached to mental health.
“Simply being able to understand, talk about and normalise these conditions is a huge step forward. I hope that World Mental Health Day and the activities that we have planned will encourage all of our employees to get involved – being open about mental health and ready to listen can really make a positive difference to someone’s life.”
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
