If we’re to rethink our approach to mental health we need to rethink legislative interpretation, says Steven Harris.
The conversation on mental health is increasing at an alarming rate, and is being quickly followed by an eager bunch of ambulance-chasing mental health ‘experts’ in the form of highly paid consultants, ready to give their solutions to an incredibly complex challenge.
This brings me to my first point, while an external professional from any discipline (be those human resources to health & safety) may be able to assist your organisation strategically, the tactical implementation of what ever measures you decide are best implemented under the watchful eye of a health professional. To be clear, in my opinion, that is someone registered and regulated by The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) or named on a register accredited by the Professional Standard Authority (PSA).
If we consider where the basis for the need for that strategic assistance can be found, most roads lead back to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. In the UK, this primary legislation is what requires employers, as far as is reasonably practicable, to proactively manage the hazards and risks to their employees. Make no mistake about it, this includes managing the risks to employee’s mental health from psychosocial hazards.
This would then point us towards a risk assessment, the boiler plate from which all informed strategy can be found. This direction of travel is reinforced within the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 which requires employers to conduct a suitable and sufficient assessment of all reasonably foreseeable risk, which requires them to identify and manage potential aspects of employment, or that could be experienced when conducting their employment, that may result in mental health issues.
This is one area that my organisation has carried out numerous risk assessments. We have developed our own format, and draw on a number of resources and prompts to ensure that we have captured all the information we need to turn the risk-related data into actionable intelligence that highlights areas of vulnerabilities within a workforce. Whilst it is always critical within the assessment of risk to never pre-judge, there are a few elements that consistently emerge, one of which I would like to highlight in this article.
If we take a step back, and revisit the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 from a few paragraphs ago, we can see that the ‘General duties of employers to their employees’ lies in Section 2. Within that section it explicitly states that ‘the matters to which that duty extends include’ in Subsection 2c, ‘the provision of such information, instruction, training and supervision as is necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of his employees’. This is where a large amount of the problem rests.
Our experience has been that, due to a myriad of societal, cultural, commercial and governmental pressures and lapses, organisations have never fully addressed educating their workforce about an aspect of their employment that carried huge moral, legal and economic consequences. Until a company has brought their workforce up to a minimum level of competence on mental health (based on the provision of competent ‘information, instruction, training’) the solutions offered by the ‘experts’ cannot hope to be sustainable.
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.
What we know about general excellence – risk assessments and training are of course vital but just base one. The overall culture is king … so a holistic, integrated and above all humanistic cultural approach to the whole organisation (especially the day to day habits and mind-sets of the leadership) is needed for a meaningful impact. A complex problem needs a team solution – only some of whom needing the right affiliations.
Legislation will absolutely not help.
There needs to be a series of ACoPs provided for mental health as the Management Regs are already sufficient to cover mental ill-health risk. It is about education, persuasion and recognition – more legislation will solve NOTHING.