Health and wellbeing could often be seen as less tangible than safety, she said. “It’s a difficult area, and it’s understandable that organisations haven’t talked about it. It can seem woolly, but if we follow the same process as for safety then we can’t go far wrong. It’s nothing new in that respect.”
It was about identifying and addressing risks, she said, and putting the right measures in place. Although 9.9m working days were lost to stress, anxiety and depression, it was still something that employees didn’t like to talk about. “It’s easier to say you’ve got a bad back.”
Just tackling stress on its own was too narrow, however. Work-related stress was an organisational issue, not the fault of the individual. “It’s very much an adverse reaction to the demands put on someone. It’s a matter of perception, but organisations need to look at why people are struggling in the first place.”
Although there was a great deal of information online, along with freely available tools, organisations were not always sure how to navigate it all or approach the issue strategically, she said. “Workplace policies that say ‘we take stress seriously’ often fall short. We should be talking about what we’re doing at an organisational level.”
The focus is now shifting to creating wellbeing – “the opposite of stress” – she said. “Organisations are trying to get to that tipping point, removing as many of the sources of stress as possible.” It was about engagement, good leadership and – crucially – improved business performance, she pointed out, and it made sense to think about wellbeing in a business-like way. “It has the potential to improve productivity as well as everything else. We need to get these messages in at the highest level.
“If we’re looking to engage with our workforce we need that wellbeing to be there first, not the other way round,” she continued. “It has to underpin that engagement.” Leadership had a huge impact on everyone, she said. “Often if you boil all the surveys down to one little nugget it comes down to who your manager is.”
The process of change would inevitably take a long time, as it did with safety, but it was a matter of ‘prevention first’. “Often we wait until it’s too late, when we’ve mentally damaged our workforce, before we do something to help them.”
Key drivers of wellbeing were meaning and purpose, well-designed jobs and environments, control and support, she pointed out, and it was essential that management communicated with the workforce about change. “You need to communicate, even if that information is ‘we don’t know at the moment’.” It was also about looking at organisational integrity – “do we mean what we say, and say what we mean?” – and giving employees a genuine voice.
“It’s only once we know what the problems are that we can start to build the solutions we need. There will always be a place for secondary and tertiary interventions, but these won’t change the culture on their own. It needs an integrated approach, something that’s sustainable. We’re not talking about soft, fluffy wellbeing here. We’re talking about improving our productivity and our business.”
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.
There are many important elements that have to fit together to ensure any workplace health and wellbeing programme is successfully implemented and sustained. Completely agree that to start with it boils down to assessing and prioritising the health needs of a particular group. In terms of a sell, The Fit for Work Team have learnt that presenting the business case is usually a good way in. You have to have buy in and advocacy from the key decision makers first though, this can make or break your pitch.