You have set out to equip business leaders to address mental health issues in the workplace. Why is this so important?
While any facet of life can impact our mental health, we spend 30 per cent of our waking hours at work — which means employers have a role to play in helping to address it. The business impact of mental health is also substantial: without mentally healthy workplaces, organizations risk reduced productivity, increased costs and loss of competitive advantage.
Work and mental health are closely intertwined, in that a safe and healthy working environment supports mental health while an unsafe or unhealthy environment can undermine it. If left unsupported, poor mental health can interfere with a person’s ability to work. The World Health Organization recently released a report that included recommendations to tackle risks to mental health such as heavy workloads, negative behaviours and other factors that can create distress at work. For the first time ever, it is now recommending manager training to build capacity to prevent stressful work environments and respond to workers in mental distress.
Global employers have a real opportunity to make a difference here, not only by tackling stigma and providing support when needed, but also by creating an environment where people can come to work and maintain their good mental health. For decades we thought about work as being completely separate from our personal lives. A degree of segmentation was normal. Then COVID-19 came along, and the boundary between work and life was
