mental health at work
Society appears to be getting more comfortable talking about mental health issues; employers could leverage this by making it a learning topic for everyone.
Mental Health awareness delivered digitally
Fenturi’s “Mental Health @ work” activity demonstrates the potential digital based learning has for reaching people at scale to develop awareness, understanding and deliver support.
The activity takes about fifteen minutes to complete and is broken down into three main sections. The first part explores what is meant by mental health and typical misconceptions people have about the topic. It breaks down common types of poor mental health and asks the learner to reflect on the type of language people use that can be unhelpful, indicating a lack of knowledge.
The second part is about how to manage your mental health and has interactive activities where the learner creates a personalised check-list and action plan for future reference. One of the first activities is to think about and understand what triggers your mental health. The learner is then asked to listen to a scenario and flag the tell tale signs that one of the participants is suffering from poor mental health.
The activity then asks the learner to explore a range of self care tips that can help them manage their health and establish a criteria of how their job should support their personal wellbeing.
The third part of the activity is about how to support other people. An interactive scenario simulates a conversation where the learner attempts to support a colleague at work. The learner is asked to make choices on how best to react within the flow of realistic dialogue, highlighting the importance of open questions and the sensitivity of appropriate language.
The course has been designed to be accessible to a broad audience and form a solid introduction to the topic. We are conscious that mental health topics have a breadth and depth that this course does not fully capture, and we welcome your feedback and how we can customise the format to your specific needs.
We have been very pleased to collaborate with Luke Adebiyi as we developed our thinking. Luke is Group Wellbeing and Diversity lead at Capital International Banking group and Trustee of Inspire UK, the mental health charity. He said this about the course: “Day to day triggers that all of us can sometimes feel is ‘normal’ potentially isn’t and can ultimately make us forget easy signs that contribute towards negative wellbeing, or spot signs in others. This course really highlights these points in more detail, giving participants a personal checklist that signposts changes to their working day. Digital technology allows us to do well, by doing good and this course gives users the opportunity to delve deeper into Mental Health, wherever they may be”
Where are we with mental health?
The subject of mental health has gained a higher profile over the last few years, as we’ve had a shared moment of increased anxiety and disruption to our way of life. There was a rise in ill health in 2021 with 822k people taking time off work for stress, anxiety or depression representing 50% of all work related ill health cases and millions of lost work days. There is an opportunity to capitalise on this shared moment and push harder to remove the taboo of talking about mental health. And make no mistake that there is taboo with 75% of employers acknowledging the presence of mental health stigma in their workplace.
One positive step is to introduce mental health awareness as part of an onboarding programme. It’s an opportunity to communicate the values of the organisation whilst ensuring that every new starter understands the topic, can identify the warning signs and understands they have permission to talk about the issue and take action. There is an obvious personal benefit to the individual, but also by scaling the training to line managers and every employee, the benefits will cascade through the entire company.
It can be a challenge to offer training to large cohorts of new starters or those returning to work particularly in hybrid or fully remote roles. Digital training can be a solution because it be can both engaging and accessible to a broad audience. Fenturi have launched this new interactive digital activity to demonstrate that potential.
We hosted a webinar to discuss the topic on May 26th 2022. Fenturi experts walked through the course, joined by mental health expert Luke Adebiyi. If you would like a copy of the webinar recording please get in touch using the email below.
