Supporting employee wellbeing

As organisations make difficult decisions to navigate through economic recovery, many employees are continuing to struggle with additional anxiety and stress. We want to make clear that there are affordable solutions out there that can help support employee wellbeing and protect company culture.

At the start of the pandemic, we looked at how to protect your employee’s mental health in the face of COVID-19, to find out more click here. To further these conversations, we then examined how employers can help reduce employee anxiety when returning to work, you can read the findings here. To understand this topic further we conducted our own poll, have a look at the results here.

A year later with new research coming to light we still find ourselves asking difficult questions surrounding employee wellbeing in the workplace. The pandemic has increased anxiety for many and there has been a sharp rise in people suffering psychological conditions. Therapists and teachers warn of a looming mental health crisis as 500,000 people who did not get treated during the lockdown finally seek help. This is due to many NHS services being suspended and people being either too afraid to access care or did not want to bother the NHS.

The outcome of all the above has left England’s 54 specialists NHS mental health trusts struggling to cope raising the question that organisations need to do more to look after the wellbeing of their employees. It is not simply an ethical decision, as there is a strong connection between employee wellbeing and company performance.

A recent CIPD survey found that mental ill-health and stress were the top two causes of long term absence in UK workplaces and ultimately a big reason for why employees quit their jobs. Whilst redundancies are obviously hugely stressful for the people being let go, the staff who remain have the added pressure of picking up extra work and rebounding from the loss of friends and colleagues. This problem of stress and anxiety is a cultural issue, and sadly will not simply go away without people being encouraged to seek available support.

We understand that resources and budgets are under pressure. However, the cost of supporting mental health does not have to be prohibitively expensive or unable to scale across a large organisation. Digital learning solutions can play a role in helping make sense of mental health problems. By creating digital learning journeys that teach managers and employees to recognise the signs of stress and how to support others, we can deliver a base level of knowledge resulting in more open conversations about mental health.

With our bespoke approach, Fenturi can focus on specific workplace triggers for mental illness and show how workplaces can be designed to support the mental wellbeing of employees. All this learning content can be made once, and then delivered to every single employee in the organisation. To speak to us directly, you can call on 0117 440 1000, email at hello@fenturi.com or fill in the contact form below.