Thank you for joining this webinar today. Um I'm just gonna give it a couple of seconds to let people trickle in. Um And then I will make a start. So my name is Amber o'brien. I am the founder of head works.We are a mental health at work training and consultancy company. Um And today I'm gonna be talking to you about supporting employee mental health just a little bit about my background before I start. So I'm a psychiatric nurse by background, I've worked in mental health services for the best part of 20 years. Um And I also have a postgraduate certificate in clinical neuroscience and an MS C in psychiatric research. And we now work with head works globally um across sectors, but mostly in the tech sector um to train people up in being able to support employee mental health. So what I'm going to cover with you today? Um I'm gonna look at an overview of mental health and give you kind of really brief overview of what we mean by mental health and introduce you to the biopsychosocial model. Then we'll look at mental health at work specifically and some of the legal requirements. Um Then we'll look at preventative strategies and then supporting employees with poor mental health, what we might be able to do, of course, it's a very short session. Um and this is a lot to cover.

So it's just gonna kind of be, you know, sort of the introduction to the ideas um at this stage. So to start us off then, so we're all on the same page when we know what we're talking about in terms of mental health, there are lots of different definitions out there. Um But I find the most useful is the World Health Organization. So they say that mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes their own abilities can cope with the normal stresses of life can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to their community. So really quite a broad definition there and it kind of shows you how kind of important mental health is to, to, you know, a holistic lifestyle. Um And when I talk about mental health problems, I'm talking about diagnosable conditions. So otherwise known as mental illness or mental disorders, I I just tend to use the term mental health problems and these are conditions that affect psychological, social and often have physical well-being. So the two things are really interlinked. And examples of these will include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, et cetera. Now, mental health problems can occur just as a one off episode. So for example, someone might have one psychotic episode in their late teens and then never again throughout their life, they may fully recover.

Sometimes they can occur several times throughout a person's life. So for example, you may have a few depressive episodes throughout your life. Um But in between that, those periods, actually, you're in a state of good mental health or more rarely, they can occur as an ongoing condition.

So things like treatment resistant uh chronic schizophrenia, that doesn't mean that someone can't live in that state of well-being, but it just means they will need um you know, a level of support in order to manage their symptoms and get to that state of mental health. And you may have heard lots of stats, but between one in 4 to 1 in six people will experience a mental health problem each year. So really, really common. Um I'm sure many of us will have had mental health problems ourselves or we know someone who's had mental health problems. And I think it's really useful to think of mental health as a spectrum. So it gives you kind of this good idea about what, you know what mental health is and how it really works. Um in reality. So if you think about point a on that spectrum as a period of good mental health, so that's when we might be feeling happy and relaxed because of that, we might be more productive and more confident. And if you think of Point B as a period of poor mental health, so that's when we might be feeling stressed or anxious, tense, unhappy because of that, we might be fatigued. We might be less productive and less confident.

And if we start to have lots of days like that, so we find ourselves actually, most days we, we're feeling point B you know, we're feeling stressed and anxious or unhappy. That's when we might slide into point C. That's when we might become diagnosable with a mental health problem. So depression or anxiety disorder or bipolar psychosis. So, you know, it, it really depends, but that just gives you a sense of kind of actually mental health is a spectrum and we're never ever gonna always be at point A on that spectrum. That's just not sadly how life works. We will most people, even if they don't get to the point C will, you know, sit at point B, you know, quite a lot throughout their lives. So it kind of gives you a flavor of how mental health works on that spectrum. And I just want to introduce you to something that we call the biopsychosocial model in mental health. And you may have heard of it before. Um But what we get asked quite a lot is, you know, what causes mental health problems or why do some people develop mental health problems? And some people don't? And there's no real clear answer there's no sort of one reason. Actually, it's a range of impacting factors.

So there are biological factors, psychological factors and sociological factors that are associated with an increased risk of mental health problems. So that could be genetics. So we know that people with uh immediate family members with a history of mental health problems are at high risk themselves.

We know that people with chronic physical health problems are more likely to experience mental health problems. Then there are things like organic factors. So brain injuries, for example, can cause mental health problems because they can alter the neurochemistry in our brains.

And then, you know, um impact our mental health maybe unsurprisingly. But alcohol, you know, excessive alcohol use and substance misuse can cause mental health problems and a chronic lack of sleep. So obviously where mental health isn't the cause of that. So for example, if someone's sleeping in, you know, unsuitable conditions for sleep on a regular basis and they're, they're not getting enough sleep, actually, that can really impact our mental health, then there are psychological factors. So things like trauma from childhood and that, you know, isn't necessarily always the kind of obvious traumas we think about. Although of course, they do increase our risk of mental health problems, but it can be more insidious traumas. So things like growing up in a household where parents are arguing a lot, um or an unstable, you know, household or we're moving around a lot as Children, all of these things can be kind of considered as, as a trauma and they can really disrupt um development and then, you know, increase our risk of mental health problems later in life.

Then there's trauma as an adult, difficult life events, you know, things like bereavement, relationship, breakdowns, job losses and then severe and long term stress, which is a really big one when we think about the workplace. Um and particularly when we think about the tech sector and and startup culture, actually, stress is a really, really big part of that. Um And then there are sociological factors. So things like social support, we know that loneliness is really associated quite highly with mental health problems.

Um and things like discrimination. So, you know, racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, all these things um surprisingly, again, are associated with mental health problems. And then we have things that, that may, you know, seem a lot more obvious. So unemployment, financial concerns, housing issues, social disadvantage, bullying, all of these things will increase our risk of developing mental health problems. And another important one to think about is excessive childcare and caring responsibilities. And that's particularly pertinent to women because we know the global burden of women and and child care and caring responsibilities, it tends to fall on women much more than it does on men. So it's really important to consider when we're thinking about the workplace and mental health.

Actually, a lot of this really overlaps with diversity and inclusion. So when we're thinking about, you know, prevention, we don't want people, you know, employees to become really stressed. We do need to also think about all of these aspects of diversity and inclusion and individual needs and groups needs in terms of mental well being. So I'm just gonna give you a few key facts around mental health in the workplace. Now, just to give you a flavor of kind of why it's such an important subject. So we know that 15% of employees have current symptoms of existing mental health problems and this is very much general liable across um you know, globally really. Um this was a stat from I think the US originally and in the UK, we know that 300,000 people with a long term mental health condition lose their jobs every year in the UK. That's about the size of Oxford. So it's, you know, pretty sizable population. And again, proportionally, that's pretty much Generali um you know, globally, um the World Health Organization recently released a really kind of shocking stat. Um So they, they found that around 12 billion working days are lost to depression and anxiety each year globally. And it's really, it's overtaken as kind of the leading cause of sick days in many countries. And then we know that 84% of employees report experiencing symptoms of poor mental health where work was a contributing factor. So that's quite a shocking one to me.

So that means that, you know, 84% of employees have sat at point B on that spectrum because of work. And actually, you know, work should be an enjoyable thing. Yes, there's gonna be stress sometimes. But we, you know, we really want to make sure that work isn't impacting people's mental health to the point that it's putting them at risk is also a really costly issue. So, along with the ethical argument, particularly if you're finding, you want to sort of um influence, say leaders in your organization to maybe take mental health more seriously, it can be really useful to make the financial argument to people who maybe are a bit more resistant or a bit more old school about mental health.

So we know in the UK and again, this is very much general liable. The average annual cost of poor mental health per employee uh is £1652. Now, presenteeism accounts for two thirds of this and then sickness absence and turnover costs account for the remainder. Globally. That cost is $1 trillion per year. So it's hugely costly. Um And so what we mean by presenteeism is people coming into work when they're unwell or unfit to and then underperforming. So that real loss of productivity, if you're trying to push through and you go to work, you're not gonna be able to focus as much. And that's certainly true with mental health problems. And it's really important that we encourage people to take that time off when they need it. Um So that actually, you know, the recovery is going to happen a lot, a lot faster. And then I just wanted to highlight two other um terms that come up quite a lot that are kind of useful to think about. So leave, this is when people use their holidays or sick days or days off, you know, weekends to work. And if you find you're doing that or lots of your colleagues are doing that, actually, perhaps there's something in, in the organizational culture that's actually not particularly healthy in terms of, you know, supporting well-being and promoting mental health.

And then we have digital leaves, which is kind of this new, well newish uh thing that's happened, definitely happened kind of a lot more during the lockdowns and the COVID pandemic when people started working from home a lot more. And I think that's really sustained now and that's people working outside their normal hours due to ease of access. So, you know, finishing work. Um and then, you know, just checking your emails because your phone's there or your laptop's there and maybe just replying to a few bits or maybe just doing a few bits extra, you know, later at night. But actually, if we're doing that, you know, on a regular basis, we have a real lack of work life balance and and that boundary becomes quite blurred and then in terms of legal obligations around mental health at work. So there are two main um pieces of law here in the UK, there are equivalent laws in pretty much, you know, every country in terms of protecting, you know, um mental health at work or health and safety at work. So in the UK, we have um health and safety legislation which says that employers have a legal duty to protect employees from stress at work by carrying out a stress risk assessment and acting upon it.

And then we also have the Equality Act and it says that employers have a legal responsibility to make reasonable adjustments for some employees who have long term mental health conditions, so long term mental health conditions um in most countries um legislation, they will class as a disability.

And so it's the same, you know, the same kind of concept as you know, making reasonable adjustments for someone who is a wheelchair user, for example. So they have that equity of opportunity and access um that everyone else does and the same thing applies to mental health problems.

And in terms of supporting uh employee mental health, it really is about taking this whole picture approach. So really a systemic whole, looking at the whole picture if we just focus on one element. So we say, I don't know, our company has an employee assistance program, office therapy.

There we go, we're done. With. So that's actually not, you know, that's not gonna achieve much on its own, it's really helpful to have those. And absolutely, we will always say, you know, and encourage organizations to have an employee assistance program or a therapy platform, but that's not, you know, that's part of the picture. And so what we always encourage um and the most evidence based way to really support employee mental health is is to kind of have this whole picture approach. So firstly looking at prevention, um and that's around minimizing stresses in the first place. So there are really kind of solid evidence based knowledge around what are the main workplace stresses. So really working to minimize those and assess those on a regular basis, then there's normalizing the conversation around mental health or helping to reduce the stigma so that if people are struggling, they can come to you as a manager or they can speak to a colleague and they can get that support that they need.

Um And then there's just general organizational culture. So really embedding this, you know, culture of wellness um and well being and then we have the intervention. So this is when we're able to intervene. So it's about being able to spot early warning signs that an employee may be struggling and then to be able to instigate a sensitive conversation with them to be able to offer that support. And then we've got the support side, that's where the employee assistance program might come in, it might be about signposting someone to, you know, therapy platform. Um It might be the person who has a long term mental health problem and they need a reasonable adjustment made for them.

So again, that would be, you know, the support aspect or it might be just offering them some advice and signposting. Um you know, things aren't too bad at the moment or actually they just need some signposting or a reminder of, of different services. So in terms of prevention, then just have a quick look at, at kind of, you know, normalizing the conversation, reducing stigma, stigma around mental health. Um was huge. Um Up until I would say tenish years ago, things started improving, they're still not great. Um And it really depends, you know, where you are in the world in terms of the level of stigma and discrimination. Um But here in the UK, things still aren't perfect at all. Um We have improved our attitude towards things like depression and anxiety. So that's great. Um There are more kind of serious mental health problems like schizophrenia that unfortunately seem to be much more socially unacceptable and much more stigmatized. And we know that stigma has a real impact on people's lives. Um So people with mental health problems, we know are among the least likely of any group with a long term health condition to find work. Um And so we know people with serious mental health problems like schizophrenia are actually seven times more likely to be unemployed compared to the general population. So that's really huge.

Um We know that they are uh among the least likely to be in a steady long term relationship and also to live in decent housing. So, you know, real social disadvantage there associated with mental health problems. And then in terms of the workplace, two stats that I've pulled out, I think are really kind of uh thought provoking, quite important to consider. So 49% of employees would not feel comfortable talking to their employers or colleagues about their mental health. So that's pretty, you know, an important consideration that actually, if we've got this culture where people don't feel confident talking to their managers about their mental health, they're probably not going to take time off when they need it and they probably will be coming into work and trying to force themselves to work, be less productive and probably get more unwell because it's exactly the same with physical health, the longer, you know, if you don't rest, actually, your recovery is gonna take a lot longer.

And we also know that 86% of people at work would think twice before offering to help a colleague whose mental health they were concerned about. And I don't think that's because people don't care. I think they really do. But I think people get quite nervous about bringing up the subject of mental health because they feel they're being intrusive or rude or it's inappropriate and it's absolutely not. It's just about doing it in a balanced way where we're showing compassion and empathy, but we're not crossing a boundary and thinking we're the person's therapist in the workplace. But it's really important to kind of get used to having these conversations and asking, you know, how people are doing if we're worried about them. So just some examples of ways that we can kind of reduce stigma and normalize the conversation of mental health in the workplace.

And these are just a few examples and you might be able to come up with some on your own for your workplace that you know, would work or you might already have some that, that you're doing in the workplace and it might be about sustaining them. But some good practices include things like sharing well-being strategies at the end of team meetings. So that could be going around the room and just all sharing one thing you've done that month or, you know, whatever period you want that's really helped to, you know, boost your mental health. Um So it doesn't have to be anything super personal, but it's just a way of kind of normalizing that conversation and also just sharing well-being tips. Um It's always good practice to ask specifically about well-being during management, one to ones. So really asking people how they're doing um how they are um you know, being quite specific so that you can have normalize that conversation. And people feel that they can, they can be open with you about that. Um circulating resources, webinars training well-being activities.

All of these things can really kind of um help to normalize that conversation and then including information in email signatures and with all of this. So that's kind of thinking about your employee assistance program or therapy platform. If you've got those, you know, in your internal emails, pop the information at the bottom because often people don't realize that they have a an employee assistance program in their organization. And it just encourages the use of that because if you're paying for it, actually you want it to be used. But it encourages people to realize, you know, you know, what if you need to use this or you need to have a therapy session, that's absolutely fine and normal. There's nothing wrong with that. So it just can really help these little touches have quite kind of a powerful impact. And then another thing that's really important for prevention is thinking about stresses at work. So thinking about how we can minimize these as leaders, as managers. Um and as colleagues, you know, what could we do to, to minimize these within our team? And these are kind of the most evidence based stresses that we know about um these stem from decades of occupational psychology and occupational mental health research.

So we know that demands of the job. So things like excessive workloads, um a lack of control over the way people are able to do their work. So that's kind of like when you would have a micro manager telling you how you must do things that's a real, really associated with stress, a lack of support. So sort of a lack of sponsorship and encouragement or even not thanking people for their work that can really cause stress a relationship. So, you know, kind of unsurprisingly but in a toxic team culture with lots of conflict and bullying, you know, stress levels can be really high and also management styles are really kind of big one for stress. So it's important as managers that we kind of self reflect and we, we seek feedback, you know, from the people we're managing about our management styles because, you know, we're all humans. So we're never gonna be perfect, but actually thinking about self reflection and how we might be able to build and improve our own style. It's good for our personal development, but also good for, you know, employee stress levels and then roles.

So when people don't understand their roles or tasks, that's a real big cause of stress. And in the startup culture, of course, roles can change really regularly and that's fine. But it's about how we manage that stress. You know, how are we communicating that are we sitting down with people and explaining their new roles you know, are we answering any questions? Are we assessing how things are going and then change again in the startup culture, something that's consistent is change. In fact, arguably in all industries change is always gonna be there. Um And that's fine, but again, it's about how we manage that change. So engaging people in the change and involving them in the change, not just in a token way, but truly listening to people and acting upon, you know, their suggestions where, where they're appropriate um can really help to minimize stress. So yeah, uh these are kind of the the main stressors and it's really, really important to consider, you know, what's happening in our workplace with each of these. How can we assess these on a regular basis and how can we minimize those? So it might be about having conversations with the wider team and, and, you know, deciding together how you might minimize each of these and then we'll move on to thinking about intervention. So, you know, we've, we've done the prevention side of things.

Um But of course, people are always going to develop mental health problems or go through periods of poor mental health. You know, we might have people with a slightly lower threshold for coping. So if you think back to that biopsychosocial model, you know, someone with a lot of those risk factors maybe not, won't, won't be able to cope as well as someone without all of those risk factors. Um and also, you know, people are gonna have things going on outside of work that you know, may trigger mental health problems or poor mental health. So that will always happen. But it's about how we actually support people when that, when that occurs. So firstly, the most important thing here is being able to spot early warning signs and when we're working remotely, that can be a bit trickier, but there are real ways to do that. So there's no exhaustive list of early warning signs, but some of them will include things like increased absence. Um a reduced productivity, um avoiding meetings, you know, you might notice that people, you know, say they're busy or, you know, quite a lot more than usual and they'll avoid things. Um They might just appear low in mood or be tearful.

You know, it might actually be quite clear, they might appear tired a lot, they might be talking less, they might avoid social activities. Um They might be talking more or very fast. So that can occur with uh mania, for example, or jumping between topics and ideas really quickly.

Um They might become irritable and short tempered and more rarely, they might become aggressive. I would say the key here is a real change in behavior. So if you really notice that someone's behavior is changing and they just don't seem like themselves, that's a real warning sign and then subjectively, so what the person might report to you or what you may feel yourself if you actually are sleeping into a period of poor mental health.

So, you know, poor concentration, being easily distracted, um just being tired, sleeping more or less, maybe feeling more easily overwhelmed, maybe worrying, more, finding it difficult to control emotions. Being quite indecisive is a really big one. And then generally feeling less interested in day to day activities that really occurs, um quite commonly with depression. So that feeling of sort of a lack of pleasure in day to day activities and then in terms of sensitive conversation. So if we start seeing these early warning signs, it's really important to think back to the statistic that 86% of people at work would think twice before offering to help a colleague whose mental health they were concerned about. So if you see these early warning signs, talk to someone, so follow your instinct, if you're worried about someone, don't avoid talking to them, talk to them. If you're the manager and you're gonna have a conversation with them, make sure they know it's confidential and then highlight anything that you may need to repeat. So if it turns out that person actually needs reasonable adjustments down the line, you may need to tell hr about that, but you don't need to repeat everything they tell you.

You know, it can just be as simple as this person has a mental health condition and they need this adjustment and then keep the atmosphere informal. So, you know, make sure they know they're not being told off. You know, it might be over a virtual cup of tea or coffee if you're working remotely or you might meet in person and, and just have a coffee break together and just have a chat and there's no set way to have a sensitive conversation. It really depends on your style, your personal style, on your relationship with that person. Um But there are some golden rules that I can give you. So one of the, the top tips I would say is try to avoid a look on the bright side approach. So if someone does tell you actually, yes, I'm struggling, I'm feeling down, it's kind of human nature to want people to feel better and to want them to be able to see all the great things in their life. But actually, if someone's feeling really depressed and we start telling them, look at all the great things that you have going on with depression, it's really difficult for people to be able to appreciate things in that time because of one of the symptoms, which is that lack of interest in day to day activities and that feeling really low in mood and just feeling hopeless.

Um And so what we're doing by telling people, look on the bright side is we're making them feel not heard and we can also be making them feel guilty for not being able to appreciate those things right now. And that can make symptoms actually a lot worse. So it's really important to avoid that. And instead of doing that, practice something called validation, which is a counseling skill, which is really useful, a really useful tool. And that's simply just validating someone's feelings. So if someone says to you, you know, they're feeling really down, they're struggling, um, you know, they're having a difficult time because, you know, they split up with their partner or, you know, whatever it might be just saying something like that sounds really tough. So it's just validating that, that experience and it's showing that empathy and it sounds very simple. But if you start practicing this, you know, that sounds really tough, that sounds really difficult. Um You'll find that people will really open up to you and it's a useful skill to use, you know, outside of the workplace in your personal life as well. Um Other top tips will be, you know, being mindful not to come across as dismissive. So often people can do this and not meaning to be horrible, but they might say, oh, that doesn't sound like anything to worry about, particularly with anxiety.

So if people are really anxious about things, you know, people might want to try and minimize that to make the person feel better, but actually, we don't want to be dismissive about that anxiety. So again, thinking back to that biopsychosocial model, there may be different reasons that people are very anxious or experience anxiety more and we don't want to minimize that. Um Also not comparing the situation to other people. So, you know, for example, we've had reports of people saying things like the rest of your team are under the same stress and they're not struggling. Well, again, thinking back to that biopsychosocial model, we all have a different background. We all are completely individual and unique and there might be numerous reasons why actually we're not able to cope with the same level of stress as other people never make assumptions as well. So, you know, if someone is being is very absent or avoidant and they're not coming to meetings and they're making mistakes in their work, actually, not just assuming that, you know, maybe they're lazy or XYZ having a conversation with them first. So really just checking if everything's ok and in that conversation, not making assumptions. So if you haven't understood anything or, you know, you, you're not quite sure you've got the full picture asking questions, another top tip is try to avoid and I know exactly how you feel response.

So self disclosure can be really powerful if we've experienced mental health problems ourselves, as leaders can be really powerful. But it's kind of not the right time to do that if you're, you know, in a conversation with someone about their mental health, because we all have our own unique experiences. So certainly do that at another time for, you know, um the kind of the whole team, you know, it helps to normalize that conversation. You know, there are lots of CEO S for example, who publicize that they've had experiences of mental health problems. But in, in this conversation, it's best to keep the focus on that person. And then I think the kind of golden rule, the absolute golden rule and the reason people are quite nervous about starting these conversations is because often they feel that they need to come up with the correct response. You really do not need to come up with the correct response. All you need to do is just sit there and listen. That's it for this for the time being and ask some questions to check. You've understood and don't worry about silence, you know, silence isn't dangerous.

It's not gonna hurt anyone. You can sit there in silence to collect your own thoughts and you know, maybe ask some questions, maybe listen, um you know, or maybe clarify some things, but you know, moments of silence are, are absolutely fine as well. So don't worry about having to say the right thing and feel all the silences and think about your response. Just try and be present and listen to that person and it might just be really simple. So just to give you a flavor of how simple it is, if you're worried about someone you might ask them really broadly. How are you doing at the moment? You know, if you have a good relationship with that person and you think they're probably gonna tell you, you might be a bit more specific. So you might say, oh, you, you seem a bit down at the moment, how are you doing? Or it might be really specific and you might wanna use some pointers and just say, you know, I've noticed your works really late recently and that's just not like you. I wondered if everything's ok. Um You know, so whatever way that you want to start this conversation, you know, it's really gonna depend on the scenario and the person.

But these are just some examples of kind of how simple it is to start that conversation and then we move on to the kind of the support side. So if someone does tell us, actually, they are really struggling, what can we do to support them? Um And so coming back to these reasonable accommodations or reasonable adjustments, there are lots and lots of different examples of these. So you can see here we've got things like flexible hours, um a reduction in hours offering reduction in workload. It could be an increase in management, one to ones to help prioritize workload or even just offer some support. It might be the person who needs time off for appointments, they might need longer breaks, they might need relevant training. Um They might need providing you know, quite space to work in. Um it could be working from home, could be something like mentoring or body systems. Um Mental health training for the team is a really big one. You know, actually that does count as a reasonable accommodation, having some clear policies around well-being phased returns after periods of sick could be a job redesign or redeployment. Um Again, it could be time off, time off sick for a for a while. And it's important to point out that, you know, obviously, if someone meets the reasonable, the legal um threshold for a reasonable accommodation, of course, we can offer them them.

And what we will do is we'll sit down with that person, we'll have that conversation and we'll ask actually, what do you need right now, what would help you? Most likely they'll tell us what would help them. But it's a good, it's good to have an understanding of what kind of reasonable accommodations, you know, some, some examples. So that actually if that person isn't quite sure we can have this discussion here are some of the things we could offer you. You know, what, what are your concerns at the moment? If that person says, actually I'm really tired at the moment because I've just started new medication, um, and it's gonna take a few weeks for it to get into my system and, and for my body to get used to it. But in the meantime, I'm feeling absolutely knackered. Well, actually, maybe we could give you longer breaks or a reduction in your hours for a few weeks and then check in, you know, back then. So it's really, you know, about kind of working with that person to work out what would be best for them. But if someone doesn't meet that threshold, say if, you know, we have an employee whose mom is in hospital, for example, and they're feeling really stressed about that. Well, actually, we can still offer them these as supportive strategies.

So we could still say to them actually, you know, if you need some time off to go and see your mom or, you know, just to look after yourself, actually, we can do that for you. Um or we can, you know, reduce your workload whatever it might be. So it's good practice, you know, of course, we have the legal requirement where someone does need them, but it's also good practice to offer things like this to employees when they're just experiencing a period of poor mental health. You know, they're sat at that point B on the spectrum because there might be something going on in their life. And then finally, I think this is the last slide, just a note on the boundaries. So it's really important to remember in the workplace that we are not the person's therapist. So, you know, or trying to offer someone therapy when you are not qualified is a dangerous thing to do. It would be exactly the same as, you know, trying to offer someone, a medical intervention. If you're not a doctor or a nurse, it's, it's just not something, you know, that I don't think people could necessarily appreciate that. It is, it is a dangerous thing to do. We got the right training. So it's really important that we don't try and become that person's therapist and it's dangerous, not just for that person, but also for us because we have our own mental health to protect.

Um And actually as a mental health clinician, we have things like clinical supervision, our own therapy where we can go and reflect and talk about how, you know, actually offering care can affect us. But if you're not having that and you haven't got the right training, it's, you know, it's not a good idea what your job is though, as a manager is to support the person to be able to do their job. So making sure that they've got those reasonable adjustments if they need them to ensure their job doesn't exacerbate their mental health problems or cause mental health problems. So thinking about that prevention side of things and then signpost. So actually, if someone is kind of over sharing and they're talking a lot about things that, you know, you're not qualified to talk about signpost them to your mental health platform, if you have one sign posts them to, you know, um the correct health services in your country.

So for example, here in the UK, it would be the NHS talking therapy service or their GP or signpost them to, you know, mental health helpline, um or even a friend or family member that they might be able to talk to, always seek support yourself after a difficult conversation.

And once you have agreed um some supportive strategies with that person, I would always say document that conversation. Um and what you agreed and send a copy to them. So, you know, it could just be a casual email to that person saying, you know, thank you so much for talking to me. I'm sorry, you're having a hard time. Here's what we agreed that can really help because that person actually, their concentration might not be so great at the moment. They probably won't remember everything you spoke about. But also, you know, in a more cynical way, it does also help cover you. So it shows that you've really offered that level of support. Um you know, in case that, you know, anything were to go wrong or, you know, that person had a difficult time and actually they felt unsupported. Well, you, you can show that you've done that. So that's kind of that whole picture approach. Um Again, very briefly looking at prevention, intervention and support. Um and at head works, we offer kind of a full training session on these things and we do always say that the most, the biggest evidence based gold standard evidence from the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Clinical Excellence or improving employee mental health is training managers and leaders.

Because that is the only way you really are gonna embed you know, all of this knowledge into the culture and really start to improve things. And of course, coming back to that whole picture approach of prevention intervention and support, you know, having all of these other aspects like an employee assistance program really, really, really helpful to have. So that's kind of the the coming towards the end of my talk.

And I don't think we, we're gonna have any um time for any questions in the chat because we've only got a couple of minutes left, but I'm more than happy if you wanted to add me on linkedin. Um please go ahead and do so. Um and you can drop me any questions there that you'd like to. I'm more than happy to answer them. I'm always happy to talk about mental health in the workplace. Uh Really is one of my passions. So uh yeah, it would be great to hear from any of you if you did have any questions. Um I think we have got a couple of minutes. So if anyone did want to pop a question in the chat, I could do my best to answer it. If not. That's absolutely fine. Um But I will, I'll wait here for the last two minutes in case anyone was, does want to answer, ask any questions rather. Um but if not, please feel free to um say, say goodbye and leave. Yeah, I think Annette has uh raised her hand. There, there we go. And that sorry, you are on mute. If you, I've pressed the allow to talk, but you are on mute if you wanted to ask something. Uh No, I'm not sure it's working in it. Uh Thank you that I can see you. Yeah, great. OK. Well, thank you all. I think that's kind of the end. But as I say, if you do want to get in touch and ask me any questions via linkedin, um you're more than welcome to do so.

Um I hope that's been helpful for you as a, a brief taster and I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.