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Help with mental health and wellbeing at work

If you are an employer, you have a duty of care to do all you reasonably can to support your employees health, safety, and wellbeing, when at work.

Employers duty of care

An employers duty of care includes:

  • Making sure the working environment is safe
  • Protecting staff from discrimination
  • Carrying out risk assessments

It’s important to realise that having a mental health issue can be considered a disability under the law (Equality Act 2010) if all the following apply:

  • It has a ‘substantial adverse effect’ on the life of an employee; for example, they regularly cannot focus on a task, or it takes them longer to do
  • It lasts at least 12 months or is expected to
  • It affects their ability to do their normal day-to-day activities. For example, interacting with people, following instructions, or keeping to set-working times.

Even if there are no symptoms all the time or symptoms are better at some times than at others, then it can still be considered a disability and legally employers are obliged to provide suitable support.

If an employee has a disability, employers:

How can you help?

It’s a good idea to work with the employee to make the right adjustments for them, even if the issue is not a disability. Often simple changes to the persons working arrangements or responsibilities could be enough.

For example:

  • Allowing them more rest breaks
  • Working with them each day or more frequently to help prioritise their workload.

So, the first thing you need to do is to ensure you have established the right health and safety policies, procedures, and tools in place that your staffs can use. Creating the ‘right’ culture amongst your staff is essential if you are to embed effective health and safety systems.

There is plenty of local, regional, and national support available to help you do this.

D2N2 Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub

Nottinghamshire County Council provide free resources and information in three areas that relate to an individual personal need “Support for me”, “Support for colleagues/friends” and “Support for teams”.

Local Authority - Health and Wellbeing teams

Most local authorities across the country have teams that offer free support and encouragement to introduce or improve health and wellbeing solutions for businesses. 

PROWORK

Loughborough University are working in partnership with Nottingham University to deliver a mental health and productivity project called PROWORK. This project will trial a newly developed toolkit designed to support employees and their managers whilst they are off work, as they prepare to return to work, and to help them stay back in work. They would like to speak to Midlands based businesses who would like to support their employees to return to work after a long-term sick leave (8 or more days). If you would like to take part in this research then get in touch with Veronica Varela-Mato, Lead researcher at Loughborough University.

Mind

Mind are a national charity that can provide information on what’s available to support local businesses to find practical solutions, to support their employees with mental health and wellbeing strategies. These including useful guides and action-plans such as; a manager’s guide and a check list for small business owners.

Business in the Community - Free toolkits

Business in the Community have worked with Public Health England to develop a range of free employer toolkits. These can be used to support your employees in becoming more productive. These include:

You can also find additional resources here: