Redesigning Workplace Mental Health Services with Enrol Yourself
How I’m tackling a redesign of workplace mental health services, whilst exploring the best ways to support my own mental health
At the start of this year, I applied to become the Mental Health Champion for my workplace. I work as a user experience designer at a digital product agency in Bristol and as part of my new Mental Health Champion role, I had already planned to do some research into how employees felt about the attitudes towards mental health and the support and services our agency currently offered. It was around that time that I met up with my friend Anna who was looking to host an Enrol Yourself cohort here in Bristol. Enrol Yourself is a 6-month learning accelerator which uses the power of peers to help individuals tackle self-appointed ‘learning questions’ on a wide range of subjects. Having met Zahra Davidson (Director of Enrol Yourself) a couple of years before, I was excited by the prospect of using Enrol Yourself to help me tackle some of the problems surrounding mental health in the workplace and so I signed up.
Sadly, just a month before my learning marathon started I lost a dear friend to cancer and my historical anxiety and depression symptoms reared their ugly head again. I tried to gain support through my work and came up against managers that lacked training and therefore the skills to help, and convoluted support services which were so hard to access I almost gave up. I was struggling, but even more determined to tackle my learning question which I had now been defined as:
How can mental health support within workplaces be transformed so employees have access to the resources they need and senior staff are more empowered to support them?
Mental health and me
Having struggled with my mental health on and off since I was a teenager I have a wealth of experience in the way companies and institutions respond to mental health. Back in university, I was diagnosed with clinical depression in my final year. My course leaders were notified and I had the opportunity to retake my final term due to extenuating circumstances. At first, this seemed like a positive development but I soon found myself struggling again. The only support offered was from my GP in the form of anti-depressants; the university offered nothing in terms of advice, counselling, or even someone to talk to. I felt isolated and my mental health descended again; I scraped through my final year producing very little I was proud of and with my confidence shattered. This was the beginning of a decade of untreated mental health problems.
Fast forward 15 years and my old university now has some of the best mental health services available. There is a wellbeing assessment to help students understand their own mental health score and make the first steps to getting help. They offer online counselling sessions, therapeutic consultation, specialist mentor support, self-help resources and resilience workshops as part of their Wellbeing Services. The safety net is huge and has most likely saved thousands of students from ending up in the position I did.
These changes reflect the changing societal attitudes around our willingness to discuss and treat mental health problems. But they are also a product of the university’s need to attract paying students and avoid lawsuits. This university, in particular, experienced 14 suicides within their student community between January 2010 and July 2018. The public outcry and bad press surrounding these deaths forced the university to make positive changes in the way they support their student population.
Workplace mental health
So what about workplaces? A 2017 report by the UK government’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group shows that suicide rates in England have increased since 2007. However work-related suicides are not officially monitored or recorded. In the absence of official data or evidence, public authorities and employers have been able to turn a blind eye.
There are statistics which do show the incredible effect poor mental health is having on the UK's workforce. In 2018, for the first time, work-related stress anxiety or depression accounted for over half of all working days lost due to ill health in Great Britain. That’s 595,000 workers suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety and this accounts to 15.4 million working days lost due to these illnesses.
The economic cost of this is enormous; Thriving at work The Stevenson / Farmer review of mental health and employers from 2017 found that absenteeism cost employers £8billion per year in total. However, this isn’t the biggest cost to the employer, presenteeism (the practice of being present at work whilst sick due to insecurities about one’s job) is estimated to cost between £17billion to £26billion per year. Not only that, but the cost of staff turnover due to mental health issues also comes in at £8billion. The figures are mind-blowing and are a stark reminder to employers of the economic cost of poor mental health, this is without even exploring the human cost of these illnesses.
Within the workplace itself stigma is rife; the National Mental Health Development Unit reports that nearly nine out of ten people (87%) with mental health problems have been affected by stigma and discrimination. A poll by Time to Change found that only 13% of employees would be comfortable talking about mental illness at work. When you compare that with the fact that 1 in 5 UK workers have called in sick due to stress, you can see the clear correlation between the number of employees experiencing MH illness and those that are failing to get support through work.
The business case for companies to develop better MH support services is there, but many workplaces are yet to realise or take action. I plan to use this insight and my ongoing research to help educate and inspire my workplace to make some radical changes in improving the way we look after our employees.
Tackling my Learning Question
The learning marathon is split into three, two-month phases; The Explore Phase, The Develop Phase and The Showcase Phase in which we prepare for the final presentation of our project. I’m currently in my Explore Phase and am collecting as much information about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace as possible. My research is broad as I don’t want to get too stuck on a direction of thought or narrow down my focus too early. I am looking at what companies are doing right in terms of employee wellbeing, and interviewing employees to find out what their experiences of accessing workplace support and services are. I’m also mapping my own experience of accessing MH support services to identify where improvements can be made, and plan to develop a manager support aid (in collaboration with my manager) that can be prototyped as a support model.
I have defined objectives and potential deliverables, but these could change as my project evolves; I am recording them here so I can reflect back and see the progression of my LQ.
My three learning objectives
- I will undertake in-depth user research within my company’s group of creative agencies to better understand how mental health issues are impacting employees day to day, how work might be contributing to poor mental health and what steps they feel the company can take to better support them.
- I will gain a better understanding of service design methodologies and utilise them to develop a more effective way of delivering mental health support and services to employees in need.
- I want to understand how finding purpose outside of work can have a positive impact on an individual’s mental health (by using myself and my peers as examples), and how we might encourage more extra-curricular purpose projects within my industry that employers will also benefit from.
The tangible deliverables I hope to produce
- I want to develop a training resource that helps bosses and managers understand how to better support employees with their mental wellbeing.
- I want to create a prototype for a service that helps employees gain access to the resources and advice they need when struggling with a mental health issue.
- I want to help collect and deliver a range of stories from employees within our industry with lived experience of mental health issues, with the goal of reducing stigma and helping to foster a more open dialogue.
Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts, contacts or resources that could help me in my learning marathon, feel free to reach out. I will be writing more about my project as it evolves so please check back. 😊
The Bristol Enrol Yourself marathon ends in October and our Showcase Event is on the evening of October 16th – venue TBC
