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 * Software
   
   * HCM Cloud
   * Payroll
     
     * Faster Payments
   * Marketplace
   * Implementation and Consultancy
 * Managed Services
   
   * Managed Payroll Services
   * Payroll Advisory Service
   * Background Checking
     
     * Criminality and right to work background checks
     * Social media screening
   * Reward Solutions
 * Public Sector
 * Knowledge Hub
   
   * Blog
   * Case Studies
   * Downloads
   * Events
   * Press and Media
   * Webinars
 * About
   
   * About Zellis
   * Careers
   * Why Zellis?
   * Business Partnerships
 * Contact


THE WORKPLACE OF NOW - PROMOTING A HEALTHY WORKPLACE.



HR GRAPEVINE PODCAST: HOW DO YOU DEFINE A HEALTHY WORKPLACE?

In this episode, we focus on defining a healthy workplace on an individual, team
and company culture level and taking note of the signs and markers of a healthy
workplace. We also look into the role HR leaders have to play in fostering
employee and company health.  



With:

Gethin Nadin

Transcript

Erik Niewiarowski

From hrgrapevine.com, it is the HR Grapevine podcast.

Hi there everyone, Erik Niewiarowski here. Thank you so much for joining me
again this week. And this episode is the third instalment of our special
'Workplace of now' series presented along with our friends at Zelis. And in case
you don't know Zellis are the UK and Ireland's leading provider of payroll and
HR solutions. With over 50 years of heritage and industry experience. Zellis
have been ahead of the curve throughout that time. So today in 'Workplace of
now' we are going to define a healthy workplace. And to do that, I'm thrilled to
be joined once again by Gethin Nadin. He is the Chief Innovation Officer at
Zellis, as well as a best-selling author and an expert in all things employee
wellbeing. So today Gethin is going to help me define what a healthy workplace
is. What does that mean, from an individual, to teams to company culture? What
does health mean and how has the pandemic impacted it? He's also going to help
me understand what the role HR leaders have to play in fostering employee and
company health and what the markers are of a healthy organisation. Once again,
it was a very insightful conversation with Gethin and here it is.

 

Gethin Nadin

Hi, my name is Gethin Nadin, Chief Innovation Officer at Zellis. I'm an
award-winning psychologist, best-selling HR author, I advise the UK Government
on approaches to wellbeing, I write for a lot of different HR magazines about
employee experience/employee wellbeing - so hopefully fairly well-versed in what
we're going to talk about today.

 

Erik

Certainly. Thank you. So yeah, last time we we spoke, we talked about empathy in
HR leadership. And now today we're going to talk about a healthy workplace. And
really, how can we go about defining what a healthy workplace is? So the first
question for you is, from individuals to teams to entire company culture, what
do we mean by health, and how has the pandemic affected this?

 

Gethin

So I think, wellbeing at work, its definition has been muddied throughout time,
especially over the last couple of years. But if you really look at what makes
people happy and healthy in life, and at work - and I've read probably in the
region of 200 studies that have looked at this over the last decade or so,
there's a pretty common set of things that we need in our lives to be able to
see our subjective wellbeing or happiness as high as it possibly can be.

And that incorporates, kind of, health/wellbeing, whatever term you want to use.
And that is things like:

 * I have a great social network, So I have strong social capital.
 * I have people around me that I can rely on - there's people that I can speak
   to when I when I really need help and when I need somebody just to kind of be
   a confidante
 * I have a voice. And I have a platform for that voice - So people listen to
   me, listen to my opinions, and I feel like I have contributed.
 * I feel included - not excluded from life or the workplace. So people
   celebrate my differences.
 * If I'm a marginalised group, but I start to feel part part of that
   organisation. I get recognised for a job well done. Again, inside or outside
   of work, that kind of appreciation for the effort that we put into any
   relationship we've got in our lives.

 

And so, we really start to think about wellbeing. And that way, you start to
think about; actually, it becomes far less about the way we talk about wellbeing
at work, which is kind of the physical aspects and the mental health aspects.
There's all these other pullies that actually happen in the background. And when
you start to understand things like mental health and that perspective, you also
then start to understand that, I believe - based on the research that I've
conducted, and I've read - that around half of our poor mental health is
affected by lifestyle behaviour changes, which means the other half, we can't
impact at all. And so that means family upbringing, genetics, socio-economic
reasons. So, lots of mental health is driven by people being held back by
society and the way society is structured.

 

And so, when you really start to think about all of that coming together in the
workplace, I think you're looking at ‘How am I removing the barriers to somebody
being as successful as possible in their team or their role?’

So, you start to really understand that, if people don't get enough recognition,
that starts to contribute to poor mental health. So, and many of us listening to
this podcast will have experienced that. You go a really long time where you
feel like ‘I’m putting this effort in, and I just really don't think anyone
cares about it.’

That starts to affect your sleep, or it starts to affect your physical
wellbeing, which starts to make your overall wellbeing worse. So, there’s is
careful balance that we need to achieve through all those things. And throughout
the pandemic, we talked about it before, burnout was a very, very common theme
of the pandemic. The way lots of employers have responded to that is probably in
the incorrect way.

Look at some really big employers like Nike and LinkedIn and Bumble, they
surveyed people and kind of said, their people said they were burnt out. So,
lots of them gave paid time off to those employees, without really looking at
the root causes of what caused that burnout in the first place. And then if you
look at some evidence that was shared by Birkbeck University last year, the
reasons why burnout happens were almost entirely down to organisational
structure reasons. So:

 * I don't get enough recognition
 * I don't know what's expected of me
 * My workload is too much
 * I've got unclear targets
 * My manager doesn't seem to care about or spend much time with me.

 

They're all more likely to feel burnout than anything else in the workplace. But
the things that help to solve workplace burnout, or stress, is down to things
like social connections. So we know that the more social connections you have at
work, the better you handle stress, the more people you've got to kind of
offload to and feel like are on your side and fighting for you, the more you
handle some of this stuff. And so I think when you start to then think about
that kind of cultural wellbeing at work, or in the team in which you operate,
you start to see all these things come together. Where actually, if I create a
strong team that trust each other, that have high psychological safety, that
care for each other, that enhances performance of the team. When I look at the
individual’s needs, and make sure that they're included, and not marginalised,
and excluded from our organisation. So, we celebrate people's differences. And
we make sure there's lots of diversity in our organisation, all of that starts
to have a big impact on wellbeing. And so, it's almost like wellbeing is kind of
a series of about 20 different levers that you kind of need to be pulling back
and forth all the time to get this right. And I think the way the pandemic
affected this is: It affected how we define wellbeing because we started to
surface some of those things like inequality, because we know the murder of
Sarah Everard in the UK, the murder of George Floyd in the US, the pandemic,
surfaced a lot of inequalities. But it also surfaced the fact that when we
physically tore people apart and made people work at home or remotely, they
started to lose some of those emotional connections with each other. Our
wellbeing was harmed by being physically removed from people during the
pandemic. And so again, we started to then appreciate that actually, wellbeing's
far more complex than just offering a mental health app or gym membership,
right? All these things at play which, you kind of go back to the tribe and fire
of what it was like to be a human hundreds of years ago, those needs and wants
haven't really changed. And so, I think, when we define wellbeing we are looking
at things like purpose, belonging, connections with other people, recognition.
That's all really, really strong part of what wellbeing at work is.

 

Erik Niewiarowski

Yeah, and I know hindsight is always like a gift. But I remember a lot of our
content on hrgrapevine.com, especially lockdowns one and two, were riding on
these firms that were giving these employees a week off. And looking at the
time, you know, I personally thought it was super innovative. But now looking
back on it, it just seems like a quick Band-Aid sort of one-size-fits-all
approach. Where now we're seeing it more tailored, based on employee's
individual needs. Because you're thinking as an employee, ‘Well, great, now I
have a week off of work. But what am I going to do with the kids now? Now I feel
the pressure to try and book somewhere to go.’ And so, a lot of times going to
be coming back from that week off, you're not as refreshed and re-energised as
the employers would have thought so hindsight is always a gift, isn't it?

 

Gethin Nadin

I think there's - I have a lot of sympathy there. Because if you look at the
analogy of the house was on fire, you had to put the fire out, you couldn't be
putting smoke alarms in, whilst this is on fire. And so, I think employers had
to react to this very quick, wellbeing kind of stress,that was thrown or thrust
upon the organisation. I think the response to that was, like, 'Let's go and buy
some stuff because that's gonna be the quickest way for us to do this is to give
people some employee assistance programme, mental health apps, and all these
kind of tools.' And I think what's happening now, as we hopefully are leaving
the pandemic, you now have employers taking a breath and kind of saying 'Okay,
right. So let's really start to look at what wellbeing works.' And so, I think
we're at the start of probably many years of companies now really defining what
wellbeing means to them and their organisation and putting some things in place,
whereas, for the last couple of years, we've just been reacting to an incredible
amount of pressure that HR teams we're under.

 

Erik Niewiarowski

Right, now is the time for us to be proactive. So with that in mind, what is the
role that HR leaders have to play in fostering employee and company health?

 

Gethin Nadin

So, I think the role of HR - which is obviously very broad - but I think the
role of HR has evolved quite significantly over the last couple of years. I
think any HR team - any HR function - played a significant role in the pandemic
and how companies have got through the pandemic, whether that was HR teams kind
of scrambling around to reinterpret what country leaders were saying on a Sunday
night, and then putting that into an email so employees understood what the
rules were and what the ups and downs of the pandemic were - right the way
through to payroll, who had to start making some, again, very quick decisions in
adjusting people's pay and then getting pretty used to some complex new pay
arrangements that they hadn't ever had to deal with before.

Through all of that, it's obvious that HR played a key role, whilst at the same
time balancing their own mental health whilst going through this pandemic, so a
huge round of applause for anyone working in HR who got this far, because I
think it was an incredibly challenging time, probably in the careers of most
people working in HR. And I think what it's also started to do is make the
business realise that HR is so much more important to the organisation, than we
thought it was, there were still many companies that were treating HR as just
this kind of regulatory compliance; hire and fire, like the police of the
organisation. I think that was also lots of employees’ attitudes as to what HR
was there for.

When actually, no, there's this group of people here that are social workers and
healthcare professionals and tech experts and tech buyers, we started to see the
role of them really come to the surface. And so, I think when you start to think
about the role of HR leaders, in making sure we have that employee-company
health, I think all we've seen really is an acceleration of something that was
already happening.

When I wrote my book in 2016, my first book, I talked about how I felt like HR
would become almost like the maître’d of the organisation, they'd go up to each
team, and tap you on the shoulder and be like

“Erik, have you got everything you need? Do you need more training? What can I
do for you? Can I take some hours away from you? Do you need more pay? Like,
what do you need to be able to kind of perform your best?”

I think that's what we're going to start to see HR continue to evolve into, as
technology has allowed us to reduce a lot of that admin. So that's becoming less
and less. And also, HR teams are more frequently now on the board of companies.
So, they have a seat at the table to talk about, actually, the people have got a
voice.

So when a company is making a decision, you've got somebody saying,

‘Wait, how's this affecting our people? And have we thought about how this is
going to affect our people’?

So, when you think about organisational change, and we talked in the last
episode about empathy, of somebody saying,

‘Wait, how is this affecting our people? And are we doing the right by our
people when we make this decision?’

And I think the more that starts to happen, the more we start to create
organisations that people want to go and work in, because they feel like there
is somebody on the board who's not just focused on profit, and productivity, I
feel like there's somebody there who's fighting for me and the rights of the
individual employee. And I think that's a really exciting place for HR to be in,
because I think the decisions many HR people made through the pandemic and will
continue to make over the next couple of years, are having a significant impact
on our societies. And you just think about how, you know, a guy gets murdered by
a police officer in America, and British HR teams are issuing statements, there
are people saying,

‘Not on my watch, you are black, and you're included, and I celebrate you, and
we will not have anything like that in my company.’

And then you have HR teams who are kind of looking at the customer base they
work with and going back to their business and saying, you know, you're working
with some companies here that our employees aren't happy that you're working
with. And so that employee activism and voice has been celebrated and championed
by HR. And so I think they'll continue to have a very key role in wellbeing. I
think wellbeing will continue to be owned and has to be owned by everyone in the
organisation. I think everyone has to understand the part they're playing in
wellbeing. Each of us employees have a part to play in that in the wellbeing of
our colleagues and our teams. But I think HR will always have that kind of core
position, to own and run wellbeing. And I think, I think that's where it should
be. I think for a long time, HR has actually been focused on people and most HR
people I know - most HR directors I know - have a real need and want and desire
to do right by people and a very people-oriented. And that's why they got into
HR. So, I think they will continue to have a critical role. And I think they
proved during the pandemic how valuable they are.

 

Erik

Yeah, and I love how in certainly we can back that up with some of our
reporting, the fact that you have HR professionals getting those director-level
jobs seats on the board, it's so important to have an advocate for the employee
with that sort of visibility, to really impact and, in a lot of cases, improve
the business strategy.

 

Gethin

I think there's been an interesting change with that HR role as well, over the
years, where there were HR people that I've met in the past that came from
operational roles, and then given the HR Director job with no qualifications,
training or experience in people management, or leadership or anything. And then
you have, the trouble that Revolut went through years ago, and they started to
have some really big cultural problems. And the CEO made a statement that
basically said “I should have hired the HR person before I hired a finance
person”. And I think that is now starting to get through, and you're starting to
get - there used to be this old trope that you don't really need an HR person
until you get to 100 people or more. And I just don't think that's true anymore.
You've got start-ups that are basically understanding the role of HR, not just
in the success of the organisation, but the health of that organisation is now
so important, that ‘ Actually should an HR person be one of my first hires?’ And
I'm excited to see so many new start-ups understand that and very early on
saying “Right, we need HR first, because if we don't get a lot of this stuff
right as we build it from the ground up, we will never get it right.” And that's
been great to see.

 

Erik

Yeah, I'm just thinking to my own personal history having been involved, in a
couple of start-ups, really, really wishing they had an HR team. Personally, I
know the CEO would disagree, but definitely, it certainly would help.

So, kind of wrap up these our thoughts here on the healthy workplace, in your
opinion, or from your data and your experience, what are the markers of a
healthy organisation?

 

Gethin

This has evolved quite a lot over time. I think with a lot of this stuff, we can
just think back to our own experiences at work and start to understand ‘When was
I happy at work? And when did I feel like I was working for an organisation that
really got this stuff?’ And it's some of the stuff I've already talked about,
when I felt like I was included, anyone who's marginalised will tell you that
feeling included in the organisation is an incredibly important part. And we can
now track diversity and inclusion to a significant number of different markers
of organisational success, like profit and productivity. So, making sure people
are included. So, it's almost like, if you want to get wellbeing right, you've
got to get a couple of other things right as well. So, communication needs to be
regular, clear and transparent. Diverse inclusion needs to be celebrated and
that needs a clear strategy attached to it.

And then you start to see some of the things that you need for wellbeing fall
into place, you create an environment where people have that voice. You feel
that people are recognised for the effort that they put in. You start to make
sure that, where possible, you're making sure that work is a positive force in
people's lives. So, you're looking at things like living wage, and abolishing
zero hour contracts and things like that, because the data is starting to tell
us that those cause problems for people. So, although that's not the be all and
end all there, again, this list of things that the data is telling us if you do
that, as an employer, your people are more likely to struggle. We can start to
understand that actually ‘what things do I have in place to make sure that
people are going to thrive and survive in the business?’ And so, you then start
to look at HR policy and making sure that again, we talked about this before by
empathising with people, but people look at stuff like flexible working, the
data tells us flexible working is incredibly good for people's mental health,
giving people autonomy and control over their hours, and where and when they
work from, has a really big impact on their health. And so, I think the healthy
organisation courts the opinions of their people regularly and acts on what they
tell them.

I think it celebrates and includes people and does everything it can to make
sure it doesn't exclude people. It communicates regularly and honestly, with its
people as much as possible. It celebrates and builds community so that people
feel like they're part of something and that they build those all-important
emotional connections. And I think when you start to get those things in place,
you start to create an organisation and a culture that's really celebrating and
built around wellbeing. I think that's again, a really special place to be, I
think when you get some of those things right - and lots of those things don't
necessarily mean you need to be going out and buying lots of stuff and spending
money on cultural and structural changes that almost any organisation can make.

 

Erik

So, in that the way you explain it there to me now, I'm personally envisioning
wellbeing as sort as the sum of all of those products that you mentioned before
- the diversity and inclusion, all of that. So that's great. Well, Gethin Nadin,
thank you so much for helping us break down a healthy workplace. We really
appreciate it.

 

Gethin

Thank you for having me.

 

Erik

Well, once again, I just like to thank Gethin Nadin, Chief Innovation Officer at
Zellis, for taking the time to help me unpack and define what a healthy
workplace is. It was a very insightful conversation and I hope to those
listening, you were able to come away with some key takeaways on how to define
what a healthy organisation is and how HR can play a role in fostering employee
and company health. That's it for this week, we will be back soon with another
instalment of the ‘Workplace of now’ series, presented along with our partners
at Zellis.

CIPD PODCAST: WHY INVESTING IN MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS

Join us to discuss why employers should be investing in mental health and
prioritising the human factor of the workforce. We look at what employers can do
to recognise the early stages of burnout and the methods that can be put in
place to help – including support networks and actively encouraging time off
work – and how providing mental health support improves staff retention.



With:

Jacqui Summons, Peter Kelly

Transcript

Jennifer Jackson

Hello and welcome to a People Management Insight podcast in association with
Zellis, where we'll be discussing why you should be investing in mental health
and prioritising the human factor of the workforce. I'm Jennifer Jackson,
contributing editor to People Management Insight. And here's the fourth part of
our six-part series on wellbeing in the 'Workplace of now, I'm joined by two
expert speakers who will be sharing their guidance and specialist advice on
wellbeing issues. So here with me today, I have Peter Kelly, Senior Psychologist
at the Health and Safety Executive, and Jackie Summons, Chief People Officer at
EMIS Health. First, Peter, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself and
what you do, please?

 

Peter Kelly

Yes, so I'm a Senior Psychologist for the Health and Safety Executive and I'm
principally involved for the last 22 years around mental health. Be it from
defining work related stress, and then what we're doing at a national level
through the regulation route. More recently, over the last 10 years, pretty much
concentrating on mental health and wellbeing. I have some strong views, and I'm
sure they'll come out as we go through the podcast. I do feel that at the
moment, we've gone back to the 1990s, and where we're trying to teach people to
cope, and we're not really addressing some of the systemic organisational
issues, and hopefully, we'll talk about those, which are impacting people's
mental health.

 

Jennifer

Sure. Thank you, Peter. And Jackie, thank you for joining us again. Can you tell
us a bit about your role? And what can you tell us about why investing in mental
health is so important?

 

Jacqui Summons

Well, thank you very much. So, I'm Jackie Summons, I'm the Chief People Officer
at EMIS Health. And I combine that role with being a Non-Executive Director for
Zellis. So, I like the fact that you've referred to me as an expert, I guess I'm
only an expert on the basis that I have worked in human resources for 35 years.
So, I have seen quite a few changes in in that time. And the way in which
employers - and also the way in which the human resources function itself -
supports people through mental health has changed considerably from my very
early experience back in the in the 1980s. Absolutely. I'm really looking
forward to actually being able to talk about this subject and hearing perhaps a
bit more from the real expert in the room, which is obviously Peter, to help us
along the way. But I would say that the pandemic has shifted considerably the
way in which employers are looking at this subject, and it's brought it
certainly further up the agenda as far as the human resources function is
concerned as well.

 

Jennifer

Great, thank you, Jackie. Now, figures published by the Health and Safety
Executive show that of the 1.7 million workers suffering from a work-related
illness in 2020 to 21, 822,000 were caused by stress, depression, or anxiety.
That's 50% of all work-related ill health cases. So, with mental health related
illness rising, what can an employer do to invest in their staff wellbeing in a
meaningful and uplifting way? And how can it be much more worthwhile and
rewarding than just a box ticking exercise? Peter, what do you think?

 

 

It's actually 57%. I'm being a geek. It's, by the way, it's the most days ever
in a year, lost to stress, depression and anxiety, and an increase on the
previous year of 200,000. So, first thing I'd say is we had a problem before the
pandemic. And we very definitely have a problem during and after the pandemic,
because we've seen a 25% increase. In answer to the question, investing in
wellbeing cannot simply be about teaching people to be mindful and resilient
anymore, it cannot be simply about head massages and fruits and pears on the
table. It has to be a systemic approach to seeing the wellbeing of your staff as
one of the core functions of a successful business. And I've said this for
nearly 10 years now - if you look at the top companies to work for in the times
500, the top 100 all have one key element. They have robust wellbeing and health
programmes, which are beyond just teaching the individual to cope. So for
investment purposes you need to be thinking about looking at the organisational
elements and how you manage those. It's no use, effectively teaching people to
cope and manage better. And then constantly exposing them to a toxic
environment.

 

Peter

I once had some goldfish in a pond outside and I killed all the goldfish and
Pete the pond man came to my house and I said

“Pete, you've done the pond, all the fish have died."

And he looked at it and he said,

“Water is filthy, Peter.”

And he lifted up the filter, and the filter was bunged up with frog spawn. And
he said,

“It's not the fish. It's the water. It's the environment they're in."

And we need to remember that, you know, actually, we've got to create the right
environment for people to thrive. In that wellbeing so kind of answered the
question, but also wanted to say I think there is far too much investment, going
into the individual and not trying to change the organisation.

 

Jennifer

Thanks for that nice analogy, Peter. Jackie, what do you think?

 

Jacqui

Well, yeah, sort of building on that, I think it's, it's absolutely correct, as
Peter describes it, and I often speak to companies where they have less money to
invest in this, and they will sometimes turn around to me and say

"Well, you know, it's, it's all very well for you, you're a bigger organisation,
you can invest in, you know, wellbeing apps, and you can help your employees
with gym membership"

And exactly as Peter describes there, but, you know, fundamentally, actually,
you don't need any money at all in a business to be able to support people from
a mental health perspective. It is about the environment that you create, it's
about the degree to which people feel that it's okay to talk about things to
each other, to their managers, to the HR function, without there being any kind
of retribution. And then they feel they have the ability to say, actually, this
is all too much, I'm going to step away for a period of time and a little bit of
time, to sort through a few issues. So I'm not trying to say that our company
are perfect at this, we're absolutely not. I do think we have been helped over
the last few years by having, particularly with our CEO, and also with our
Senior Executive group of people who genuinely do say to people

"It's family First. it's your time first."

So if ever issues have cropped up, particularly from the CEO, I've always felt
that we have a supportive environment. There will be people that will
undoubtedly, say that we don't always do that. And sometimes we are quite, you
know, driven as any company is to do well, and to make a profit. But I think
it's a whole series of different things. I did set up about four years ago, a
programme of Mental Health First Aiders within the work force. It doesn't work
for every company, it's worked really well for us. So we do have that sort of
really informal approach to it, that people can talk to a colleague who is
trained to at least have that first discussion with somebody. And we also have
external counselling advice as well to people. So that's part of it. But I'm
with Peter, it's much more about how you run your business day to day and how
you support people through that. So they can work really effectively, but also
can feel that they're supported, because I'm absolutely sure that a lot of the
stress, depression and anxiety that is showing up - and it's definitely showing
up in our company, by the way, so I would support those stats - isn't
necessarily caused by work in every case. It's often something outside of work
at the moment. I would say very much to do with financial wellbeing, is creating
an enormous amount of stress. But if you don't think you're getting the support
for those issues in work, then it certainly can be very difficult.

 

And I think it's really, I mean, what I think, you know, Jackie said is
absolutely 100% Right, which is if you've got the right leadership, people who
are prepared to talk about mental health care to talk about family and talk
about real issues for the staff, then that makes a fundamental difference. And
so, every time I go into a business, and I say,

“Why do you stop talking about mental health? When you walk through that door?
Do you become a different person than the person you are at home?”

Because we talk about mental health. We talk about family issue. In work, we
should be able to do that. And I think leadership that leads by that example is
really, really important.

 

Jennifer

Thank you, Peter. Now we're currently in a cost-of-living crisis. And this makes
investing in anything difficult for many businesses as they see their budgets
cut. So, what are the business benefits of investing in, and promoting, good
mental health and why is it crucial to prioritise the human side of the
workforce?

 

Jacqui

Yeah, so I think the obvious answer of it, around this is that, if that kind of
level of stress is behind some of the absence, then it's a really obvious piece
that if we don't get on top of this, we don't actually have employees able to
work. And so that's a big issue. But interestingly, I don't think it is about so
much the absence away from the workplace, I think it's more around the inability
to give fully of yourself, if you're not in a good place from a mental health
perspective. So, it's not, to me, so much about 'is somebody present in the
business?' it's, you know, 'how do they feel each day? And therefore, how are
they interacting with their colleagues? How are they able to sort of give their
best on any particular day?'

We're doing some pilots at the moment about, in terms of reducing our working
week in terms of the number of hours that people are working. And, you know, I
have a little theory that actually, by spending a little bit more time taking
care of things outside of work and having less actual time physically in work,
people are actually going to give far better in the point that they are with us,
and they're going to want to work more effectively, because they feel that we're
giving something back to them in terms of some of their own time. So, it's yet
to see how it goes. But, that kind of thing, I think is something to certainly
think about. It's not just purely around absence, I think it's that sort of
extra thing that you give when you're in a good place mentally.

 

Jennifer

Sure, sure. And Peter, what do you think?

 

 

Peter

Well, I mean, if you look at the report by Ernst and Young that the return on
investment for investment in mental health is one to five, so for every pound
you put in, you get five pounds back. What was very interesting actually, it
used to be one in seven. One of the things we found during the during the
lockdown periods, and the isolation, everything else that have gone through, we
found that, if you're investing in systemic responses to mental health and
stress, you got a greater return on investment.

I don't know about you, maybe of your experience during the lockdown. But I
mean, simply providing someone with a computer and a large screen and a desk
didn't in itself actually constitute your responsibility as an employee to
manage their mental health, it was really about how we developed innovative ways
to have conversations with people. So, I think the return on investment argument
is there. And yes, we are in a cost-of-living crisis, where more than ever, we
need our people to be healthy and happy in work. And, to facilitate that we need
to look beyond the cheaper options of teaching our people to cope and actually
think

'Well, what can I do to make my business more effective?'

Because, if you actually look at the organisational issues that you've got in
your workplace, and you change those two, they reflect and support your people,
your business will be able to properly mitigate some of the fallout that's
coming. Whereas if you are constantly putting your people into a state of
strain, because of the pressure that you're putting under, and not actually
changing the business model itself, then I think you've got problems. And that's
what we're seeing. And I guess my call is to do the individual stuff, but also
to do the organisational stuff. Because actually it's going to be good for your
business if your people are healthy.

 

Jennifer

Makes sense. Thank you, Peter. Now a key part of investing in wellbeing support
is being able to spot the warning signs of mental health issues. And the HSE's
Working Minds campaign helps businesses and workers understand the best ways to
encourage good mental health and prevent work related stress. So, what can
employers do to recognise the early signs of burnout? And what methods can be
put in place to relieve this? Peter, do you have any insights on this?

 

Peter

Oh, yeah, obviously HSE's Working Mind campaign is about making it routine to
talk about mental health and to address mental health in the workplace. And when
we talk about mental health, we're talking about work-related stress and mental
illness. And what we're trying to do is to get organisations to reduce that. The
justification obviously - we've talked about it - is because it's at the highest
levels ever.

To make it routine, you need to do four other elements. So, one is you need to
reach out if you see people are not right and distressed or not behaving in a
certain way, you need to recognise the symptoms. And there's lots of information
out there now about mental health, we've seen that during the lockdown. And
during the pandemic. You need to respond 'Oh, there's a problem, I will ignore
it.' No, you need to respond and do something about it. If you've got five or
six people having the same problem, you have to do something about it. And
that's part of the legislation requirement anyway. Then you need to reflect on
what you've done and if the thing that you've put in place to reduce the
work-related stress isn't working, then change it before you go through a whole
year and wait to find out it doesn't work. And ultimately, we want you to make
it routine. So we want you to have conversations with people, we want you to
engage with your workforce. And we want you to do those 'Five R's”.

 1. making a routine
 2. reach out
 3. recognise
 4. respond
 5.  

 

And guess what? They’re the same five steps are the risk assessment process that
we require you to do, as well. So, you know, this is a great opportunity. If
you'd asked me when I first started 20 years ago, that we'd have a year or
two-year campaign on mental health, that was a long, long way away from my
imagination at the time. So, we're really going to be concentrating around this
area, we've made it part of our 10-year strategy, and you will see us being
involved in this area. And that may include regulatory activity as well.

 

Jennifer

Great. Thank you, Peter, for your insights there and taking us through the five
R's. Jackie, do you have any thoughts?

 

Jacqui

Yeah, I do have a thought, which is that. And it goes back a little bit to what
we were saying earlier about the fact that this is not just necessarily at the
organisation level, but it's also down to the individual managers. I think that
one of the things that that has become very clear is that we have managers at
the moment who are really very effective at managing through some of these
issues, and we have others that find it way more difficult. We certainly tried
to support the people that are finding it more difficult. I suppose my thought
around this is that with your own team, it sometimes feels as though you're
dealing with them - or it should feel as though you're dealing with them in a
way that you would deal with your family. So within your family, you recognise
different signs that people have. You know when people are perhaps not as happy
as other times, you can kind of see the signs of that. We're trying to encourage
managers to think about that as well. What's different about the way the person
is reacting now to the way they were before? And there are lots of, you know,
through the pandemic, when we weren't seeing people that were lots of signs, you
know, somebody who perhaps, you know, typically would be on camera, but then
started not to be on camera. You know, it was sometimes not appearing to be
quite as clear in terms of the way they were speaking. There were lots of things
we did pick up those signs. The one thing I would say is that one thing that
works for one person doesn't necessarily work for somebody else. And, this is
where we have to come down to what's the way in which you're going to find out
how that individual is feeling, or how your whole group feels? Because there can
be differences.

I've encouraged people in my team to - now that we're starting to get back to
face to face - think about if you want to have a conversation with somebody, and
it's becoming really difficult to understand really where they sit, because
they're on a Teams call, and you can't really work out what's going on. I've
sometimes found it really helpful to go and take a walk with somebody. So, if
you don't live too far away, if you have that one-to-one, actually walking
around and having a conversation is really interesting how people open up and
tell you a little bit more about what's going on for them than they perhaps
would if they're sitting across what is quite a harsh interaction really over a
laptop. So I'd certainly encourage people to think about that. But I love the
sound of the five R's. I think it's a really, really good message to get across
and it's a really good way to remember what you should be doing as well. So, I
think that sounds fantastic.

 

Jennifer

Brilliant. Thank you, Jackie. Now, work-related mental health illnesses were
already rising before COVID-19 hit. But with everyone having to adjust to a new
way of living and working during lockdowns unfortunately rates increased during
the pandemic. It has however given employers a chance to reflect. So, how have
you seen a change in attitude among employers towards mental health and well
being? And what support networks should be available to staff in need of mental
health support? Jackie, what do you think?

 

Jacqui

I guess it builds a little bit on what I was saying before about different
things for different people. You can have programmes in your in your business
that you could feel quite comfortable with doing. So, I talked about the Mental
Health First Aid program that we have. And that works for some people, it
certainly wouldn't be something that everybody would reach out to. So, we've
also taken opportunities to make sure that the external support that is
available to people is readily available, so that when you're having a
particularly bad point. I remember I was told quite a long time ago by a
colleague that she was in a particularly bad place in a domestic situation at
home, and actually really hadn't sought help at all. And then went into her
kitchen in the workplace. And there was a poster on the wall. And basically, it
had a number and there, she just saw it, and it just made her think, Okay, I'm
just going to call somebody now and have a conversation about the things that
are going on. But actually, for months and months and months she hadn't really
done anything about it. So, it's some sort of trigger, I think, helps people
just to bring it to the front of mind, we certainly found that to be to be quite
helpful. But you have to work a little bit harder at that when people are not
necessarily all physically face-to-face. You have to put a little bit more
effort in than you would have done in the past.

 

Jennifer

Yeah, sure. Peter, what do you think?

 

Peter

Yeah, essentially everything that has been said. But you know, I mean, to me it
is self-evident that the lockdown, and the pandemic was a huge seismic shift in
how businesses manage their people. For many, many years, the system has been
king, system over person. And many times people say

 

'Well, I've got a computer and I need to answer these emails, I need to do them
at two o'clock in the morning. I've got a mobile phone, I've got it next to my
bed.'

 

So actually, we've made the system King, and I think the what the pandemic has
taught us is actually we've got to put our people first and you don't have a
business unless you have functioning, healthy people in it. And, in terms of the
investment argument, which is, you know, obviously we've been talking about
that. The return on investment on what we call tertiary or individual issues is
substantially less than the return on investment on organisational issue. So,
use the pandemic to be an opportunity to look at how you do your work and how
your work is processed. I think that's really important.

When you go back to 1980, and you look at the Spanish flu pandemic, two things
occurred directly after. One was a global recession. And the other one was an
outpouring of mental illness globally, as a consequence of what happened during
the Spanish flu pandemic. What we've got at the moment is exactly the same
characteristics. So, we know actually, that if you put a global recession
together with a pandemic, you do have the possibility to have substantial mental
health. So I think businesses, in preparing for the future, and in managing
people's wellness and reimagining people's health, they need to focus now on
what they can do to make themselves healthy organisations. Many times we create
organisations that incubate illness that don't actually incubate healthy
workers. I know it sounds very much like 'Star Trek-y'. But it is true, you know
what I mean? And that's sort of a long-winded answer to your very brief
question. Apologies.

 

Jennifer

No that's great. Thank you, Peter. Thank you both. Now, workload pressures, as
you say, tight deadlines, too much responsibility, lack of managerial support.
These are cited as the biggest triggers for workplace stress and depression and
anxiety. So that leads us on to; what fixes can employers make to ease those
pressures and prevent this work-related stress and how can these fixes improve
staff retention as well? Jackie, what do you think?

 

Jacqui

I mean, I think it goes back to something that I talked about earlier on, which
is the fact that there is a there is a tendency to drive towards a number of
hours that people work and having to you know, I've had conversations recently,
where people have been some concerns about productivity. And so, the answers
come back

‘well, how can we monitor and make sure that people are working for the eight
hours a day?’

And I think actually, it's almost turning that on its head and looking at it the
opposite way, which is, you know,

‘What are the number of hours that somebody could work to be effective that are
perhaps less than they have before? And what could you build into a normal day
that would give people some kind of time that back that would help them to
manage their mental health?

You know, the thing I said before, I've got a theory, which I'm hoping will play
out in stuff that we're planning to do for the next few months, which is
actually, if you did something quite radical and said,

‘Well, we only really want your work, we don't want you working eight hours, we
actually want you to work five really productive hours in a day.

But we want you to use some of the other time that we're giving you to take a
walk to do some exercise, If it's right for you to sort of take some time away
from the screen, read a book, talk to your colleagues, you know, have an
informal conversation been one that's necessarily focused on a specific
objective or a piece of work?’

And so, so giving back sort of balanced back to people, in my mind, I think
would lead to those hours when somebody is actually working being way more
effective. I still see in our business, too many long meetings set up with no
clear agenda, no indication of what you're actually sitting in that meeting for,
for the next two hours, you know, do you need to be in that meeting for two
hours? could it all be done in half an hour? So, trying to just encourage people
to sort of rethink the way in which people work and the time that they give to
the to the deadlines that they have. Because you're absolutely right. I mean, we
hear these conversations a lot that people don't feel that they've got enough
time to get work done. There's this constant pressure. I mean, I'm also a huge
fan - and I haven't always done this - but there have been times in my career
when I've done this. I'm a huge fan of actually stopping people working out of
normal hours. So literally, you know, some companies I know have gone the route
of cutting off, you know, email access, during non-working hours. When people go
on holiday. Certainly in my team, I do not expect people to be contacting me
when they're on their holiday. And in fact, we push back if they do, and say you
need your break, you need your time away. I see too much of somebody being
constantly in touch, which doesn't work well. So there's some of the things that
we're certainly thinking about the moment.

 

Jennifer

Thanks, Jackie. And, yes, so these fixes, how do you think they can improve
staff retention?

 

Jacqui

I think they absolutely, absolutely do. And I think it's interesting that when
people are coming, particularly younger people are coming to join the business,
the questions they ask around the working pattern, you know,

when are they expected to do this?

what kind of level of holiday?

But we were also thinking about, as an example, allowing people to take their
very standard bank holidays, but to take them when they want to take them and
not when we're forcing them to take them at Christmas and Easter. So quite a
radical change. But for some people, it's that that would be really a great
thing, because they'll actually want to do different things with their family
and can have that time back. So, I think it's interesting, the demand is now for
a more flexible working arrangement than more than it's ever been. We certainly,
when I started work 35 years ago, you wouldn't have dreamt of asking questions
around, you know, ‘how flexible can my work in working week be?’ You absolutely
knew you needed to be there for eight plus hours a day and to show up every day
that I think that's changing enormously, which is a fantastic thing that people
are now prepared to have those conversations. I actually think it would help
people to retain staff without a shadow of a doubt.

 

Jennifer

Great. Thank you, Jackie. What do you think, Peter?

 

Peter

My word, where do I start? Yeah, I mean, that the absolutely central - all the
evidence suggests that working at doing an organisational intervention is far
more effective than then than the individual element. And if you do the
individual element on its own, it's really ineffective.

If you want to retain people, create workplaces that people feel engaged with,
workplaces where people go to work, and they come back the same as they went. So
they're not made ill by work, they're actually sustained.

Neuro-psychologically, because it's where I came from before I came into this
job, we know that eight hours of the day your brain functions effectively at a
very high level of processing. And that's why we, you know, we're most engaged
during that eight hours, we need eight hours of sleep, I mean, also need eight
hours doing something else. And effectively, you can split it into those three
elements. And actually, if we now look at flexible working, we say, okay, we
want you to do eight hours, but we don't mind when you do the eight hours, as
long as that interjected by the fact that people get quality time, where they're
able to do the things that gives them a sense of enjoyment, obviously, you do
need to go to bed. And you know, you can't sort of think well, I'll, I'll stay
up till three o'clock in the morning, because actually, your brain is not wired
to stay up till three o'clock in the morning, all the time, unless you obviously
work in the night-time economy. So the point is, I think, giving flexibility is
dead important.

You look at the way you manage work, can the work be done in a different way? Do
we need to send that email?

Absolutely, do not be getting mission creep when it comes to Zoom, Teams or Wave
Cast, or Clean Feed!

So what you have to do is get yourself into a place where you are looking at
your people as a resource, and as something that's going to help you achieve
what you want to achieve in your business. And very often I don't think people
do that. They see the process and system as being the thing that they're trying
to deliver. But actually keeping people sustained in in a workplace is really,
really important. And you can do that relatively cheaply, by actually asking
them what, how they want to do the job? How can the job be done differently?
What are the issues? So I think, if you're going to generally do wellbeing, then
it has to encompass a range of options. And remember, when I when we first
started this journey, wellbeing was health and wellbeing. Now well, being has
over six or seven tentacles on this, like big, massive octopus. Focus on the
elements of wellbeing that are important to the to that your team, your unit, or
your organisation or group that you have. And as you know, yes, have individual
issues, but also think, let's talk to our people about how we can do the job
fair,

 

Jennifer

lovely, thank you very much, Peter. Now, it may come as a surprise, or maybe not
small workplaces have a statistically significantly lower rate of work-related
stress. And in contrast, medium and large businesses have a statistically higher
rate. What can medium and large enterprises in particular do to address work
related stress? And what could they perhaps learn from small businesses? Peter,
what do you think?

 

Peter

Right, let's look at it. When we look at businesses SMEs, what they're doing, is
they see the problem straightaway, they address it, they're often quickly on the
process, they'll put something in place to change it. If there’s 10 of you
working in a factory, and one guy comes in, and he's absolutely riley, and he's
narked and he's kicking off, and it's very obvious that he's not happy, you can
address it really, really quickly. And that's one of the things is being aware
of your people, and the changes in the people around you. And medium enterprises
and larger enterprises put a system around that, and then somehow that delays
the process and response. that well actually I went in, we went into work and
there's 250 people, and there's one person over there that you know, and then
they go, ‘Well, we got to report it to HR, we've got to do this. We got to do
that.’

So, sometimes, we overcomplicate what should be an easy an easier process, which
is to go over and see how people are going, how they're travelling, you know. If
you ask people, ‘how are you?’ they’re going to say, ‘I’m fine.’

If you say, ‘how are you travelling?’ You give them an opportunity to talk.

 

Jennifer

Thank you, Peter. Jackie, what do you think?

 

Jacqui

Yeah, I found this really interesting, actually. I wouldn't have known this to
have been a fact but if somebody else asked me to guess, I probably would have
guessed that this would be the case. Having worked in small businesses and also
much bigger companies.

The one thing I would say about smaller organisations as well as the excellent
point that Peter makes about the fact that you see things that you can deal with
them. Is that I think there is just more focus in a smaller business on the
things that are really important, as far as work is concerned. I certainly have
- my organisation is an enormous - but I've noticed even the size of it in
comparison with the previous company, there is this inclination to slow things
down, sometimes we need a policy for this, we need to have a meeting to discuss
this.

So you just tend to put more obstacles in the way of getting things done quickly
and effectively, in a larger organisation. So I think, you know, to Peter's
point, they have to work even harder, almost breaking down those barriers, you
know, thinking about the small work team, what can you do within your small work
team and just get on and do it, and not have to wait for the whole organisation
to respond to something which you see within your, your own your own smaller
team. I think we are we are guilty in bigger companies of sometimes being almost
paralysed by the fact that there is a view that you can't just do something to
change something without creating a lot of policy and process around it. And,
you know, it is hard. I mean, we've, we've gone through this discussion recently
about how we want to change our flexible working approach and how we want to
change, I talked about the possibility of changing our approach by bank
holidays, for example, that sort of thing sometimes takes an awfully long time
to get agreed through a bigger organisation. And if you were just, you know, a
10-person company, you'd probably have just done that very, very quickly if you
thought it would work. So, I think we have to work much harder, in that in that
bigger company and making these things happen quickly. And almost, you know,
putting that small mindset in place, even if it's a bigger organisation, but is
it it's really interesting, I think we've got we've got a lot to learn from
those smaller companies, for sure.

 

Peter

Absolutely. And the problem, the thing is, we constantly say, oh, SMEs, are
this, they’re that, or this and that, but actually, in this area, they do have
the possibility to, to teach lessons to larger organisations who overcomplicate
mental health, and make it make it structurally difficult to report, you end up
with problems.

Really, we should just be talking to our people and make it routine. There you
go five steps to talk about mental health. We shouldn't be like, oh, John in the
corner has got depression, what's the process? What's the system? What do we
need to do? You need to have all those, but before you do that, you need to talk
to him.

 

Jennifer

Great to recognise some of the learning points we can take from smaller
businesses, though. Thank you very much.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed listening to our speakers today, and that they've
provided you with some useful information to better assist your teams. Thank you
again to Peter and Jackie, for being excellent guests and providing us with your
insight and expertise about this rapidly growing market. And thank you to Zellis
for partnering with us on this series. I'm Jennifer Jackson, thank you very much
for listening and have a good day.


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SPEAKERS

GETHIN NADIN, CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER AT ZELLIS

Gethin Nadin is an award-winning psychologist who has been helping some of the
world’s largest organisations to improve employee experience and wellbeing for
two decades. He has been featured in major titles including Forbes, the Guardian
and Financial Times, as well as key HR, reward, and pensions publications.
Gethin has been listed as a Top 101 Global Employee Experience Influencer and
was named an Inspiring Leader 2021. He has published two bestselling books: A
World of Good: Lessons From Around the World in Improving the Employee
Experience and A Work In Progress: Unlocking Wellbeing to Create More
Sustainable and Resilient Organisations. 

JACQUI SUMMONS, CPO AT EMIS HEALTH AND NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT ZELLIS

Jacqui Summons is the Chief People Officer at EMIS Health, the UK’s leading
provider of clinical IT systems for joined-up patient care. In 2021, she joined
Zellis as a Non-Executive Director, to help the UK and Ireland’s leading
specialist HR and payroll provider respond to the evolving needs of its
customers, particularly those in senior HR roles.  

Jacqui has over three decades of specialist knowledge of the challenges large
organisations face, and the role HR must play in helping build resilience and
adapt to rapid change. She has earned this expertise by helping guide the course
for some of the country’s largest businesses.  

PETER KELLY, SENIOR PSYCHOLOGIST AT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY EXECUTIVE

Peter is a mental health expert and advisor on mental health at work- and
work-related stress and works with organisations to improve mental health in the
workplace at both a strategic, organisational, and individual level. A
passionate advocate of making workplaces mentally health and breaking down
stigma towards mental health.

He has been involved in working across the EU on several initiatives in relation
to psychosocial hazards and risk prevention. Scientific Expert Panel member to
ISO 45003 Psychological Health and Safety in workplaces.


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