Below we’ve listed 5 ways to help build your team’s mental resilience. Giving your team the tools, tips and techniques can help them to manage stress and pressure, embrace change, build confidence and adopt a positive outlook.
Make time to talk
There is still stigma around mental health problems and what certain diagnoses mean. So encouraging a more open transparent environment is a great step towards creating a healthy work culture where staff can be honest and reach out for help without fear of being stigmatised.
As a manager make it clear that mental ill health is nothing to be ashamed of, and that your door is always open. If you’re team are working from home or hybrid, think about alternate touchpoints, such as ‘office days’ or weekly online video catch-ups.
Put a ‘wellness action plan’ in place
A wellness action plan (WAP) is an informal workplace document designed to act as a personalised, practical tool to help employers and employees better manage their health and wellbeing.
You can use a WAP for any kind of health issue, physical or mental, or as part of an employee’s return to work following absence, injury or illness. Bear in mind, it is not a replacement for a formal return-to-work plan, such as you might agree with an occupational health professional, or a legally binding document.
What a WAP does is set down on paper what triggers within the workplace may cause or contribute to illness, what support employees want to receive, and what approach will best support wellbeing or recovery.
Mental health charity Mind have created a mental health WAP guide for line managers that you can download from their website. We’ve also create a mental health care plan employees can use here.
Communicate what external support is available
Alongside supporting your team yourself, signpost employees to whatever external support is available, both within and outside your organisation.
Depending on what services you have in place this might include information on how to access an employee assistance programme (EAP), where and how to go and see an occupational health team, and how to get in touch with internal mental health ambassadors or wellbeing champions.
You can also signpost employees to any self-help toolkits, guidance and advice available on your office intranet or via your benefits platform (for example access to any mindfulness apps or fast-track medical, GP or counselling support).
There are also plenty of organisations you can signpost staff to for support such as Mind, Samaritans, Every Mind Matters, Better Health and the NHS.
Recognise work and personal mental ill health overlap
When it comes to talking about mental health, it is natural for employers to focus on work-related mental ill health. The Health and Safety Executive’s stress management standards and tools can be valuable in identifying common stress triggers.
However, it is important to recognise that home and personal stressors will often bleed into work life and vice versa. It could be money worries; anxieties about their children, family or relationships; concerns about how to manage caring responsibilities; health issues, either your own or those of a loved one, and so on. Therefore, when an employee is struggling, it will often be because a combination of work and home stressors are feeding off one another.
For this reason it’s important to be looking at the mental health and wellbeing of your team in a holistic way. For example, offering support on topics such as financial wellbeing or caring responsibilities outside of work can be a valuable way to help build resilience.
Help people to help themselves
It is important to ‘walk the walk’ as well as ‘talk the talk’ when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. This means actually putting in place day-to-day changes that make a difference.
You can have all the services and mental health ambassadors in the world, but if your work environment is mentally toxic, maybe because of a long-hours culture or constantly demanding deadlines, you’ll constantly be fighting an uphill battle.
Try to be proactive about ensuring employees do properly switch off outside of work, take their full holiday allowance (and don’t constantly check in while they’re away), and take sick leave when they’re unwell.
This might only need small changes, for example communicating the importance of scheduling emails so people don’t receive them over the weekend. But it may also need to be something you deliberately model yourself so as to give others ‘permission’ to do the same; very visibly leaving on time, for example.
Alongside this, it may be valuable to offer health promotion advice and tips on how to get into better lifestyle habits such as improving your diet, cutting back on the alcohol and getting into a better sleep routine.
Promoting available health education tools to encourage a climate of positive wellbeing self-help will ultimately create a team who feel empowered and supported to look after their wellbeing.
