The 6th of November is Stress Awareness Day, an opportunity to raise awareness of mental health and wellbeing. This is a good opportunity to focus on what support employers could provide to their workers to preserve their mental wellbeing or to staff who suffer from serious mental health issues.
Mental health
The expression "mental health" refers to emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. Mental health problems may affect the wellbeing of employees as seriously as physical conditions and can amount to a disability under the Equality Act 2010.
If an employee has a disability and discloses it to their employer (or the employer ought reasonably to know of the disability), the employer has a duty to make reasonable adjustments (or workplace adjustments).
Reasonable adjustments
The duty to make reasonable adjustments is aimed at making sure that, as far as is reasonable, a disabled worker has the same access to everything involved in getting, doing and keeping a job as a non-disabled person.
When the duty arises, employers are under a positive and proactive duty to take reasonable steps to remove or reduce or prevent the obstacles the disabled worker faces and includes making adjustments to provisions, criteria or practices, adjusting physical features and providing auxiliary aids.
When making reasonable adjustments for mental health, employers should consider that every role and every employee is different, so what works in one situation or for one employee may not work in, or for, another. Employers should also be aware that mental health changes over time, so any adjustments need to be reassessed regularly. Communication with the affected employee is therefore crucial.
ACAS's toolkit on mental health and workplace adjustments
The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) published a toolkit on mental health and workplace arrangements. It lists useful examples of workplace adjustments, covering different areas of work that employers should consider implementing to address or prevent their workers' mental health issues. These include:
- working hours and patterns arrangements: paid time off for medical appointments, flexible hours, part-time or job share arrangements;
- changing the physical working environment: allow homeworking or hybrid working, provide workspace in quieter areas of the office;
- changing roles and responsibilities: assign workload reasonably, breaking down work in smaller or short-term tasks, reduce customer-facing work;
- reviewing working relationships and communication styles: agree a preferred communication method to help reduce anxiety;
- flexibility: offer extended phased return to work, be flexible in respect of absences (maxing sure that the employee affected is not disadvantaged).
Other support and resources
Not all mental health conditions or symptoms amount to a disability, but they may nevertheless impact on the employees' wellbeing and, ultimately, affect their absence rates and productivity.
It is, therefore, in the employer's interest to offer other forms of support and resources which members of staff can turn to, should they experience mental health difficulties, whether temporarily or on a long-term basis.
Examples of additional support and resources include:
- offering training on issues such as stress, anxiety, burnout, depression, etc.;
- appropriate management of workloads and supervision;
- offering access to an Employee Assistance Programme;
- offering financial wellbeing training and helplines;
- arranging pension advisory sessions; or
- promoting healthy/positive forms of socialisation, through the creation of book clubs or sports teams.
Conclusions
Employers should be aware of their duty to protect their workers' mental, as well as physical, wellbeing and should understand what it is expected from them in relation to starting a conversation with the relevant employee and making reasonable workplace adjustments. Businesses should also be conscious that collecting data about their workers' mental health conditions means collecting processing particularly sensitive information and need to make sure that they have appropriate data protection policies and systems in place.
Managing mental health issues in the workplace is a sensitive matter and should be approached with empathy, reasonableness and without making assumptions.
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