employment and skills

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Mental health and wellbeing at work continues to be one of the most challenging issues that employers face. The financial cost to organisations of poor mental health is estimated to be £42bn a year.

Anna Golawski provides free webinars on the topic of mental health, stress and resilience.

We know that the more conversations we have, the more myths we can bust and barriers we can break down, helping to end the isolation, shame and worthlessness that too many of us with mental health problems are made to feel.

Open conversations about mental health are more important than ever. We need your help to start the conversation – together we can end mental health stigma. In order to help people, Stratus Coaching regularly holds free webinars on the topic of mental health and wellbeing which are open to all to help them gain a better understanding and awareness of the subject. (Contact Anna for details or search on Eventbrite).

Why should organisations care?

Now more than ever, employers need to ensure they promote healthy workplaces where people feel comfortable speaking to someone if they are struggling. According to the Health and Safety at Work Act, employers “must protect the health, safety and welfare at work of employees” which includes mental health. Convictions and prosecutions over a lack of mental health support have already been seen across Europe.

It is also the right thing to do to proactively look after people’s wellbeing so that they can perform at their best, but not at the expense of their health.

What can you do to help?

Mental Health Policy - is this accessible to staff and managers? Does it clearly signpost people to internal and external resources available?

Internal resources - inc. mental health first aiders, Occ Health, EAP.

Mental Health First Aiders - trained to have conversations with people.

Training - are leaders aware of their responsibilities and able to confidently have conversations about wellbeing?

Culture of Openness - how often are people asked how they are feeling, not just an update on what they are doing?

Regular breaks - encourage employees to take regular breaks during the day to restore their mental energies.

Email policy - are people expected to be on call 24/7? Sports people value their rest days as much as training days, we need to recharge our minds too.

Clear objectives & guidance - when people know what’s expected of them, they can better perform to their full potential and use constructive feedback for future success.

Coaching/mentoring - reflecting on progress and sharing insights pays huge dividends.

Prevention is better than that cure. The sooner people can talk about any struggles they are experiencing, the quicker they will bounce back.

image © Pete Jones Photography

Please contact anna@ stratuscoaching.co.uk for future dates or information on in-house training. She is a Mental Health First Aid instructor providing the MHFA 2-day and 1-day course, and refresher training sessions with an excellent track record:

“Anna was a brilliant trainer who included everyone in the course and was very engaging.” “An absolutely amazing course - I would advocate for as many people as possible to undertake this course.”

“Anna was a really amazing course leader”

“Anna was amazing! I learned so much not only from the theory that she taught but also the kind and sensitive way in which she delivered the course and drew upon her own personal experiences. I feel much more confident handling mental health issues in the workplace now. Thank you again.” “Anna was an amazing instructor. So clear and well presented courses. and just an all round lovely person. Thanks to Anna this will stay with me for life.”

07799 334594

www.stratuscoaching.com

Once upon two times: leadership through storytelling

What is your organisation’s story? Who wrote it? Who is telling it? If you’re in a leading position in your organisation and are puzzled by these questions, you may have a problem. That’s because if you don’t know your story, you’ve almost certainly lost control of it.

Angus Cameron

Academic Operations Director Roffey Park Institute

Let me tell you a story.

A year or so ago, back in the ‘before times’ when we could attend conferences, myself and my colleague Dr Arlene Egan were confronted with an interesting conundrum. We’d presented a paper on organisational resilience, the themes of which had struck a chord with one particular CEO. His firm, he told us, at least as far as the numbers were concerned, was very successful. It was well-established, regularly turned in healthy profits and won international awards. His problem was that despite the money and the plaudits, he was struggling to lead a deeply divided workforce.

The split had developed as the company had grown beyond its original premises. A new factory had been built to meet increased demand, new product lines had been developed, and a new staff was recruited to run it all. There was little or no transfer of the existing workforce to the new site. That would have been difficult enough by itself had it not been for an extra twist of political geography. The organisation is based in an Eastern European country that had left the clutches of the Warsaw Pact not long before the new factory opened. The firm’s different sites developed along two divergent trajectories – one looking back nostalgically at a half-remembered socialist utopia, the other forward to a vague but glittering capitalist future.

So we asked the CEO what his organisational story was. Perhaps not surprisingly, he did not have a very coherent answer to this – it had never occurred to him that he needed one.

As we discussed the apparently intractable divide in the firm, it became apparent that the senior team were leading the functions of the organisation – the mechanics of cashflow, R&D, production figures, deadlines and contracts – but not the organisation itself. They had brands and marketing messages, even mission statements, but they had failed to take hold of one of the most important elements in an organisation’s identity – its story. Not only had they allowed two company stories to emerge, they had not realised how quickly, or how deeply, each would reinforce the other. What emerged was one firm, but two organisational cultures and two workforces tightly entwined in the creeping vines of their own, selfgenerated stories. Our troubled CEO went off very thoughtful: determined to find a way to unify his company story. The continued success of his company suggests that he did.

This might seem an extreme example. We had certainly never encountered an organisation quite as split as this one. But aspects of this tale apply to all organisations. There is not and cannot be a single organisational story that is true for all time. The context in which we operate changes, and so the stories we tell to situate ourselves in that changing environment must also adapt. While few of us will ever encounter the clash of histories experienced by our friend from the conference, just think of the emergent contexts in which you are operating. Climate change, Black Lives Matter, #metoo, Brexit, the rise of Generation Z and, of course, whatever post-Covid world awaits us, all should be prompting some rapid revisions of organisational stories. This is much more than canny marketing: your organisation’s story affects every part of your operation, every member of staff, all of your stakeholders. A good organisational story describes your destiny and, in doing so, shapes it. It falls to leaders to develop and tell such stories because if they cannot convey them with clarity and conviction, nor can anyone else. And as our CEO found to his cost, the fundamental human imperative to tell stories of belonging, tradition, direction and success will fill any available vacuum.

Fortunately the same storytelling imperative that can cause such narrative havoc, is also its solution. All organisational leaders also tell stories. But if they don’t form those stories carefully and reflectively, if the stories they tell don’t respond to the world in which we operate, they are destined to fail.

Learn how to tell effective stories, and we can all live happily ever after.