Mental Health in the Workplace: Employing Best Practice
Evaluation Summary Report Marie Griffiths Public Health Network Cymru Coordinator July 2018
Introduction Public Health Network Cymru based within Public Health Wales provides a range of support to practitioners and researchers across all sectors that influence any aspect of public health and health improvement in Wales. Amongst the services they provide is a seminar series that seeks to promote best practice based on existing and emerging evidence. The series covers a diverse range of topics and recent examples have included topics such as Healthy Minds for Future Generations: Promoting Dementia Risk Reduction and The Contribution of Allied Health Professions to Public Health. The topics are determined by the network members who vote on a list of approximately 12 topics that are circulated annually and Workplace Mental Health was within the top 4 voted for by members. The Network arranged a planning group to aid in the shaping and contribution of the seminar. This seminar took place on the 10 July 2018 and was hosted at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff. The seminar was jointly chaired by Professor Sir Mansel Aylward, Chair at Life Sciences Hub Wales and Phill Chick, Assistant Director – Mental Health Delivery Unit, NHS Wales. Professor Aylward welcomed everyone to the event and spoke about his feelings around mental health, how it affects the population’s health and how important empathy, compassion and involvement are for survival. He spoke about the importance of mental health in the workplace and provided an insight of how he became involved in mental health. He concluded his introduction by highlighting the need for this seminar to address the evidence base and to inform us better practice.
Overview of Presentations The day was opened by Dr Adrian Neal, Consultant Psychologist, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. Adrian spoke about ‘What evidence based practice really means when thinking about mental health at work.” He spoke about how thinking about mental health is often unfamiliar territory and if we don’t understand our own mental health how can we begin to understand that of others. This was followed by two presentations, Jules Twells – Workplace Wellbeing Manager, Mind Cymru and Adam Jones – Public Health Practitioner (Policy), Public Health Wales. Jules spoke about creating mentally healthy workplaces. She talked about how the goal at Mind is to mainstream good mental health and make it core business to all employers. She also highlighted the workplace wellbeing services on offer to employers to support mental health in the workplace. Adam presented on his personal experiences of ‘Living with Depression and Working in Public Health Wales’. Adam shared information with delegates on incidents that had occurred from birth and through his childhood which is the likely cause of him suffering with depression from the age of 16. Individual presentations are available by contacting publichealth.network@wales.nhs.uk or can be accessed on the Public Health Network Cymru website.
Parallel Sessions Three workshops were held during the event and were repeated to give delegates an opportunity of attending two of the three available: • Making our Workplaces More Age Friendly: Steve Huxton, Ageing Well in Wales Lead, Older People’s Commissioner for Wales. • Mental Wellbeing at Work: Jane Rees, Employee Wellbeing Manager, Public Health Wales; Hannah Dring, Workplace Health Practitioner, Public Health Wales; Helen Walters, Workplace Health Practitioner, Public Health Wales. • Addressing Stigma: Karen Roberts, Programme Manager, Time to Change Wales
Evaluation Form 48 people registered via Eventbrite for the event and 52 attended on the day which highlights the popularity of this event as it also had a waiting list of 50 people. The seminar was also live streamed via Twitter with 42 people viewing during the seminar and a further 26 people viewing the stream post seminar. An evaluation form was given to all delegates at the end of the event and 29 forms were returned.
Quantitative Results The first question asks delegates whether or not they were members of Public Health Network Cymru. It is interesting to note that the majority of delegates were not members of the Network (76%). This may largely be due to the event flier being distributed amongst stakeholders recommended by the seminar planning group, however the Network had 7 new member registrations in the week following the seminar
Another question on the evaluation form asks delegates to rank from 1 to 5, (where 1 is not at all useful and 5 is very useful) “how useful did you find the seminar?�. As can be seen the majority of people answered 4 or 5 (93.1%) to this question with 6.9% (3 people) providing the answer of 3.
Qualitative Results Further questions on the evaluation form looked for a qualitative response which is detailed below.
What was your main motivation for attending this event? The majority of delegates attended the event to learn more about mental health in the workplace and what more they can do as an organisation. To find ways of supporting staff through some difficult times ahead and to kick start ideas for the future organisation Looking for ways to introduce more support for mental health and wellbeing into the office To see / talk about the current picture of workplaces in Wales in regards to mental health and to see where arts development could assist/work with companies to enhance wellbeing
Was there anything that was of notable interest? A number of people mentioned Dr Adrian Neal’s presentation on evidence based practice as being one of the highlights of the day. Other aspects mentioned were Lisa’s story in the ‘Addressing Stigma’ session and also the ‘Mental Wellbeing at Work’ session. Dr Adrian’s speech was very interesting and particularly powerful was the presentation from Lisa in the stigma workshop Guest speakers - Dr Adrian Neal - lack of evidence regarding interventions - very interesting Workshop on MH and Workplace Evidence Base
How do you plan to utilise the learning gained at this event? TMany of the delegates said that they would share the information gained at the event with colleagues and would make more efforts to develop a process within their organisations. Look at what support we have in place already for ageing workforce and where we can improve it I have made contacts where there could be partnerships and collaborative work in the future. Also to be mindful of wellbeing in my workplace Consider corporate health standard. Consider pledging “Time to Change”
What seminar / conference topics would you like to see delivered in the future? The topic areas that delegates said they would like to see covered in future events were varied. The Network wouldn’t be able to provide events on some of the topic areas stated which were too specific but would be able to direct delegates to other more relevant organisations: • • • •
Public Health Approaches to Suicide Prevention Engaging staff in HWB activities More on older people, integrational work, mentoring Stress – Dealing with it!
It is worth noting that “Older People” was suggested and this is a seminar that the Network is in the process of planning. “Nutrition” was also suggested and this again is an area that the Network is already investigating for a future seminar.
Other comments Delegates had an opportunity to provide any further comments they had about the event. There were only 2 negative comments from the day and these were in relation to issues with technology. Excellent day - Thank you for all your efforts. Thank you for a well-run seminar and the lovely refreshments and insightful speakers. Thank you. Lisa you made this topic real and easier to relate to.
One word Participants were asked to give one word to sum up how they felt about the event. These words have been inputted into Wordle (www.wordle.net). Wordle generates word diagrams that give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text. From this you can clearly see that informative, interesting and excellent were stated most frequently.
Further information Further information and a short video of the day is available on the Public Health Network Cymru website or by contacting publichealth.network@wales.nhs.uk
Mentimeter Mentimeter is an easy to use web based presentation tool. It is a secure platform that can be used with different sized audiences to make presentations more interactive. We took the opportunity to use Mentimeter to interact with delegates and find out their views on the current situation. Participation was very good by delegates and a total of 41 delegates took part. The results are as follows: