MINDFUL WORKING

The psychic shock of the coronavirus pandemic has been such that, whatever ‘normality’ ends up looking like, the industry will need to be proactive in supporting mental health and wellbeing, whether for employees who have been ‘furloughed’, working from home or gingerly heading back into the office

By Kimberly Bartlett

Probably all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, have felt a sense of psychological dislocation during the coronavirus Covid-19 crisis. The sense of fear, anxiety, bereavement (both direct if we’ve tragically lost loved ones or indirect in terms of the ‘loss’ of hopes, dreams, job security or even just of ‘normality’) has been palpable.

In fact, even before the UK went into full lockdown in March, research for the Mental Health Foundation found one in five UK adults (22%) were feeling ‘panicked’ and a third (30%) ‘afraid’ because of the coronavirus pandemic. Almost one in five (18%) admitted to feeling ‘hopeless’ [1].

Even without a terrifying incurable global pandemic to deal with, it has been estimated as many as one in four of us will suffer a mental health problem that is severe enough to warrant some kind of help in our lifetime [2].

Within the workplace, too, the cost of mental ill health – absence because of stress or anxiety – is now estimated to have overtaken that of musculoskeletal complaints, such as back or neck pain [3]. It is not just absence either, many workplace health professionals suggest the cost of ‘presenteeism’ – or struggling into work when you’re unwell and then underperforming or spreading your illness around – is actually greater than that of absence [4].

Depression, anxiety and other ‘invisible’ disabilities such as autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis, lupus or fibromyalgia can also lay a person low almost imperceptibly, affecting their work and home life for months or years at a time.

The cost of this is great, not just for mental health services, the NHS and social care but also for the families, friends and employers of those affected. For some it is too much, and in 2018 tragically there were 6,859 recorded deaths by suicide in the UK alone [5].

And mental ill health affects our industry as much as any other. Indeed, a report last autumn by the inclusion consultancy EqualEngineers warned that engineering faced a mental health ‘emergency’, with one in five engineers saying they had lost a work colleague to suicide and more than a fifth having considered suicide or selfharm themselves. More than a third described their mental health as being just ‘fair’ or ‘poor’ [6].

MANAGING MENTAL ILL HEALTH

For managers and employers knowing how to deal with, manage and, most of all, support someone who is struggling in this way can be challenging, much more so than if, say, they have something physically wrong, such as a bad back or broken limb.

What to do, what to say (or not to say)? Do you encourage them to go off sick, or will that just make things worse? What is the impact going to be on colleagues or, indeed, the fact you still need them to, at some level, do their job?

It is precisely for this reason that a caring, understanding relationship at work can be one important key to long-term sustainability of living with mental health issues. Without the worry of losing your position or the stress of thinking there is just too much work to manage (or that failing to get through it is somehow a ‘weakness’), the mind can reset, and life can get back to normal faster.

RESTRICTIVE SICK LEAVE POLITICES

For many, another key player when it comes to anxiety and turmoil is an overly restrictive or prescriptive sickness policy. While some policies are open to interpretation and managerial discretion, some are heavily enforced and tight on requirements.

For example, some policies say an employee can have no more than three bouts of sickness in a 12-month period. This may not seem like a problem until you realise that, often, these policies are based on incidence and not time away.

So, for example, if your lunch makes you ill and you end up needing to take the afternoon off, you will have used one ‘instance’ in just that half day and have only two left for the next 12 months before you risk being written up or disciplined. Yet, someone with a chest infection who has to take three weeks off will still only have used one ‘instance’ and so be in the same position. All of which brings me back to Covid-19 and the potential mental health crisis – as well as economic crisis – that may well follow on from it and which all employers, in lighting as much as elsewhere, will need to be considering and addressing.

OPEN, TRANSPARENT CULTURE

So what is the answer? There is no quick fix to this, no one blanket rule that will work for all. Some things can help – including training around resilience, access to mental health first aid or counselling through an Employee Assistance Programme or even an occupational health professional.

At a more general level, a flexible, open, transparent workplace structure and working to create an environment where people feel able to raise or talk about mental health or ‘coping’ without fear of stigma can also be helpful.

I’d also argue that discretion and understanding at the line management level is the best way to strike the balance between sick leave to reset the health of the sufferer, removal or reduction of presenteeism and, ultimately, an increase in productivity from effective person and sickness management.

Finally, we need to recognise, I feel, the importance of socialisation within the workplace. One thing the weeks of coronavirus lockdown has brought home to many of is how, even if we might grumble about the commute to work, we are, at heart, social animals.

That was why as part of its response to the pandemic the ILP very quickly put in place a series of social media and online tools and resources to help people stay connected personally and professionally ( ‘How the ILP has your back’,Lighting Journal May 2020, vol 85 no 5) – and see the panel at the end of this article for more details on these.

Against the backdrop of mass ‘furloughing’ of employees and general job and financial insecurity, we recognised a change in routine (that loss of ‘normality’ again) is difficult for many and, as a social species, being or becoming isolated is not conducive to a healthy mind long term.

Time on your own, when you choose it, is good for the mind. However, having that choice removed works against an evolutionary mechanism that is primed for survival. Isolation can promote depressive episodes even if you’ve not had previous symptoms or may cause inherent illnesses to interact with each other, creating a ‘feedback loop’ [7].

TIPS THAT MIGHT HELP

Here, then, are some tips that I’d argue can help to create a more social, more socialised, workplace environment, especially for when you or team members are working remotely or from home, and whether or not that is coronavirus-related.

1. Make time to chat. If in the office you normally have a team cuppa at 11am (and that’s great), add in a ‘virtual one’ for home workers. So it could be an 11.05am (or whatever times works) follow-on video ‘cuppa’ meeting where you just catch up for a drink and a chat that doesn’t have a specific ‘work’ agenda but is just about much-needed visual and auditory stimulation. 2. Communicate good practice. Organisations such as Acas have useful resources around safe and healthy home working [8]. This can include encouraging people to maintain a daily routine that works for them, including getting dressed to switch your mind from home to work mode, taking a break for lunch, building in exercise or just time away from the desk, and properly switching off when the day is done. 3. Dial a friend. Pass on the message that if you’re feeling down it is OK to simulate the office environment by giving a nearby colleague a call and just listening to the sounds of another person working. Natural conversations will ebb and flow and will help you to connect with each other on an easy footing.

4. Recognise out of sight must not be

out of mind. Whether it is a colleague or an employee, if you have people working remotely or at home, it is vital to recognise that, if anything, you need to be communicating more regularly than when you are all staring at your screens in the office, making more of an effort to connect and communicate, and not just by email. So schedule in stuff, pick up the phone, set up that video call.

During the lockdown, we discovered that technology allowed us to be both more connected but also more alone than ever before. Whatever ‘normality’ looks like on the other side of the pandemic, there are important lessons here for our mental health and wellbeing that we can all learn.

HOW THE ILP IS SUPPORTING MENTAL HEALTH

The ILP has put in place various measures designed to support the mental health and wellbeing of lighting professionals during the coronavirus crisis.

These include the ‘Lighting ’s Furloughed Friends’ LinkedIn support group, weekly ‘Hi Lights’ online chat and networking sessions and, with the IALD, Society of Light and Lighting and Zumtobel Group UK, the Instag r a m - b a s e d ‘ L i g h t M i n d e d Movement’.

Keep an eye on the ILP’s website, www.theilp.org.uk for details of Hi Lights meetings, Lighting’s Furloughed Friends can be found at www.linkedin.com/ groups/13843909/ and you can access the Light Minded Movement atwww.instagram.com/ light_minded_movement/

Kimberly Bartlett EngTech AMILP MIET is ILP Vice President – Education and principal engineer, south team lead, Lighting & Energy Solutions, at WSP

[1] ‘Millions of UK adults have felt panicked, afraid and unprepared as a result of the coronavirus pandemic – new poll data reveal impact on mental health’, Mental Health Foundation, March 2020, https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/news/millions-ukadults-have-felt-panicked-afraid-and-unprepared-result-coronavirus-pandemic-new [2] Mental health facts and statistics, Mind, https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/statistics-and-facts-about-mental-health/howcommon-are-mental-health-problems/ [3] Health and safety at work, Health and Safety Executive, 2018, https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh1718.pdf [4] ‘Presenteeism costs twice as much as sickness absence’, Personnel Today, November 2015 [5] Suicide facts and figures, Samaritans, https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/research-policy/suicide-facts-and-figures/ [6] ‘Masculinity in Engineering’, EqualEngineers, October 2019, https://equalengineers.com/ wp-content/ uploads/2019/09/EqualEngineers-Masculinity-Report_Final.pdf [7] ‘Isolation’, Good Therapy, https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/isolation [8] ‘Working from Home’, Acas, https://www.acas.org.uk/working-from-home;

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