Culture of Care

Speaker A: Welcome to the Coaching Outcomes Podcast with me, Karen Frost. Two decades ago I discovered the perfect synergy drawing on my background as a senior leader and bringing it together with my dedication to seeing people grow and realise their full potential. Since then there's been no turning back. As an executive and business coach, I found my passion and purpose, my mission to leave a lasting impact on people's lives. Create professionally and often personally too. Join me M as I explore the transformative influence of coaching and leadership development. One conversation at a time. I'll touch on the latest leadership trends, invaluable insights and practical tools by drawing on first hand experiences and uh, showcasing inspiring stories of those I've had the pleasure to work with or alongside. It's good to have you here.

Speaker B: Employees are much more likely to pay for a workplace that demonstrates care and support for their well being.

Speaker C: A psychologically safe environment to work in that should be available to every single employee in any organisation, anywhere.

Speaker B: Sometimes just being able to empathise and listen will make such a difference to somebody. Hello.

Speaker A: Today I'm talking to Sinead Faram Moody. Sinead has full responsibility for the mental health and well being within her national based organisation. She also leads the mental health first aiders across her organisation. Sinead and I go back a little while now. We were both colleagues together some time ago and it's been really lovely to catch up with her and understand how she has developed her career into this very specific area and skill

Speaker C: first and foremost. It's really good to reconnect with you again Sinead, because it's been a few years. We had a little catch up a few weeks ago, but it's great to hear what's happening in terms of your career and everything. So thank you ever so much for coming to this conversation. Today we're going to be talking about the work that you've done in terms of mental health and safety and what you've been doing in your organisation. So in your organisation you've had the leading role in creating a culture of mental health and safety. I just wondered how this all came about for you.

Speaker B: Well, I joined my current organisation at the end of 2018 from um, a position in the NHS where I'd been part of the working age adult psychology team in an NHS mental health trust. When I joined the organisation I was asked if I would join the Health and Wellbeing Committee, which I did and then subsequently a couple of months later ended up taking on the role of the chair before anything could really move forward. Covid happened. During COVID I approached the senior leadership team about the possibility of training some of the health and wellbeing team members up as mental health first aiders. Um, they were really supportive of that. And I think part of the reason that I was able to kind of give a good business case for this was that having just come from the nhs, I was really aware early intervention can be absolutely key when you're talking about mental health and mental health illness and also how difficult it can be to access services.

Speaker C: So currently your role is as that chair.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: And therefore in terms of how you've been able to embed this across the whole of your organisation.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly that. I'm lucky that I'm chair of that but I'm also the EA to the CEO within the business. So I'm fortunate that I've got an actual direct line to the top and key decision makers within the business which has really helped.

Speaker C: So if we just take you then for a moment say why do you think it's important to focus on mental health and safety and to have mental health first aid and across the whole of your organization like you've got them now.

Speaker B: So this is really uh, an area of passion for me. I think that uh, mental health and mental health first aid is so incredibly important because a healthy workplace is one where employees, managers, leaders all work together, um, to protect and promote the health, safety well being of everyone in the organisation, which in turn contributes to the sustainability of the organisation. Um, if you want to look at it from a purely business case aspect, stress, anxiety, depression, they're the biggest causes of sickness absence in our society at the moment. And um, accounts for more than 40, closer to 50% of all work, um, related ill health. Over 55% of working days lost each year, that's around 16 million are down to mental ill health at the moment. Costs companies roughly around 44 billion each year. And um, normally when we talk about mental health we tend to focus on absenteeism and how much that costs businesses. But actually presenteeism is just as ah, problematic and it comes with a much higher cost because you tend to find that the people who are, you know, present is uh, much more prevalent among leaders and higher paid staff because they feel like they can't take time off or they can't disclose a mental health condition. And again, more than 60% of UK employees have experienced a mental health issue due to work or where work was a contributing factor. So for me it's an absolute no brainer.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: That even if you're just looking at it From a business perspective. Why would you not?

Speaker C: Well, indeed, the stats that you've talked about there, the impact on organisations and also that point you make around it being impactful on senior leaders because they don't feel as though they can talk about it, is fundamental to the bottom line. At the end of the day, uh, before you even stop to think about people and the impact on the individuals themselves.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I should actually say as well that I know the figures and the optimistic, they're all the time updating and changing, but I should say as well that some of those figures that I mentioned earlier, because I talk about them in the mental health training, some of them are actually pre pandemic figures.

Speaker C: Oh my goodness.

Speaker B: Can you imagine what they're actually like at the moment?

Speaker C: Not better than that, definitely, are they?

Speaker B: I certainly don't think that they'll have moved in a favorable direction. No, exactly. As you just said, in terms of business attracting and retaining employees, employees are much more likely to favor a workplace that uh, demonstrates care and support for their well being. If you as a business or a leader can live those values through offering a healthy workplace harmony and have strong diversity policies, um, you're much more likely to attract and retain a diverse workforce.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And staff have positive mental health when they feel, you know, heard, valued, supported, they'll be much more productive. And I think that you'll see a significant impact on business performance if you give people that type of environment to work in. Yeah. And I think we mentioned mental health first aiders specifically. I think they can contribute massively. Well, I know in our organisation they do to a culture shift in the company and how it supports its people. Because mental health first aid is a trained to support early warning signs of mental health issues or a decline in mental health. And early intervention is key and um, you can provide support and signposting to professional support when required. It's about raising awareness of mental health issues and really a huge part of being a mental health, um, first aider is about reducing, um, stigma around poor mental health or mental health illness. Not just in the workplace but the community and the wider. Mental health first aid can be so, so valuable to an organisation.

Speaker C: We'll perhaps talk about more benefits, but if we come down to the more detailed part, what exactly is your role and your responsibilities? What exact exactly, uh, have you done, um, to change this culture so that you've got all of these mental health first aiders and attitudinally a difference and a change in your organisation as a consequence of the work you've done since 2018.

Speaker B: My role is the chair at the Health and Wellbeing Committee. So it's for UK and Ireland and um, that's. I'm really fortunate that uh, it means I get to lead um, a diverse group of colleagues from a range of departments, locations and um, physicians across the group. The main aim is to promote and support health and wellbeing in both the workplace and in colleagues and um, personal lives. I think when I joined it was a nice group of people who met once a month to talk about health and well being and um, things they could do but there was no real vision or purpose. It wasn't as organized as it could be.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So my first thing to do that I did, I tried to make it a much more functional part of the business and embedded as part of the business rather than just these colleagues who met once a month who went, had to have a cup of tea and it was about raising the profile with the senior management team about what the Health and M Wellbeing Committee could offer, what we wanted to do. Um, very lucky that this, the senior management team were very supportive of this. So much so that I was able to train myself as a mental health first aid instructor which has had a really big impact within the company. Um, all employees joining the organisation received details about the Health and Wellbeing Committee and mental health first aiders and are told what support is available to them. There's been ah, an onboarding video made about mental health within the organisation and um, the wellbeing committee, it's embedded as part of the employee orientation seminar now. So I think that's really important because it demonstrates to colleagues who are joining the company from day one the company's commitment to creating a mentally supportive culture within the business. We've recently become accredited as a great place to work. Uh, a key component of achieving that is obviously one of the areas that you need to score highly in is that it's an emotionally healthy place to work.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: So yeah, so I feel like we've had quite a positive impact as a business. We also won the Chamber awards for Herefordshire and Worcestershire in the health and wellbeing in the workplace category. So I think there's been a lot, we've achieved a lot.

Speaker C: I think it's illustrating not just that it's happening but that you've got recognition for it happening as well then, isn't it?

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's not about, you know, exactly, uh, as you say, it's the recognition and that's what the kind of Applying for the awards are not about winning a trophy, it's about showing the value of what we actually do and showing that what we do does add value. It's meaningful. So that's been really great and it's been a great endorsement of what we're doing.

Speaker C: All sounds fantastic.

Speaker B: I'm very keen, as you can tell,

Speaker C: but also I think you need to be proud of what you've done as well, because you've taken it from one place where although you've got a very committed senior leadership team there, you've still got to make it happen and everybody's still got to buy into it and you've got to have the processes in place and the people trained to enable it all to happen. Um, I'm just wondering if you could give me, without breaking confidentiality, one or two examples of where mental health first aiders have been able to intervene, whether it be yourself or one of your team, where you think you've made a significant difference to, uh, one of your employees.

Speaker B: One example I can think of recently is that we had a colleague going through a disciplinary process. Rather than approach line managers or other colleagues, they requested myself or another one of the mental health first aidist who works really closely with me to be there, to be the person that they took with them to, uh, the disciplinary meeting because they felt that really contained and supported by that person. They had attended our, uh, mental health first aid training sessions and we're so aware of the difference it can make that they asked for one of us to go with them. We keep a rolling, completely anonymous contact log across all because we are located in various locations around the UK and Ireland and we use that to understand more about the frequency and the nature of the contacts we receive, to determine if there's a pattern, which in turn enables us to focus more on those issues and how best we can offer support in, um, those particular areas. We're very lucky, in fact, that I would say that we benefit a lot of people in the organisation because we have a, uh, trained mental health first aid instructor. That means that I regularly run two day mental health first aid programs within the business and anyone at any level is welcome to come on those programs. Not to be a mental health first aider per se to the business, but in order to gain tools and skills that they can use in their personal lives and, um, there's no criteria for coming on. We have people from the production floor, one of the directors, we have everybody across, um, a really broad spectrum. So something I've done is I've sat with somebody and made a list of questions for them to ask their GP M When they phone up because somebody's feeling mentally overwhelmed, they pick up the phone to the gp, the GP starts talking to them and they burst into tears.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: They get nowhere. We've compiled a list of questions that they want to ask and in what order. The feedback I had from that was so lovely, you know, that it finally enabled somebody to move to the next step in their mental health recovery. It was something as simple as just taking some time to sit down and say, well, look, what do you want from this conversation? How do you want it to go? It's just about time, offering people time. A lot of the time, you know, and it's something that we're all short of these days.

Speaker C: Exactly. That it's the time and the listening. Isn't it as well that when you've got properly qualified, trained individuals that do it from a foundation of knowledge and understanding, it must help enormously and reduce the stress that some of the employees might otherwise go through if they didn't have that support?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I can tell you that our, um, mental health first aid network is utilized a lot. It really is. A lot of the time it's just being able to have the confidence to have that conversation with somebody. You don't have to know all the answers, you don't have to know all the technical stuff. We're not there to make a diagnosis or be a clinician, but sometimes just being able to empathize and, um, listen M will make such a difference to somebody.

Speaker C: Absolutely. With all this knowledge and experience and actually doing it day in, day out as well, and getting recognition for what you're doing with your organisation, your organisation understands it. Many organisations, certainly some that I have worked with in the past, probably wouldn't have the insight and awareness that your organisation has about the importance of it. So if you were to give senior leaders in other organisations advice about why it's important to do this, what would you say? Sinead?

Speaker B: I would say leaving aside all the strong business case reasons that we spoke about earlier, I think we spend 30% of our lives at work and, um, it's been recognized now that an employee's line manager and workplace now has more impact on their mental health and well being than their gp. So as an organization, it's really important that they treat that responsibility with the gravity it deserves. I feel really strongly about this and, um, it's been reported that more than 60% of UK employees have experienced a mental health issue due to work or where work was a contributing factor. From a very practical stance we know that the 2010 Equality act already provides a certain level of protection to employees mental health, um, conditions. But it's worth being aware that the mental health first aid bill which aims to give mental health legal parity but physical help in the workplace has now been read twice in Parliament. It's not ratified, it's not been progressed yet but I'd be really hopeful that it's only a matter of time before it becomes legislation that organisations and leadership should be ready for this, they should prepare for it. If companies are proactive and do things now that will embed better than if colleagues and employees think that it's only been done because the law is telling you you have to, not because the organization values their well being. I think uh, an employee having the opportunity to have regular check ins with a mental health first aider or a line manager even who's completed mental health awareness training is going to create like a really psychologically safe workspace. Um, mental health first aiders are ah, an incredible resource within um, an organization. But it's really important that if companies decide to do this that it isn't just a tick box activity um, and say oh we've got mental health first aid, we're trained, it's for mental health first aid and wellbeing programs to be effective. They need to have a uh, robust framework and align with the wider well being strategy. You can't just train up three people and say right off you go. It's about more than that. So I would say you need to look at what you offer, how you can improve it and how you can sustain it.

Speaker C: It's fascinating listening to you because I think you make some such really important points in terms of the advice that we'd give. That whole thing about being proactive rather than reactive is a cultural thing and you need to change the cultures of organizations a psychologically safe environment to work in. I completely agree with you. That should be available to every single employee that works in any organisation anywhere. I've learned a lot from listening to you today so thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and ideas, your experience of what you've done. It sounds phenomenal and it's clearly had a very positive impact first probably most importantly for the people at work, the organisation and then secondly in terms of recruitment and retention and probably things like the bottom line as well. But the most important thing is the people that work for you, isn't it?

Speaker B: Absolutely. And that should be the case in all organisations.

Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Renee.

Speaker B: Thank you, Karen.

Speaker C: Thank you so much for listening to

Speaker A: this coaching outcomes podcast with me, Karen Frost. I hope you enjoyed it. Take care and goodbye for now.