1 in 3 employees in the UK would not feel comfortable talking to their manager about their mental health problems for fear of being judged. Especially within this profession, social workers experience working with vulnerable people in distressing situations, dealing with challenging behaviour, experiencing compassion fatigue and much more. All these factors can negatively impact the mental health of social workers, so it is even more important that they feel able to open up about their issues and get the right support they need. keep reading to get some tips on how you can manage mental health in the workplace.
Mental health fluctuates and considering how much time we spend at work as well as the challenging situations social workers are put in, the workplace environment is bound to affect their wellbeing. Therefore, the mental health of your staff should be a priority. Organisations perform better when staff are healthy,
motivated, and focused. So how do you achieve this? You can promote well-being within the company and tackle the causes of work-related mental health problems.
Promote wellbeing
Firstly, all managers must be on board so they can communicate clearly that mental health matters. This can be through raising awareness about mental health, supporting mental health campaigns, and encouraging staff to take their lunch breaks as well as work healthy hours.
You can raise awareness by including mental health within the induction and training process, giving them information about how mental health is managed and what support is available. You could also send round any mental health awareness content, such as blogs, factsheets, tips, and useful website links. Social Work England has a great support section on their website that can be shared with your staff. The Mental Health Foundation also has many mental health awareness posters that you can put up around the workplace.
Tackle the causes of mental health problems
The charity, Mind, has identified workplace triggers for stress and mental health, these include, unrealistic expectations, long hours and no breaks, pressured working environments, poor managerial support, unmanageable workloads and poor internal communication.
To avoid your staff from experiencing these triggers, you must create a company-wide mental health strategy, outlining how mental health is at the heart of all policies. All line managers must be trained to be able to spot signs of poor mental health in their staff and ways in which to support them. Regular one-to-ones should be scheduled between managers and each other their members of staff, in this way you can get to know your staff, ask them how they feel and make it a time for them to tell you any problems they have. This is the best way to boost employee engagement and build trust. If one of your staff members has any issue, ensure that you set out a plan together of how the issue can be resolved and what support they will require in the process.
Mind also has lots of resources for managers, senior leaders and CEOs to allow them to promote and better their staff when it comes to mental health.
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