‘Mental health should be workplace priority’
HOW COMPANY LEADERS CAN GIVE STAFF ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY’
ONE of the country’s leading experts on mental health is urging companies to recognise the important of mental wellbeing in the workplace.
Poppy Jaman, chief executive of the City Mental Health Alliance, made the comment during the Ramniklal Solanki Pioneers event, organised by the Asian Media Group (AMG), publishers of Eastern Eye and Garavi Gujarat newsweeklies, and the University of Southampton’s India Centre.
She also revealed how she suffered from depression after being forced into marriage when she was 17.
“Our vision is creating mentally healthy workplaces, and inspiring health creation,” she told the virtual audience.
“I feel very strongly that workplaces need to get this right because my recovery would not have happened if I didn’t have a job that fostered and strengthened my identity beyond the diagnosis, beyond being a Bengali girl, beyond being a brown woman.”
Jaman founded Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), a small government project, which in 2017 was recognised by the Financial Times as one of the fastest growing small medium enterprises in Europe.
Today, she is able to influence big FTSE companies to change the way they tackle mental health challenges among their workforces.
“We’re in the financial services sector in London, in Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore,” said Jaman. “We’re developing chapters in the US, India, Portugal and New Zealand.
“These are all massive financial institutions. HSBC is a member. Goldman Sachs is a member. Lloyds Banking Group is a member, and their CEOs, their leaders, and their boards have made mental health a priority.
“They are baking in the wellbeing of their people into their business strategy. So they have moved it from being an HR thing, to actually, if we want to create prosperous businesses that are forward-thinking, that are attracting the right talent, that are building businesses, that are responsible citizens within the ecosystem they sit in, we have to demonstrate and be able to hold ourselves to account when it comes to the mental health of our people. So what does that look like?”
She told the audience that companies know it makes business sense to look after their staff, and to do so, they need to implement three things.
“Make sure that you are running campaigns 18 months to three years long on mental health,” Jaman advised. “It could start with something that is palatable, like eating healthily, exercising, sleeping – all of those things that every single one of us can relate to that help build resilience and mental wellbeing.”
The second goal is to train leaders to have the skills to tackle mental health challenges, she said.
“Line managers, 70 per cent of them think that the mental health and wellbeing of their teams is their responsibility, [but] 30 per cent have only ever had any training. So, let’s skill up managers to do their jobs really well. But not just managers, your chief executive, your board need to be able to do this. That is why we’re doing this.”
The final pillar is to make sure the idea is sustainable.
“How do you make sure that mental health and wellbeing is a boardroom agenda?” Jaman asked.
“What I can tell you is that many of the businesses we’re working with have put it on their risk register. They’ve come up with mitigating actions, and then they have resourced it.”
She said the boards which make the decisions must lead, measure and plough resources into mental wellbeing.
“I just say to businesses and organisations, ‘lead with business acumen. You’re all experts in your field, just apply your business acumen to solving this problem. And you will notice a benefit in everything that you’re doing.’” What is remarkable about Jaman’s work is that the bosses of FTSE 100 companies are breaking taboos. They
are sharing personal own stories of being vulnerable caused by work-related stress. Suddenly, it has become okay for people to admit they need help, without anyone thinking they are weak.
“Leadership vulnerability matters. If you, as the chief exec of Lloyds Banking Group or HSBC or London Stock Exchange, you share what you have experienced, and then talk about how you have supported yourself and how this is personal to you, you’ll give permission to all the people in your organisation to speak up,” explained Jaman. “When everybody speaks up, you do two things. You create psychological safety because people don’t worry about the fear.
“They don’t have a fear of the consequences on their careers because the CEO is talking about it. And they don’t have a fear of futility, that if I say something, nothing’s gonna happen anyway, so what’s the point?”
In the early days of her campaign to change attitudes, Jaman said people admitted their problems behind closed doors. Today it is more open.
That “psychological safety” is an essential and powerful tool in changing culture, she added.
“Creating psychological safety means that people call out bad behaviour. It’s about innovation. People then bring great ideas on solving this together, and when you speak like that, people are like, ‘oh, of course, that makes sense. If I give this much it is going to have that much difference. So, I’ll have a go, and I’ll take a risk.’”
But there remains a big problem among south Asian communities where mental illness has one word – paagal (madness).
Jaman contends that only by “opening up” would south Asians be able to confront challenges they have been ignoring and hiding because of community stigma and shame. She urged all communities to face their struggles head on, especially because the pandemic had made things worse.
“Yesterday I was talking to my auntie about it, and between us, we counted nine people who had died in our extended family,” said Jaman. “She personally had lost three people in her immediate circle, and she was in a really bad way.
“It has had a disproportionate impact on our communities, and when you look at all of that, how do we respond to it? How do we stay well to respond to it?
“The pandemic has put in another layer of stressors that we need to address. So, staying well and developing your wellbeing toolkit is really crucial.”
That “toolkit”, Jaman said, meant people could help themselves by understanding the triggers which set off mental health issues.
This was especially important for young people, she added.
“More than 80,000 more young people were referred to NHS services for mental health struggles during 2020, which was 28 per cent more from the same period the previous year. That’s our kids. That’s our grandkids. That’s our cousins. We need to get this in our homes, and we need to talk about it. Asian communities have to step in and talk about this and normalise it, because it is normal.”