The disruption caused by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of our lives. While stress and anxiety are normal reactions to adverse events, the impact of this pandemic goes well beyond “normal” levels. People are rightly worried about catching the virus or passing it on to a loved on. They’re also worried about their financial future as we enter into another recession. They have all of this to contend with while being cut off from many of their normal support networks.

On top of this, employers have had to get their heads around a vast array of changes in the workplace, all which come with their own stressors. The Job Retention Scheme (furlough), a mass move to homeworking, employees juggling work and childcare and not to mention the myriad video conferencing platforms and software and seemingly never-ending video calls.

And now lock down is easing and we’re being encouraged to get staff back to the office, this comes with a new array of causes for concern. A survey by CIPD has found that two-fifths of employees are anxious about a return to workplaces because of the potential health impacts, with 31% worried also about the commute, which rises to over 50% for those usually commuting in and out of London. And the mental health and wellbeing of employees is also a top concern for employers.

CIPD also found that 67% of employers cited their employee’s mental health and wellbeing as the main organisational challenge they currently face. And when asked about the biggest challenge related to homeworking, 70% were concerned about health and wellbeing of their employees.

So, what can both employers do to support the mental health and wellbeing of their staff as we potentially transition out of lock down and back to an, admittedly new, way of working?

Here are our Top 5 tips:

1. 2-way communication
   Conduct a survey and ask people how they are feeling at the moment, both about a continuation of home working but also about a potential return to office working. Find out about people’s individual circumstances. Are they within a particularly vulnerable group? Do they live with people who are? What is their childcare situation? Ask people what would be helpful to them, in relation to their mental health and wellbeing at work. Ensure you communicate back to your employees about your plans and intentions. If people have to return to offices, how are you making them safe? What measures are you putting in place? If they will continue to work from home, how are you going to support homeworking?

2. Update your Workplace Stress Risk Assessment
   There are templates and tools to support you to complete a Stress Risk Assessment on the  Health & Safety Executive website. One is an organisational level assessment, and the other is at the individual level. It’s likely you already have an organisational one, but things have changed, so we’d recommend reviewing and updating it in light of the issues thrown up by COVID19.

We’d also recommend using the Individual Workplace Stress Risk Assessment on a proactive basis with employees- it’s often a tool that’s used when someone has been off work sick and is returning to work, but it is also a really useful tool to use on a proactive basis to explore particular stressors for that person and try to mitigate against them before someone’s mental health is negatively impacted.

3. Ensure all employees complete a Wellbeing Plan
   Many organisations have introduced these, they go by different names- some places call them WRAPs- wellbeing, recovery action plans, some places call them WAPs- wellbeing action plans. You can access Mental Health UK’s version here. Whatever the name, these are really useful tools that require employees to think about what wellbeing looks like for them, what triggers them to feel stressed? What are some of the signs they may be experiencing stress or poor mental health? Are there certain protective factors, like getting enough sleep or doing physical exercise, that helps their mental health? What do they want you as their employer or their manager to do if they are struggling? It’s particularly important to review these now in light of homeworking. Whereas before, it may have been obvious to a manager or colleague that an employee was struggling with their mental health by some behaviours they may have displayed in the office, if everyone is now homeworking, how can a manger pick up on those signs?

4. Encourage regular breaks and the booking of leave
   Certainly, at the start of lock down, and particularly in organisations where staff had been furloughed and remaining staff were having to pick up extra work, we heard reports of staff working more hours than they had ever worked before. There has also been a long stretch where, because you can’t go anywhere or do anything much, few people have taken any holiday. As an employer, you should encourage regular breaks throughout the day and the keeping of regular hours if the work permits. Also, encourage your staff to take leave so they can rest and recharge.

5. Equip your people managers
   Usually our message to employers about line managers is that they should  look out for the signs of poor or deteriorating mental health and have the confidence to have a conversation with the person they manage about what they’ve noticed, explore any issues and put the right support in place. Often that includes signposting to an Employee Assistance Programme or similar service. Managing a team who may now be all working remotely, and who may be experiencing a wide range of pressures and concerns about COVID19 – both in and outside of work – is likely to be new for those managers, and they too need support to be able to do that effectively. Provide them with training, guidance and tools to be able to continue to support their staff, even in the midst of a global pandemic and a changing landscape workwise.  We’ve adapted our Mental Health for Managers course to take all of this in to account.

If there are any mental health and wellbeing-related topics that you would like us to write about, please feel free to make a suggestion for our upcoming online articles by emailing us at partnerships@mentalhealth-uk.org

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