As Mental Health Awareness week kicks off, EG looks back at what the industry is doing to support its people.
Wellness is the buzzword of the moment. Climbing walls in offices, treadmill desks, running meetings – anything that attempts to promote movement in staff gets a big thumbs-up. But what about the issues many still don’t feel comfortable talking about? Samantha McClary looks at how real estate is tackling the stigma around mental health
“The property industry has a relationship-dominated life. There are lots of pressures of dealing with lots of different relationships. It’s a very driven industry and people in it have to be successful. There is always a firm handshake and everything is always good. This strikes me as a risk.”
That was the view of Jonathan de Lance-Holmes, a partner at law firm Linklaters, speaking at a mental health symposium held in memory of former BAA Lynton managing director John O’Halloran, who took his own life in March 2015.
Lance-Holmes knows what he is talking about. He is one of a growing number of successful men who have been hit by mental health issues.
For him, it was stress-induced anxiety, for others it is depression. For all, it is something that needs to be talked about.
And that was the aim of the symposium. Set up by O’Halloran’s former colleagues Gordon Edington, Howard Morgan and Simon O’Donnell, the one-day event sought to bring mental health issues out of the shadows and into the cold light of day.
SEE ALSO: LionHeart crusades for property’s mental health
O’Halloran had suffered from depression for years – not that anyone in his professional life would have known it. “To the outside world, John was strong, successful and caring,” his son Rob told the audience. “But behind closed doors, he was depressed. We believe that if we could have talked about how he was feeling, we could have made a change.”
According to Emma Mamo, head of workplace at mental health charity MIND, depression will be the second most common cause of ill health worldwide by 2020. Already it costs UK employers more than £30bn a year through lost productivity, recruitment and absence. Men aged 45 to 49 are most at risk and in males aged 15 to 44, suicide is the second biggest killer behind accidental death.
Work is the most stressful factor in people’s lives, according to MIND, with one in six employees having to deal with anxiety at work. And while 40% of employers view workers with mental health issues as a risk, eight in 10 have no mental health plan in place to help sustain good mental health.
MIND found that although one-fifth of workers have called in sick because of stress, 95% of them gave their employer a different reason.
Research by Lionheart, the benevolent fund for the RICS, backs up the scale of the issue, both in the prevalence of stress and depression in the industry and the inability or unwillingness to talk about it.
In its latest survey of RICS members, Lionheart found that stress was the key issue affecting them, followed closely by work/life balance. When looking at the profession as a whole, some 70% of RICS members said that stress and the pressure of work was the number one issue the industry faced. Unemployment came second with 66% of the vote, followed by work/life balance (59%), long working hours (50%) and, finally, depression (37%).
The figures show that stress, anxiety and depression are major concerns in the industry, but so few people are speaking up about it, says Davina Goodchild, Lionheart chief executive.
“Only 12% of people we helped in 2015 came to us with mental health as their primary issue,” says Goodchild. “Some 19% came to us with a physical health issue. There is a mismatch between what people say is the issue and what they are comfortable talking to us about.”
Starting the conversation
So why aren’t people talking? Jonathan Binns, a former Deloitte partner and now a mental health adviser, says: “There is a view that people who have suffered from a mental health issue will not recover. It is not the same with physical health. But in the eight years since my [mental health] illness, I have been equally as successful, if not better at my job.”
Binns says the reason he did not say anything about his illness until it really took hold was that he thought that if he was to talk about it, that would effectively be his exit interview.
“It is the association of mental illness with weakness that stops us,” he says. “But as Winston Churchill said, mental health is not something that afflicts the weak.”
“There is a real need for the property industry to move forward on this agenda with pace,” urged former British Property Federation president Edington. “We can start to create something positive from John’s loss that will enable our industry to be real leaders.”
Breaking down the stigma
With mental health soon to be one of the biggest causes of ill health, businesses need to make sure they have systems in place to help those afflicted and show that life can, and does, go on. Practical steps could include:
- Establish a team of mental first-aiders – www.mhfaengland.org
- Ensure that private medical and life insurance has mental health cover.
- Educate people. Build people’s mental health literacy to ensure that they make healthy life choices – www.wheelofwellbeing.org
- Address the elephant in the room. Talk about it. Remove the shame and stigma by bringing mental health and wellness into the open.
- Readdress work/life balance. No emails after 8pm and before 8am. Don’t call staff while they are on holiday. Enjoy downtime.
- Identify workplace triggers. Run regular surveys or have regular chats with staff about what might be driving poor mental health.
Have you been affected by mental health issues? Were you supported? Does the industry need to do more to promote mental health? Interact with us @estatesgazette using #wellbeing
• To send feedback, email samantha.mcclary@estatesgazette.com or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
