HEALTH AND WELLBEING: The son of a senior property professional who took his own life joined forces with RICS charity Lionheart this week to call on the industry to sign up to a national pledge to help end mental health discrimination.
The Time to Change Employer Pledge is a way for organisations to demonstrate their commitment to changing the way we all think and act about mental health in the workplace. The programme is funded by the Department of Health, Comic Relief and the Big Lottery Fund and run by charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness.
Speaking on 9 May at the John O’Halloran Symposium organised by Lionheart, Rob O’Halloran said his father, a former group property director with BAA, would have been “surprised and puzzled” to have his name on a mental health campaign.
Rob O'Halloran: We want something positive to come from dad's suicide #JOH #mentalhealth pic.twitter.com/fADQXz2ili
— LionHeart (@LionHeartRICS) May 9, 2017
“He was a person who masked his true feelings. We are determined to see something positive come out of dad’s death. It’s important that we talk about this – including at work. I think more opportunities to talk could really have helped dad.
“The Pledge needs to be supported, particularly at senior management level. Please give it your support.”
John O’Halloran took his own life in March 2015 after battling depression for many years and losing his wife to cancer in 2012. His friends and colleagues had been unaware of his mental ill health.
Time to Change works with employers to develop an action plan of tangible activity to get employees talking about mental health. This must include activity to demonstrate senior management buy-in and training for line managers so they feel comfortable having conversations about mental health with their line reports.
Employers receive support throughout the Pledge process as well as a year of support after they sign. This includes coaching to develop their action plan, connections to other employers and free master classes to learn from leading employers on how they have achieved success.
Around 500 businesses have signed up to the Pledge, including CBRE. But despite high take-up among constructions firms, property is so far under-represented, according to Time to Change employer manager Sarah Restall. “This needs to be industry-wide,” she said.
“We want to take away the stigma so that people feel they can have conversations first, before they hit a crisis.”
Lionheart chief executive Davina Goodchild said the charity itself had committed to the Pledge and was now asking the industry to sign up. “It would be amazing if the top 20 surveying firms all signed up. It would put the property industry at the forefront of this. I think it would surprise people. It would be a show of strength and it would encourage younger people to come into this industry.”
Working with Mind, Lionheart now offers a series of workshops on mental health, provides information packs for smaller organisation and has recruited mental health ambassadors from within the industry who are willing to talk about their personal experiences.
“Wherever people turn to in the industry, they should receive a sensible and sensitive response. We’re not there yet,” she said.
Goodchild said that mental ill health was a particular challenge in the property industry because of its male dominated environment, which made talking about it less acceptable. “It is a very fast-paced culture, focused on success and the next deal,” she said. In a recent Lionheart survey, more than 40% of respondents said that stress had a moderate to severe impact on their working lives.
Why employers cannot ignore mental health
■ 1 in 4 British workers are affected by conditions such as anxiety, depression and stress every year
■ Mental ill health is the leading cause of sickness absence in the UK, costing an average of £1,035 per employee per year
■ 95% of employees calling in sick with stress gave a different reason
Source: Time to Change
MORE ON MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING xx
RICS charity reports increase in mental health issues
As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, EG is covering the property industry’s response to mental health issues.
RICS charity LionHeart said a quarter of people contacting it for support in the financial year 2016-17 went on to receive counselling.
This was a similar figure to the previous year but the number of enquiries coming in to LionHeart increased from 301 to 390, a 24% rise. Read the full article…
‘I failed to take care of my mental health and consequently hit the buffers’
Alan Burke is one of the industry’s high flyers, with more than 30 years’ of experience in development, funding, joint ventures and city regeneration. But in 2015, he suffered from a debilitating breakdown.
Here, he talks about his experience and how he fought his way back I love the property industry and have been a part of it for more than 30 years. In many respects, it has made me who I am. It has certainly allowed me to make a good living, meet great people and have a fantastic standard of life. But it also very nearly finished me off.
As a young man, I took everything in my stride – the learning, the travelling, the growing demands on time, the exams, the late hours, work/life balance, the negotiating, the joys of deals done, the woes of the deals that got away. The pain of failing and the excitement of succeeding and making a difference.
But somewhere, around about 10 or so years ago, the highs started to diminish and the lows became deeper.
What was going on and why? I still do not know all the answers to all of the questions, but I do now understand a lot more about myself and a great deal more about the issues I have been facing – or more accurately refusing to face. One thing is very clear to me: I failed to take care of my mental health and consequently I hit the buffers. Read the full article…
Lionheart joins fight against mental health discrimination
The son of a senior property professional who took his own life joined forces with RICS charity Lionheart this week to call on the industry to sign up to a national pledge to help end mental health discrimination.
The Time to Change Employer Pledge is a way for organisations to demonstrate their commitment to changing the way we all think and act about mental health in the workplace. The programme is funded by the Department of Health, Comic Relief and the Big Lottery Fund and run by charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness.
Speaking on 9 May at the John O’Halloran Symposium (selection of images from the event below) organised by Lionheart, Rob O’Halloran said his father, a former group property director with BAA, would have been “surprised and puzzled” to have his name on a mental health campaign. Read the full article…
Former Savills director considered suicide
Former Savills investment director James Crawford has told how depression took him to his lowest point in 2015, when he didn’t expect to see out the year.
As his illness took hold, the highly successful investment agent found himself questioning whether he could take his own life. He had walked along railway lines when he took his dogs out and had also carried a piece of rope around with him for months
“I had always been in control of everything I did. Depression is a complete loss of control. It is frightening. I felt complete desolation and despair and I had no idea how to get out of it,” he said. Read the full article….
Freehold and Lionheart team up
Freehold, the networking and support forum for LGBT real estate professionals, has teamed up with LionHeart, the benevolent fund for RICS members and their families.
Surveyors who access LionHeart’s services on a LGBT-related issue will now be offered the opportunity to link up with Freehold and invited to speak to other LGBT real estate professionals, should they wish.
David Mann, co-founder of Freehold and partner at Tuffin Ferraby Taylor, said: “We are very proud that Freehold has helped meet a real need in the property industry but this is a real step forward for us. Being able to offer support to those individuals who come to us via LionHeart is a real privilege.
“This very much aligns with our existing mentoring scheme or simply provides a network of fellow LGBT professionals within an industry where you can feel isolated if you are perceived as being ‘different’.” Read the full article…
Peace of mind: tackling mental health in the workplace
“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. Read the full article…
Can high-rise homes make you ill?
Frothy coffees. Funky spaces. Great neighbours. Green roofs. Walking to everything. Watching the sun go down from your exclusive eyrie. To read the PR patter of a hundred sales brochures right now is to realise that high-rise heaven is round the corner and up the lift-shaft. We have learnt, proclaim sleek developers and confident architects, from the mistakes of the past. This time people will be happy and the windows will clean themselves.
Are they right? Some market signals are hopeful. There is a market for top-end residential flats high in towers. In modern, high-end, well-managed London developments with a reliable lift, each floor is typically worth 1.5% more. Some robust sociological studies show that middle income or wealthy residents can be very satisfied with their homes as long as the blocks are well managed.
And recent city-wide data shows that crime, particularly burglary, can now be lower in high-rise buildings compared to other housing. With more prosperous residents, controlled access, more expensive management and street locations, high-rises can be very safe places to live. Read the full article…
Bottom-line benefits of banishing burnout
A group of workplace visionaries sat in a cosy huddle around a coffee table at the Rail House Café in London’s Victoria. Lit with daylight, its décor was pared-back industrial with corrugated metal ceilings, exposed beams and a saloon-style bar.
The din of the city was barely audible outside. Inside it was chilled out, relaxed, a refuge from time. It is part of the thoughtfully-curated retail and leisure offering surrounding Land Securities’ Nova development. A perfect place for a caffeine pause before the gurus, who had assembled for an EG round table on the future of workplace wellbeing, would go about the hectic day that inevitably lay ahead of them. Read the full article…
Talking it through – real estate and mental health
Performance reviews, lease negotiations or tenant defaults, tight deal deadlines, planning applications, late-night emails, investor meetings, complex legal documents, the challenges of keeping to budget and development delays are all things that can crop up daily for most real estate professionals. We can thrive off this pressure or sometimes it can cause us to slowly wilt. Work pressure can have a significant impact on our mental health and should not be ignored.
Katherine Laurenson, head of legal at LGIM Real Assets, discusses how Legal & General is raising awareness, educating and inspiring action with the launch of the ‘Not a red card offence’ campaign. Read the full article…
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