When Piers Connolly returned to his office in London after a work trip in Europe, the first thing he did was request an urgent meeting with his boss. He told him he had been signed off work with a serious mental health condition and added that he would be leaving the office in the next 40 minutes.
“It was an interesting conversation,” Connolly said of the meeting. “It was a huge surprise – I was ace at hiding it.”
No one had known that Connolly, a financial services director, had been struggling with his mental wellbeing. He was seen by colleagues and superiors as a top performer and hard worker, putting in long hours in an industry notorious for high pressure. He was known to answer emails at any time – even on Christmas Day.
No one knew the toll that being on call practically 24/7 was having on Connolly’s mental health. “I wasn’t sleeping well. I had constant anxiety and I would be on my emails all the time,” he said.
The business trip to Europe proved Connolly’s breaking point. “I got to the hotel and had serious thoughts about doing serious harm to myself,” he said. “I was unable to cope with the stress I was under […] I was even prepared to give up a life with my wife and two kids.”
One in six people working in your business will have a mental health issue, according to NHS statistics. Ensuring that not only do employees receive help and support, but also that people in the company can spot the signs when an individual might be struggling, should be essential.
But there are still too many people like Connolly who struggle in silence and conceal their mental health issues from their employer. Connolly was one of several speakers who took to the stage at EG’s Future of Real Estate conference to talk about how to address mental health in property, and how to prevent situations like his from happening.
Healthy minds boost bottom line
Not only is providing mental health support for staff the responsible and right thing to do, the business case for ensuring employees have good mental health is overwhelming.
According to the charity organisation, Centre for Mental Health, mental health problems cost companies in the UK a combined £34.9bn owing to reduced productivity among unwell employees in the workplace, sickness absence related to poor mental health, and people leaving their jobs because of poor mental health.
Monika Misra, head of employee health and wellbeing Europe at pharmaceutical group GSK, pointed out that businesses should be acutely aware that poor mental health is an issue they need to address. The World Health Organisation has identified that depression is the most common form of disability globally.
“If we want happy people and productive people, we need to make sure mental health is on the agenda,” she said. “We know people feel better when talking about their mental health, and you will see a boost in productivity and business performance as a result.”
There is plenty of evidence to support Misra’s statement. People living with mental health problems contribute an estimated £226bn to the UK economy, which represents 12.1% of GDP, according to research by Mental Health Foundation and employee benefits specialist Unum. Addressing wellbeing at work was found to increase productivity by as much as 12%.
‘Employees are like champion racehorses’
Companies should start rethinking the ways they approach mental health by removing “toxic” work cultures in which working overtime and putting in exceptionally long working hours is accepted and even rewarded, Connolly said.
“If you have someone committed and motivated to working hard, you can’t expect that person to do that every single day,” he added. “You wouldn’t want a champion race horse running races every single day. Give people space and time.”
Melanie Olrik, partner at property consultancy Hollis, said such a culture change “does not happen at the click of a switch”, but that in order to make real progress, businesses need to be committed to making this happen.
“You have to deliver on bold statements and ensure that it’s OK for people to come forward and talk,” she said. “Ask employees how the business can support them and what they want you to tell the wider team.”
Connolly said that creating this culture change is fundamentally quite simple – and doesn’t cost a penny. “All you’re trying to do is create an environment for people to feel comfortable talking about their issue […] even a two-person company can create this type of environment.”
But what happens if you work at a company where senior leadership isn’t, or doesn’t want, to create an environment in which mental health can be talked about openly? Misra said that change can happen from a grassroots level. “Get a peer group together who have similar interests and start talking,” she said. “It will gain traction and you can start to influence more senior levels of the organisation in that way.”
Thames Water leads the way
Thames Water is one company that has transformed the way it addresses mental health.
Speaking to delegates, Thames Water occupational health and wellbeing manager Aimee Cain said that the company devised its own 12-month plan to tackle poor mental health in the workplace when it realised that national figures indicate 35%-40% of all workplace absences are a result of mental health.
The company first provided mental health first aid training for employees, involving trainees donning virtual reality headsets to understand how it feels to be suffering from a mental health illness, and learning how to spot the signs of poor mental health in colleagues.
Across the business, 498 staff are now trained Mental Health First Aiders, with 300 more on the waiting list.
Cain said that the company knew it had achieved a culture change when one employee posted on the Thames Water online staff forum about his mental health illness, offering tips for other employees on how to manage depression. “It was a very powerful message,” Cain said.
Perhaps the most critical step change businesses can make, according to the panellists, was making sure that line managers are properly trained to be able to handle mental health issues in the workplace.
“Line managers are key,” Olrik said. “It can affect people badly if line managers aren’t trained. A lot of the issue is around ignorance – people often don’t understand mental health, what it looks like, and what impact it can have.”
Would Connolly have reached that dark place, alone in his hotel room, if he had received support earlier on from his superiors? “When I said to my managers that I had a mental health problem, they were surprised – even though I was demonstrating what I now know to be the classic signs,” he said.
“If someone came up to me and said: ‘Is everything OK? Are you really OK?’, I suspect I would have said: ‘I have a big problem on my hands’.”
The panel
Piers Connolly, financial services director
Monika Misra, head of employee health and wellbeing, Europe, GSK
Melanie Olrik, partner, Hollis
Aimee Cain, head of occupational health and wellbeing, Thames Water
Chair: Zoe Sinclair, founder, This Can Happen
If you need help with any issues raised in this article, you can get support from:
- Mind, the mental health charity 0300 123 3393 – provides advice and support to anyone experiencing a mental health problem
- The Samaritans 116 123 – confidential 24-hour support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress, despair or suicidal thoughts
- LionHeart 0800 009 2960 or 0121 289 3300 – charity for RICS professionals and real estate professionals
To send feedback, e-mail lucy.alderson@egi.co.uk or tweet @LucyAJourno or @estatesgazette
