The Covid pandemic has accelerated even further the already rising mental health rates.
According to the Annual Mental Health at Work Study, carried out by BUPA UK Insurance, 2020,they found that 41% of employees have experienced poor mental health where work was a contributing factor in the last year.
Numbers have increased considerably since 2016, this adds up to an extra £6bn a year for UK employers, bringing the total loss to businesses to £45bn in 2020, according to Deloitte in Jan 2020. And sure the cost has increased even further as we continued through the lockdown period.
The positive that has come out of the Covid pandemic, found that companies were positioning wellbeing at the heart of their strategic planning to promote long term mental health benefits.
Interestingly, they analysed how employers dealt with mental health and its financial impact. Encouragingly, it showed on average, for every £1 spent on supporting their employees’ mental health, employers saw a £5 return on investment in reduced presenteeism, absenteeism and staff turnover. And the earlier the companies brought in the interventions the more successful they were, compared to leaving employees until they were severely struggling. This highlights the need for companies and organisations to tackle mental health in a much more proactive approach, so everyone wins, including the organisation as a whole.
Sadly, the number of employees who keep their mental health issues and illness to themselves has increased from 27% in 2019 to 30% in 2020, with more men than women suffering in silence (BUPA Insurance, 2020).
This supports the findings that the greatest costs are largely due to ‘presenteeism’. Presenteeism is when employees are unproductive but still at work, hence suffering in silence often and instead of taking time of sick to recover. However, these losses were also down to absenteeism and staff turnover.
Interestingly, presenteeism costs businesses three times more than actual absenteeism, as employees do not give themselves a chance to recover. This highlights the problem of how important employees feel it is to be seen and the ‘always-on’ culture, exacerbated by technology. Hence the need to change the work culture within organisations.
The report also found that the young people were the most vulnerable, with employers losing 8.3% of 18-29 year old’s salary on mental illness. They discovered this group were less likely to tell employers of their issues and take holiday rather than sick days.
There is also anew movement to view mental health in a different way… basically need to pitch it that we all have mental health and we all fluctuate between thriving, struggling, being ill and possibly off work also. The good news is that if organisations provide the right support for employees who have mental illness, they can still thrive at work, which will aid each individual’s wellbeing, which subsequently will allow them to add value to the organisation again and also to get back on track overall with their health.
So what can you do to get started?
If you would like to start with supporting your teams with their mental health within your organisation, then Performance and Wellness Consultancy and Coaching, can really work. It can be adapted to your needs as well as supporting your colleagues to feel and be their best for optimum employee engagement, positive wellbeing, increased performance and successful results and overall bottom line. A true win-win for employees and your organisation.
Why not learn more from my other blogs to see more about how we can help everyone to be their best in a sustainable and financially and mentally positive way.