The Spaces That Shape Us
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The Spaces That Shape Us
Creating Supportive Environments: A New Era for Workplace Wellness
Content Warning: This episode contains themes around suicide. If you or someone you know are struggling at the moment, there are links to resources at the end of these show notes.
Uncover the key to a healthier and more productive workplace in our discussion with
Head of Workplace Wellbeing at BAM, Ruth Pott and Trainee Clinical Psychologist, Lauren Weeks. We delve into workplace wellbeing, addressing its crucial role in today's fast-paced environment and confronting the stigma around mental health. Our talk highlights the importance of creating a safe, supportive atmosphere for employee growth.
Our discussion emphasises the need for inspiring, collaborative workspaces and a holistic approach to wellbeing. We underscore that the physical environment affects mental health, with well-designed spaces boosting wellness. Concluding with the vital message that mental health is paramount, we stress the urgency for businesses to prioritise and invest in their employees' wellbeing. Join us for an enlightening episode offering practical tips to enhance mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
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- Samaritans. To talk about anything that is upsetting you, you can contact Samaritans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can call 116 123 (free from any phone), email jo@samaritans.org or visit some branches in person. You can also call the Samaritans Welsh Language Line on 0808 164 0123 (7pm–11pm every day).
- Shout. If you would prefer not to talk but want some mental health support, you could text SHOUT to 85258. Shout offers a confidential 24/7 text service providing support if you are in crisis and need immediate help.
- Acas - Supporting mental health at work. Acas gives employees and employers free, impartial advice on workplace rights, rules and best practice.
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This episode contains themes around suicide and mental health, so just a content warning for our listeners before you start listening to the episode. We will have some resources for anyone who is struggling at the moment in our show notes, so please do make sure you have a read of the notes before you start listening. Hello and welcome back to the Spaces that Shape Us. I've got my voice back, so for anyone that listened to the last episode, I'm sorry again for the horrible listening, but I'm back, so that's good. So today we are talking about the very important topic that is workplace wellbeing. Everything has changed in the past three years, as we all know, and wellbeing really came to the forefront of all the conversations around workplace and more than ever, thankfully, employers are talking about it and really trying to implement strategies so that they can have the most well team. So today we're going to be talking about some practical strategies. We're going to be talking about how employees can really get involved and really think about their wellbeing and we're going to talk about kind of the future and current situations in wellbeing. So I'm very, very excited to introduce both of my guests today. So first of all, we have Ruth Pot, with over 25 years of experience in senior HR roles. Ruth has been at the forefront of employee wellbeing across diverse sectors like road haulage, trade associations and civil engineering. In 2011, ruth embarked on a pivotal journey with Bam Nuttle, initially serving as their HR director. Her dedication and expertise soon elevated her to the role of global director for mental health and wellbeing. Today, she leads as the head of workplace wellbeing for Bam in the UK and Ireland, influencing positive change across the organisation. Beyond her professional endeavours, ruth has been making significant contributions as a trustee of the Men's Mental Health Forum since 2022, showcasing her commitment to mental health, particularly focusing on men's health and child and adolescent mental health. Ruth's academic achievements are equally impressive. She was awarded a master's degree in workplace and health and wellbeing in 2021, a testament to her dedication in this field. That same year, her efforts were recognised on a grand scale when she was named most inspiring mental health leader by the prestigious organisation. This Can Happen.
Speaker 1:On the other side we have Lauren Weeks. She is a dynamic trainee clinical psychologist with a diverse background in mental health. Lauren's experience spans a variety of settings, including the NHS, schools and third sector organisations, where she has worked with a range of age groups and clinical presentations. Lauren's approach is integrative, combining systemic methods with her passion for using play, movement and creativity in her practice. This reflects not only in her work with young people and families, but also in her keen interest in the impact of physical space on mental wellbeing. With her commitment to an intersectional and trauma informed perspective, lauren brings a depth of understanding to the socio-political and personal context influencing mental health. Her insights, especially on creating empowering environments, are sure to enrich our discussion on workplace wellbeing today. So welcome to both. Thank you so much for being here. If I could just hand over to Ruth first of all, if you could just give us a little bit of an outline as to who you are, your background I know I said it all, but why this is interesting to you, why you're interested in this topic.
Speaker 2:Thanks, holly. Thanks for that introduction. So I've been working in the workplace health and wellbeing field full time for five years and it never fails to amaze me the breadth and complexity of people, issues or issues that people bring to work. And I think it's massively important, particularly working in a very sort of male orientated sector, as I do, working in civil engineering and construction, and all the challenges that that brings. But whether you're male or whether you're not, people have. We just live in a very complex, fast paced world. Mental health is an increasing issue for so many people. So as employers, we're in a unique position to be able to assist and support people, just signposts, give them some basic advice and information and make a really massive difference to them, and it can be transformational for so many people.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and Lauren over to you. Why are you interested in this topic? Why is it important to you?
Speaker 3:Thank you, holly, nice to meet you. Ruth. Well, I guess it's my entire career mental health and I've just seen so much throughout all the different workplaces I've worked in. Particularly, I think people think if you work within the mental health sector, that it's all going to be fine there, and what I've realised is it's really, really not Working.
Speaker 3:Through schools and research, third sector like NHS, you see so much of how people can't still talk about their mental health at work and I see it with my friends. I see it in so many different environments and I see because I've worked in lots of different places and I've moved across placements every six months I can see when mental health is championed and when it's ignored and I can see the impact of different people's presentations or their intersectional identities and how that might be ignored and can then it can then impact them. You know like we all have different identities and if things are being ignored or silenced at work and people don't feel safe I feel like I'm going to talk about safety a lot today, it's probably going to be my favourite word Then people aren't going to thrive and I think it's just so important to try and, like you said, remove the stigma, because it's still so much there, even though it's got a lot better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Let's break it down. So let's assume that nobody who's listening knows what workplace wellbeing is and, to be fair, is a really broad topic. It covers so many grounds and I'm sure there's lots of CEOs and leaders and people with teams who sort of think, oh, if we just put some coffee machine and a pool table in our office, everyone's going to be fine and well. So, Ruth, what does workplace wellbeing mean? Can you give us a kind of overview of let's break it down what does it entail? Well, I think, if you go back 50 years.
Speaker 2:the 1974 Health and Safety Work Act came in and the focus there was and rightly so was very much on safety because there were way too many people being killed and being seriously injured in workplace accidents. So for many decades the focus has really been on physical safety. The health aspect of that has been largely focused around health surveillance and the statutory requirements to sort of reduce occupational diseases. Actually, for the last 25 years the 99 Safety Management Regulations had a requirement to manage work-related stress, but I think that's an area that most employers have probably not been dealing with terribly well. So in terms of what is workplace wellbeing now? It's kind of.
Speaker 2:For me it's really any aspect of somebody's health, whether it's physical or mental health, that's likely to have an impact on them in the workplace. And it's not necessarily even just the physical or mental health of the people in of your employees. It's actually their wider family. If they're worried about somebody at home or they've got a really difficult situation they don't know how to deal with it, that's going to have an impact on their concentration, their performance, their safety, everything that they're otherwise trying to achieve at work. So, creating the safe spaces and making it okay to not be okay.
Speaker 2:We hugely encourage people to just come forward and share what's on their mind. Sometimes people just want somebody at work to know what they're dealing with. Sometimes they need signposting and supporting and that's the role that an employer can play in actually doing that and, as I said earlier, it can be absolutely transformational. We have so many people, we have so many dealing with so many things, and they always have. It's not new, but the difference is we now know what people are dealing with because we have created those safe spaces and we have developed a culture literally where it is okay to not be okay. So it is physical health, it's mental health, it's kind of social health and social well-being and, of course particularly the last 18, 24 months the financial well-being. They're all interlinked, they're all interdependent on each other and we can have a massive influence as employers in just helping people navigate through whatever difficulties they're facing.
Speaker 1:That was going to be. My next question is the kind of the last three years we all know has been wild and we've kind of I think a lot of companies have kind of been thrown into these changes. It hasn't necessarily happened, naturally. So what have you observed in the past three years that's changed about workplace well-being?
Speaker 2:I think obviously the whole concept of hybrid working and flexible working has been massive for all the obvious reasons. There is a downside to that in terms of it does increase social isolation and loneliness, which can impact upon people's mental health and well-being. So hybrid working and just trying to get balance for most people is probably right and appropriate. Financial well-being clearly, particularly last year. I appreciate it has sort of tipped over into this year, but there was much more focus on cost of living and all the issues surrounding that last year. So, again, just trying to provide people with support and just education and awareness that there is help out there. Obviously we had a little bit of government help, but there are all sorts of other sources of help that people could use to just try and manage money better.
Speaker 2:So, huge pressures, huge pressures and I think the fact that people had many, many months working at home increased their personal anxieties. So it was making sure that they were supported, they were encouraged and then supported when they were coming back into the workplace. And even with people who are still regularly working at home now, making sure that managers know to ask the right kind of questions. It's really hard trying to identify changes in somebody's behaviour or demeanour or possibly even performance if they're working remotely. So it's making sure that managers do have those regular one-to-one conversations. They're asking the right kind of questions, they're trained to know how to respond to the answers that they get and really just keeping with it, because life continues to get really stressed.
Speaker 2:We now have two wars going on and obviously we do have employees who are affected directly by those as well. So it's just pressure upon pressure upon pressure for everybody, and it's just trying to have visibility on what people are dealing with and support them as best we can.
Speaker 1:And I know we talked the other day on the phone and BAM is multi-award winning for its wellbeing. So would you mind giving us just some of the stories that you told me about, for example, the wellbeing rooms that you created, just some like recent initiatives? Yeah?
Speaker 2:so a really, really successful initiative created by one of my colleagues this was actually four years ago, it was in 2019, somebody who just thought that to create a wellbeing room on one of our sites might be a good thing, to literally create that safe space for people to come forward and have a chat. It was on a motorway site. She got agreement to do the trial for three months, was given a very modest budget to furnish the room so it didn't look like an office, so it wasn't unsimilar to this in terms of a couple of sofas, an armchair, a coffee table, some nice pictures on the walls, fairy lights, biscuits, that kind of thing. Plants, definitely plants, Definitely plants, definitely a kettle and some digestives, preferably chocolate. And she put a desk in there where she could do her own personal work reports so that she would sit in there doing her reports. People would come in and have a chat about the weather or the football or whatever it was and then say actually, while I'm here, can I have a chat to you About such and such. And she kept a record during that trial. This is a site, it was a motorway site, so a lot of night working going on there. 70 people came through and had a conversation with her. Between them they had 210 conversations over that three month period and even now, when I sort of talk about the breadth and the complexity and the seriousness of the issues that people were dealing with, it's still quite shocking.
Speaker 2:Suicide was a huge thing. Yeah, you know I'm feeling suicidal. I've attempted suicide. I've got somebody at home who's feeling suicidal or who's attempted suicide. I've been bereaved by suicide. I've got a teenager who's self-harming or is not eating. I've got a child being bullied. I've got a sibling in a domestic abuse situation.
Speaker 2:We had a couple of people who came forward with really serious gambling issues where you know they've been kicked out of the family home or the home has been repossessed. They've got people banging on the door demanding money, with menaces. You know they were getting to that metaphoric, very dark place themselves. And what really struck me with that was nearly all of these issues were not work issues, yet they were bringing them to work and we were then putting them out on safety, into safety critical roles during the day, during the night, with the obvious implications for safety, for performance, for sort of near misses, accidents and so on.
Speaker 2:So it was a very, very, very sharply into focus to us the need to continue with the work that we're doing and make sure that people do feel safe, that they'll come, if they come forward and seek help, that they'll be managed discreetly, confidentially, sensitively, and that they have the confidence that we'll be able to signposts. And we're not about diagnosing or providing any kind of counselling or therapy ourselves as an organisation. But we have the Employee Assistance Programme, we have Medical Insurance, we have a very extensive network of the mental health first aiders, along with trained managers. We use a lot of charities. So it's just finding the right support for the right person at the right time and most of our people who've had training will know where to signpost somebody. To that, but it was very much make. That was where we started making the links between poor mental health and wellbeing and the increased risk of accidents and incidents. So it really crystallised a lot of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and all it took I say all it took was just creating a space, absolutely literally.
Speaker 2:I mean the spaces were literally no bigger than the studio that we're sitting in now and it was literally £1,000 that was spent in IKEA for that particular project and the furniture that was on that project then went up, to my knowledge, at least two other motorway sites. I mean it's been extensively used and the whole concept has been rolled out now widely across the organisation and obviously other organisations now have wellbeing rooms. But yeah, the wellbeing adviser whose idea it was, she won an award for that innovation. So four years ago it really was at the forefront of creative thinking in wellbeing and not the kind of thing that you might consider in a construction company, but it absolutely worked.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I was so impressed by that.
Speaker 1:I just love that story and I guess it brings up an idea of this intersection between personal wellbeing and workplace wellbeing. Right, and I imagine before I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but maybe people are only focused on workplace wellbeing previously because it's maybe a little bit uncomfortable to talk about someone's personal wellbeing. And how much responsibility should an employer take over someone's personal wellbeing? There's an intersection, right? I don't know what your thoughts are, I mean there, I think there's definitely an insect.
Speaker 3:And it's great hearing all of the things your company's done, ruth, because I think when I hear workplace wellbeing, I sometimes cringe a little bit. I think it can be a little bit of a buzzword for a lot of companies, but it sounds like you your company, has actually thought about all of the things and thought about the joining up of how things aren't in silos. Your personal mental health or your personal wellbeing, your personal life, is going to impact upon your workplace life and vice versa. If you're not feeling supported at work, that can then transfer into your personal life. If not, feeling your self-esteem is going to not be great. But equally, if you're having a breakup at home or there's like we've been speaking about austerity for the last 10 years the cost of living crisis all of those demands are going to be like pushing and increasing that pressure. So I think when I hear about companies like yours, I'm like okay, that's great, you're not even overcomplicating it. Something as simple as a room where someone can come for a chat and it doesn't have to be about work, that's where it's great.
Speaker 3:I think it's often that A lot of companies still won't do the joining up of like workplace well-being and personal well-being. It's interesting because obviously I'm not coming from corporate. So when you said, oh you know, they'll just get a coffee machine and a pool table, in what world? We don't even get coffee, we don't even get milk. That's wild to me. But I see so many companies will do that, particularly corporate. They'll be like, oh well, just incentivize, incentivize.
Speaker 1:I guess there's a worry of encroaching on someone's personal well-being. What do you think? I mean, I wonder if people feel that they don't want to get too deep into someone's personal life. I think I've been told before you know, keep your personal life at home, and when you come to work you leave at home and then you deal with it at home, and I don't know what's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as employers, you can't force anybody to share anything.
Speaker 2:The work that we've done. We were very clear from the outset. We were not forcing anybody to talk about their mental health and indeed surveys tell us that a fair number of people will never disclose their mental health status to their employer. They're intrinsically really really private people. That's fine, as long as we can still signpost them, you know, so they can sit in briefings and just think actually, maybe I can get help, I can feel better, I'll go and see my GP. They don't have to do it through the company. Lauren was absolutely right that you cannot split them out. You know, the experience of our wellbeing rooms was very much that people bring all this stuff and most of what we deal with is personal stuff. It's not work related, it's not caused by work.
Speaker 2:I mean we know work is good for people generally. There's so much science to support that, but very few people don't have something at some point in their life that is on their mind, whatever it might be. Just one example would be menopause in the workplace. You know, trying to think about introducing that into a very male environment, and my starting point on that was it absolutely needs to be menopause for men. You know, the demographic of our organization is that there would be far more men impacted by menopause at home than women. And what's that got to do with business? What's that got to do with BAM or a civil engineering company?
Speaker 2:But when you sort of strip it back a little bit, it's the whole relationships become a bit fraught for all the obvious reasons. It can lead to relationship breakdown, family breakdown, divorce. That will have an impact on somebody's performance at work. So if there's anything we can do to just help somebody deal with that, ideally prevent them getting to a place. You know, with all the issues surrounding menopause there's an awful lot of preventative measures and information can be put in at a very early stage in terms of trying to get people to talk. You know, in terms of relation, you know personal relationships and whatnot, but if people are going through a breakup, there's an awful lot we can actually do to support them. Then it was a conversation I actually had just yesterday with somebody within BAM in terms of I'm really not that keen on all the personal stuff and you know, trying to explain that the personal stuff is so, so important and experience has told us that it is predominantly personal stuff that people are dealing with and therefore we do need to take it seriously. We do need to raise awareness around what physical health issues, mental health issues and just make sure that anybody who raises any kind of issue that we can talk from a place of knowledge, sympathy and empathy and that that person will feel supported.
Speaker 2:And that equally extends to relationships at work. You know, obviously, bullying, harassment it does occasionally happen. People need to know that they can, they'll be supported. Or, you know, bullying relationships out of work or whatever it might be. People need to know that they can actually talk about it, bring it to work and they can get some help with that. So it's massively important and you can't just deal with it in isolation. You know it has to be the gold well-being. Workplace well-being needs to be the golden thread, it needs to be embedded in an organisation. It needs to be part of your strategy. It needs to feed through into absolutely everything. It's not just for HR or for the safety team or whichever team you've kind of parked it in within your organisation. It needs to underpin everything that you do. You really do need to understand that. If you, if you're wanting high performing teams which is what most organizations strive to achieve if the well-being of individuals is not at its best, you'll never get that high performing team.
Speaker 3:You're talking about a few different things there, though, like I love the bridging of something that might traditionally be seen as you know oh, we'll just educate women on menopause. But it's also men go through, their hormone levels drop when they get to a certain age. We can also think about, like the menstrual cycle and how that's going to affect us. But giving education to all genders and not just women on that, I think it just opens up that conversation, doesn't it? And reduces like taboos and stigma. But I think you're also talking about like I did some research on like mental health at work programs and it showed that like stigma about mental health is still so dominant that people don't speak and then that leads to presentiaism, which is when people show up to work when they're not, when they're not coping, and that actually costs businesses so much more when, if people absentiaism when people don't show up to work and take time off, it's like I think it presentiaism costs double the amount at least yeah, at least, and it's so if people really, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Cipd and Deloitte both talk about presentiaism being two to three times greater than your cost of absence. So, whatever your absence figures are, and and yeah, and it makes perfect sense. You know, people feel obliged to turn up to work, particularly if it's hybrid working. They're far more likely to turn on to a computer if they're really feeling rubbish. It's just. I can just sit here, and you know wiggle the mouse every 10 minutes, absolutely when?
Speaker 2:really, really, they should be taking some time out yeah, and I've been two, three occasions this year when I've really called people out and I've just had a Friday meeting and somebody was clearly not well, they kind of got the tail end of COVID or something. They'd already said that they'd had a couple of days off earlier in the week and I was very much. Why are you here? We can postpone it. I can record it, send you notes, whatever. Please just take the rest of the day off.
Speaker 2:And they just went, okay, people struggle there because somehow they just needed permission from somebody to actually do that. So you know, again, one of the many things we introduced earlier this year was just a very simple digital well-being guide and that was all about your out-of-office message making sure that if you are doing we're not encouraging out-of-hours work, but if you are to make sure that you're not, that that email message is not being sent to sort of seven o'clock the next working day, making sure that you're not working when you're not well, very particularly making sure our leaders do not work when they're not well, that our leaders do not work obviously work when they're on holiday, because it just sends those very subliminal messages to the rest of the team, the rest of the organization, that they should be doing that too and really calling people out when they do it. And actually we are beginning to see people being called out. You know, and I've had it happen to me I came back from holiday and I spent the sat Sunday afternoon, you know, catching up with my 500 emails, and it was just you shouldn't have been doing that because, you're still on holiday it
Speaker 2:is, it was my choice. What I should have done was just make sure that they were time to go out at seven o'clock the next morning and you know I just had a lot to do that following morning and it just suited me to do that. But again, you know, for the rest of the team it is sending that sort of implied message or implicit message that you'll ask, you know, sunday if you leave, maybe you should be clearing your emails, which actually people shouldn't you know? We are really trying to encourage people to switch off and on a personal level, absolutely I do try to lead by example. I had a two-week holiday this year and I left both the work phone and the work laptop at home. I absolutely did not log on to anything to do with work for a whole two weeks and they managed without me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know it's funny, isn't it that ego I understand like they can't live without me. I've got to be on my emails all the time and it's just no, not too good, good managers, absolutely.
Speaker 2:They should have a team to be able to manage without them, but it it's. You know, leadership has a huge role in all of this. To set the example there, to share their own vulnerabilities. You know, over the years we've had a number of leaders who've talked about domestic abuse, about childhood abuse, about their own personal journeys with anxiety, mental health in the family. You know, and if you've got one of your senior leaders show just making it real and just sharing their own personal experience, it absolutely makes it okay for everybody else too.
Speaker 2:We get a lot of peers talking about their personal experiences and we had a very powerful one about four years ago. Somebody who got to that metaphoric dark place of wanting to end their life went and talked to their manager because they remembered that their manager had done some training and said you know, if ever you want to talk, please, you know my door's always open. They did that. They got the sympathetic, understanding, supportive response was signed, posted to get the EAP and clinical intervention had many months of quite intense therapy and a year later we're in a position where they were happy to talk to our then chief executive.
Speaker 2:Their manager and the individual had this sort of three-way dialogue, just a dual video log, but it was so, so powerful, you know, and this individual was very much. You know, I felt so bad, I didn't think I could get better. Perhaps help me get better, and now I, if I can just help one other person out there, you know, it's kind of job done and so many people responded really really positively to that. So, again, it is just approaching it from different angles, different things work at different times and keeping up the momentum, but definitely leadership influence is massive in all of this so would you say that's if we think about this kind of the challenges when implementing a well-being program.
Speaker 1:Would you say that's one of them?
Speaker 2:I would definitely say you need to have the leadership buy-in and support. It is so much harder to do it without. So if you can get a sort of senior leader, advocate to support, to be trained to, to share anything that any, any lived experience, personal experience, personal exposure, is hugely beneficial. If they can do the training to just have that kind of insight, I think that's that's that's massively important as well. Keeping it simple, you know that's hugely important.
Speaker 2:It's really easy to just make it very, very complicated but you know, just getting some mental health first aid is trained up using some of the great free resources that are out there. You know a lot of charities have particularly people like mind and Samaritans. They've got, you know, a whole part of their websites for employers. You know they've got templates, videos that obviously they have at-cost training programs, but ACAS have a free mental health training, e-learning training program that that anybody can use, so it's not difficult and then just use some of the national events.
Speaker 2:Time to talk is something that we always support, you know, and they have a lot of free resources as well, but it's just not over complicate things. You know, if they think about getting an employee assistance program and just making it okay to not be okay it is. It takes time to create that culture, but if everybody does take it seriously, it doesn't it? Sometimes it can be quite easy. You know, when we started this, I was genuinely stunned at how much support there was for doing it, because it does resonate with so many people and actually, if somebody in the organization takes responsibility for it, I would be very surprised if you didn't very quickly get other people who would just say I'd like to. You know, do the mental health first aid training?
Speaker 2:or one day manager training. I'd like to be an advocate, you know, and help and support on this. It really gathered a pace very, very quickly because everybody's got their own story to tell, whether it's them personally or somebody within their family or friendship group. Mental health in particular does touch everybody yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:And when we think about mental health first aid I suppose this is more for the question for Lauren what do you think anyone can do that? Do you think there's any parameters in which we should be careful about mental health first aid and what that kind of looks like? I mean where there's so much training for it? And I've been to many, many mental health first aid courses in my life and I don't consider myself to be a mental health first aid because I don't feel qualified enough. What would you, what would your advice be to organizations who are implementing the mental health first aid strategy?
Speaker 3:I'm in two minds about mental health first aid. I think I think it's good when companies have a conversation around mental health and there's designated people who people can go to mental health first aiders. When I've looked at certain mental health first aid programs, they can be quite prescriptive or they can sometimes just focus upon, you know, low mood or anxiety, which are all very important things to focus on. But I think they run the risk of sometimes, you know, thinking that one person is just going to be experiencing one mental health difficulty at a time, or it can also sometimes increase stigma around different mental health difficulties, such as someone experiencing hearing voices or seeing things, or someone who's experiencing a range of different emotions. And I don't think mental health first data is equipped to maybe deal with the complexity of different mental health difficulties, particularly when they like compound on one another.
Speaker 3:When someone's haven't had an experience of trauma and is then experiencing difficulties with their emotions and is then maybe hearing voices, that's a lot for someone who's not experienced training, like I've gone through eight years of university to get to where I am and still I wouldn't say I'm equipped to deal with every different mental health difficulty. I think I would say companies should just continue to educate themselves, continue to like reduce stigma around all the different types of mental health difficulties. Someone hearing voices isn't like they're not crazy. That's such a like natural response to someone who's maybe experienced something traumatic in their life and I guess, just providing lots of different ranges of education. I think mental health first aiders, if they're there, also are going to need support. Because what if it's a time like, for example, christmas is often quite period of time when people actually generally struggle, so if they're having like five people come to them, and they're taking on all of that load of like some mental health first aiders?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think it needs to be. I mean, I always think about, like, the system and I think the system needs to be supporting one another and I don't think it should be a conversation for just one person. I think you need to create that culture and that community where, yes, there might be a designated person, because people people like to, you know, be able to put people in boxes sometimes. But I think you need to also get rid of that binary and have a like okay, I can talk to my manager, but I can also talk about it to a friend at home and maybe prepare how I want to go into this conversation or I'll talk about it to my colleague or talk about it to HR, like, I guess, just make sure that it's not the narrative that you can only go to the mental health first aid and if they're struggling, they also need somewhere to go.
Speaker 3:I think just education, like, as you're saying, you work in a very male dominated environment and obviously we know that suicide is the biggest cause of death in men under 50. But often what's missing from the narrative is that women are three times more likely to attempt suicide and it's about having those conversations that suicide is definitely needs to be focused upon with men, but we also need to be thinking about all of the different genders and, like I said, kind of when people are experiencing layers of oppression, what's happening there. Think about not just mental health but also, like person's identity, what they've been through, what their past is experiencing. So I think it's complex. I don't know if that answered your question.
Speaker 2:It is really complex. You know, we're very clear on boundaries and we have run into issues with boundaries, with people getting too involved and literally stepping over the line of what a mental health first aid is meant to do and trained to do.
Speaker 2:It's like a first responder in a way. Yeah, absolutely. And again at the conversation I had many months ago, which is very similar in terms of you can't possibly learn enough in two days to be able to support people. But if you draw the analogy with the statutory first aid people who do a first, the full four day first aid at work courses, you know we're not training them to be orthopedic surgeons or heart surgeons. We're training them to know how to administer CPR, if it's needed or how to stabilise a leg if we think it's been broken.
Speaker 2:So mental health first aid isn't any different in that respect. It is the supporting and the signposting.
Speaker 1:So it's almost having a mental health first aid strategy, but there's needs to be a wider strategy underneath that. Yeah, absolutely so, rather than companies just saying it's fine, we've got our mental health. First aid is and we're done.
Speaker 2:Exactly, you know, and Lauren's absolutely right, it's not just, we're not just relying on our mental health first aiders. You know, actually all of us in the organisation have a responsibility for looking out for others. But you know, very particularly, people need to have a choice of who they want to talk to. So it can be their line manager. The line manager should have had training. It can be a leader. The leaders should have training. It's mental health first aiders, obviously. They will all have been trained, along with the HR team. And then we've got all the external support as well, whether it's charities or whether it's the employee assistance programme or it's medical insurance. It's very comprehensive, so we try to have all bases covered. It's really hard. It's really hard, it's a huge topic.
Speaker 1:So if we just think about physical space because that's what the podcast is about how does the design of a workplace impact well-being? It's quite a big topic, but what examples I thought of, for example, quiet zones for neurodiverse individuals or social areas for community buildings. I know in this conversation we've talked about culture, we've talked about community quite a lot. So I wonder how important or how, how do we create space that really kind of fosters community and creates a well culture? I know neither of you are designers, so don't expect you to have that.
Speaker 3:I have a lot of feelings on this. I think it's really important. I think, first and foremost, before you can even consider physical space, you've got to have that sense of like culture and that sense of it's safe to come into this workplace. Safety, I think, gets ignored so much and I'm going to go theory on you, bloody manzolo, but like, people can't thrive if they don't feel safe. So I think that's like, before you can even get to physical space, you need to have that sense of safety. And then, I think, physical space like you said, there's a lot to it. I think you need flexibility.
Speaker 3:We work in hybrid space now, as you said, and you need to have it. I don't think it. Yeah, it needs to not be rigid. People can work from home if they want to. Equally, I think we should encourage making meetings in person as much as we can, because we get such screen fatigue and it's nice to be able to like converse, like here, so nice to be able to converse with someone, look into someone's eyes like 70% of conversation is body language, apparently exactly.
Speaker 3:I miss so much if I do therapy online versus if I do it in person. It's so much nicer. But equally, like you said, with like neurodiverse needs, some people might struggle coming into an office every day. So I don't think there should be a policy that you have to come in, particularly if you've got five hours worth of Zoom meetings. That's like you're just going to be sat there and be frustrated that you can't go and make endless cups of tea.
Speaker 3:But I think quiet zones for neurodiverse people very important. But I think people often think, oh well, that means it needs to be an individual space. Just because you might get overstimulated by noise doesn't mean you want to work alone. I think where I currently work, do it quite well. I mean, the space is amazing. I work in with families and young people and there's toys everywhere. It's very open, there's lots of light, there's lots of nice smells. Like you know, sensory nudes, I think, are very important and each room has like a range of different toys for the like family and young people.
Speaker 3:But with the office space for the employees there's the upstairs office, which is more chatty and you know if you're going to work up there you're going to.
Speaker 3:You know there'll be moments of silence when everyone's working, but it's more encouraging of speaking, whereas downstairs that's more of the space where it's quiet working, but people still have people around them. And then there's separate spaces where people can go and work on their own and it's quiet and I think things like a kettle. I know like I would love a hot water tap in my kitchen at home, but I think something about boiling the kettle and waiting just encourages that conversation, encourages that like intimacy that you have with someone. When you've got to wait three minutes and I was annoyed that my bus was late today and it meant that I had to wait for three minutes, I was so fast paced. But if you can like gather around, have a little chat about what tea you want or what you're going to have for dinner, those moments of intimacy and connection can then lead to someone being like oh, I can be vulnerable with this person, so I think it's so much, you need the open plan you need the individual.
Speaker 3:You need the space and it's authentic connection as well.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, don't want to fabricate these moments of connection. Like you said about the hot water tap, I think I was telling you the other day I'd probably told both of you we used to have a hot water tap in a co-working space I used to work for and whenever it broke, the connection between the people was I couldn't believe it. They would chat to each other, they'd laugh, they'd get annoyed because they it did work. But there was a very specific way you had to do it, for it to do it, and they'd teach each other and it was so wonderful. And then, as soon as the hot tap was fixed, no one was talking to each other in that area and we really noticed it and it was just fascinating. But we're obviously being in a co-working community. We were like, how do we create these moments of social connection?
Speaker 3:but it's actually quite difficult because it's quite authentic it's really difficult, particularly, I guess I'm coming from, not corporate, like where I work there's we have public money so we have no money because you know our funding just keeps getting cut and cut and cut so our spaces aren't pretty.
Speaker 3:But the places, the placements I've been where there's been good culture and good like team connection is when there has been a space for like employees to gather and have a sense of community. And it's also been a space where when I worked on an inpatient ward we were in the same floor as all the young people, so then they knew that they could just come and chat to us and there'd be so much more connection and speaking, whereas a different ward, the psychology office, was the floor above, so then there were so much less moments of conversation, so like there's almost like small little therapeutic interactions you could have. So I think even if there can't be, you know, lovely plants everywhere, I think there's still moments where it can be good, but you've just got to have spaces for community and the team. You can have a beautiful office, but if the team doesn't generate a feeling of safety, then You've just got lots of nice plants.
Speaker 2:And plants are really important. They are, I mean, obviously in our sector. It can be more of a challenge creating the really beautiful workspaces because they're usually temporary sites, so I'm sure you can imagine lots of porter cabins all together. But a lot of thought does go into the design of the workspaces so that we, you have the communal areas, you have individual meeting rooms, you have the quiet spaces. On the larger sites we'll have the wellbeing rooms.
Speaker 2:Things like light are hugely important. I think we all know that we now have a biodiversity specialist within our organisation. That was meant to have a catch up with her a couple of weeks ago, but she's very focused on what can we do to encourage better use of natural light. How can we use water? How can the sound of water or literally just having some sort of water feature in a water in a main area, increased use of plants and things Colour Absolutely colour. In our main offices we'll have colour, but increasingly in sites there'll be plants, but almost all of them have the outdoor amenities, so they can be very, very creative. For example, disused old hard hats that nobody's using, drill a few holes in them, put a train on them and very quickly they're converted into hanging baskets, Plant is for the baskets.
Speaker 2:Old oil drums. They're always bird feeders Wherever we are. Even motorway sites put a bird feeder up. People sit and watch it. I was at a rail site back in the summer Beautiful location. They were literally in the middle of nowhere and they just had the little patio within the safety of the compound, because obviously it needed to be a secure compound. But they still managed to have a patio table and some chairs and whatnot. So when the weather was nice they could sit outside and they were surrounded by oak trees and it was in a field.
Speaker 2:It was a rail site, so they were working on a railway embankment, but each site is different but increasingly getting people to think about the wellbeing aspects of it and it's more work that we will be doing going forward just to get all the natural aspects in there. It's all the subliminal things, often things that people just don't notice but it actually does add and help with their wellbeing.
Speaker 3:I think with physical space as well, something that encourages movement.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm a big big movement person.
Speaker 3:I've done therapy on walks before, like I think so much of people's jobs is just requires them to sit in a laptop, so something where maybe the office is actually a walk away from the kitchen and it actually encourages them to move and maybe then they're going to meet someone on their walk to the kitchen, and I know that's very lots of spaces but there's not enough space. We often have to hot desk or do this or do that. I think something that can encourage that or is thinking.
Speaker 1:We actually had a project recently it's not started yet but it's finalised on the design and they've essentially got a kind of a workspace which is lots of banks of desks mixed with kind of hot desking and different environments for meeting. They tried not to have like meeting rooms, because we're trying to like break the confines of that and you can meet in different kinds of places on the floor up high, just to change things up a bit. And then they've got there's a big space, they've got this kind of walkway in between and we've called it the walk of fame and it's meant to be like very experiential. So you go through and it's actually it's a content creation agency, so we're putting all the creators work like all over the walls so they can basically go through this walkway, have a conversation with their colleagues.
Speaker 1:There's various kinds of desks and places to sit and see each other's work and have a proper conversation about what they're working on. I mean, it's creative, so it's quite. You know, it's fairly straightforward to do that. And then in the other space they've got their content creation sort of area where they do it all, and we just love the idea of that, that like experience. We want it to be super experiential to just encourage people to come together, because the owner of the business just doesn't want people sat at desks.
Speaker 3:I love that.
Speaker 3:Because, you're also thinking about people's sensory needs, because I'm not going to lie, like sitting in this chair.
Speaker 3:I'm usually sat on the floor. Most of the work I do working with kids and young people, I'm on the floor, I'm getting a toy here, I'm like moving so much and I know I'm very lucky to not have to be staring at a laptop all the time. But I think spaces encourage people to be able to sit on the floor or be able to kind of like touch something that can be so grounding or, like you said, with sound and smell. So many people were moving further and further away of being quite like integrated with our body and be able to like feel and understand our body. So things like that where people can stand, people can sit, people can be in a noisy environment, people can be in a quieter environment or like have the experience of looking at different projects, maybe even touching it, like going up close to it All of those things is vital for us as individuals but then collectively encourages that conversation and that communication and actually just the whole thing of movement.
Speaker 2:We have large parts of our population who are on their feet all day, so our site-based colleagues and then large proportion sat at a desk all day. So, where appropriate, we absolutely encourage people to have walking meetings, even if it's just one a week.
Speaker 2:If it's a one-to-one, if it's a meeting where you don't have to be writing a lot of stuff down and have confidential data, just go and walk, just a walk around the block. I've certainly done it quite a few times, just got the earplugs in and they can see that I'm listening, but I'm actually just doing a mile walk around the block and when I was regularly in the office we actually had quite nice garden. So again where it was a non-confidential meeting, just go and sit outside and have that one-to-one conversation with somebody outside. You don't have to be chained to the desk all the time.
Speaker 3:And again as a leader.
Speaker 2:If you do it, another see you do it. And where it was it was quite visible, so kind of the whole building could see. And then I did see that not huge numbers but other people did start actually doing that and it was a really, really nice garden that we had and a bird flying around. It was just nice to be outside in the fresh air and some sunshine rather than just being stuck behind the desk and behind a screen usually. So it's just mixing it up and ditto with people working at home. Just walk, if you can Just walk, do get your steps in. Get some fresh air this time of year. Get a bit of vitamin.
Speaker 2:D with the sunlight when it stops raining.
Speaker 1:You can forget to leave the house. Working from home, I just sometimes forget to leave the house all day.
Speaker 2:I have to work quite hard at it. I'm a bit of a gym bunny when I'm not in the gym. Yesterday I was at the gym but I still went for a walk. Friday is the day I tend not to go to the gym.
Speaker 2:I will always go for a walk, first thing because otherwise I can be at the desk for the whole day, and if I can get out at lunchtime I will. I'd literally, I'd say around the block. It's a mile. So it's a brisk 15-minute walk, with or without the dog, and I just make myself to it because I know I'll feel better.
Speaker 3:It's the wonder of having a dog that Indeed. I think I'm a bit like a dog, but I don't take myself for walks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you do become a bit stir crazy, yeah, I can't, I need.
Speaker 3:I think that's what like I get overstimulated just sitting. I need to actually be moving, to be a bit more calm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get it, I feel you. So we're coming towards the end. But last kind of section, I just want to quickly run over this. So just about we've talked a lot to the employer, I think, and talked to leaders about what they can do to manage their team's mental health, what they can implement to improve wellbeing in the workplace For the employee. What are some of the sort of strategies that employees can take to be able to open up and to set maybe healthy boundaries at work, I think it's okay to say no If you're completely overloaded with work.
Speaker 2:I think managers and leaders should enable their employees to say actually, I can do this, but I can't do this in addition to everything else. So what are the priorities here and what doesn't need to be done? And I think, particularly in terms of work-related stress, that's really important and when you've got deadlines looming and then more work landing on your desk, you need to be able to go and have that conversation. Absolutely, protecting hours. We talked about our digital wellbeing guide.
Speaker 2:It takes a while for that sort of culture to change, because over the last 20 years, I think, as employees and employers, we've got into some really, really bad habits. So it does take time to sort of unravel some of that. But I think to look after your own wellbeing, you do need to go. I'm taking two weeks off, I'm taking a week off and I'm really not going to log on. I'm really going to try and switch off from work, because if you're just checking emails, even if it's just to delete all the drunk emails, you're not properly switching off and long-term, that sort of compromises health, and I think absolutely it's regular dialogue with managers. Managers do need to think about using the HSE standards to make sure that they've got the measures in place so that work is not compromising people's health or wellbeing. And I think employees need to take a little bit of ownership themselves. They do actually need to look after their own health. They do need to think about what they eat, how much they move or don't move, and they need to think about drinking and smoking and the impact on their long-term health.
Speaker 2:One of the things we've got a big, big initiative coming up on Get Bad Moving, to try and to increase physical activity.
Speaker 2:And from a psychology point of view, I know people know what they should be doing, but trying to get them to change behaviours is really difficult. So again, I'd sort of try and identify the barriers that people have for not moving and try and make it easy for people. So it's just trying to think differently with all of these things, getting employees to think differently and actually get them to consider what kind of old age do they want, what kind of work life do they want, what kind of work life balance do they want, what kind of family life do they want and what are the things they need to do to put in place. We can help them with some of the theory behind it and we can have all the support measures in place, but ultimately it's individuals who need to go. Actually, I need to switch off, I need to sleep better, I need to do some exercise. I will do that. One walking meeting each week. I will tell the children to put the digital stuff down at the meal table.
Speaker 2:It's all those kind of things because it's changing behaviours and it's getting people to think about the longer term benefits of doing all of these things. So we as an employer can do so much. We can provide the tools, but we need to have the buy-in from employees. They really need to think about what they want for their lives and their health going forward. I think we as employees, we can't do it all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I do agree with you. I think there does need to be more ownership. But I think, coming from my line of work, maybe I'm thinking less about employees right now. Maybe the people that I work with you can have so much of that narrative.
Speaker 3:But often when people are really struggling or they're coming from really low income backgrounds, I think it can be really hard because people have to constantly work to support their families or they're given this narrative oh, eat all of these vegetables or do this, but they can't even afford basic food. And I think then that can transpire into employees as well, because we don't know what everyone's history and background is. We don't know their experience of childhood. Trauma impacts so many things and it impacts how we perceive ourselves, how we think we're being perceived by others. So I think it's careful to think about those. Narratives are good, but also consider the impact that can have on someone, because it might increase a bit more stigma. I think employees can do a lot for themselves. Like you said, walking. I hate the narrative of go for a bath and have a walk, but it could also be great.
Speaker 1:It does work, though it does work.
Speaker 3:Just shouldn't be the only message. But I do think before an employee can think about it, it has to come from the employer. I think it needs to really really be built into the conversation. It can't be tokenistic. We can't think about race in Black History Month just then, or LGBTQ rights just in Pride Month, and mental health just in mental health day or mental health week.
Speaker 3:It needs to be constant and we need to be thinking about all of these different things. We need to be thinking about a person's experience in their body, in their identity, all of their different mental health difficulties, their family situation, the impact of austerity. It's complex, but if we can promote that in the workplace, that we're actually thinking about all of these things throughout the year, then an employee is going to feel safe, they're going to feel validated, they're going to feel heard. When they feel like that, then they can feel more able to take on more work or have the permission to say, oh, I'm overloaded. They can have the permission to then say, oh, I'm actually struggling right now. I need a day off, and it doesn't have to be a day off for physical health. It's a day off because I'm really anxious or actually something's triggered me from my past and I just need space. Some companies- do.
Speaker 1:I've seen duvet days and it's like no questions asked days off.
Speaker 3:Just I still have to work, for we had three well-being days a year.
Speaker 3:You could either pre-plan it or you could just, on the day, be like having my well-being day, but then they still encouraged if you were really struggling with your mental health, you could still take sickness days for that. I think it's ownership. But I think it has to start with the employer, because if they're not promoting that, then you're going to get people either constantly working, burning out and not coming back to work, or they're just you're going to have a high turnover rate. So many places where I work there's such a high turnover rate, which is a shame because it's the mental health field. But I think just more and more conversation, Also as an individual. Just reflect on what your boundaries are. Reflect on if there's certain periods in the year when you're going to be struggling more. Have a conversation and maybe take on less work or talk to your friends and family and colleagues about it. Lots of moments of just slowing down and reflecting, because sometimes people don't know what's happened until it's happening to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say as a manager myself. I really encourage my team to talk to me about how they are feeling and what's going on for them, so that it doesn't just come to the time when it's bad and then say, oh, I didn't turn up for the meeting or I'm not there or I'm late or whatever it is, and then it's all actually struggling at home because you can do so much to help somebody. Before it gets to that point, see, I agree, people need to talk.
Speaker 2:That's where the preventative thing comes in. A lot of it is driven by us as an employer, but in encouraging employees to take ownership, there is an element of preventative. There are so many measures they can put in place to help themselves keep well, stay well. So, yeah, they do need to take some ownership. We offer well-being days and again there's flexibility about how they're taken. But the purpose was to just again, to just encourage the conversation on well-being. We don't stipulate that they're doing something well-being. They can do whatever they want to.
Speaker 2:We've just chosen to call them well-being days, so that people do think about it.
Speaker 1:I love that. Yeah, I think it's brilliant.
Speaker 3:I think just having a good team where I currently work. It's so nice. Everyone, when it's lunchtime, they're like it's lunchtime. Everyone encourages them to leave the desk. Don't force it, because some people everyone has different needs. Everyone encourages everyone to get up grab their lunch and we all gather in a room and eat and talk for half an hour. It's every lunchtime and it's so nice.
Speaker 3:I eat lunch staring at my screen Exactly, but it's the encouragement from others and I think it's like that's what I mean when it's built into the team and it's encouraged in that way. That also will create moments where people can take ownership and be like oh no, I'm actually having a really difficult day or nothing's really even going on, but I'm just feeling not great because we're human and it doesn't have to be one thing. Sometimes we're just going to be feeling really grumpy. So I think, just understanding people's individual needs, but trying to create community wherever you can, community reflection they're vital.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, we have come to the end. Thank you both so much for joining me today. It's been so insightful. I think we've decided that it's really, really complicated and we have a long way to go, and I think we haven't solved it. I'm glad the conversation is big, and so it should be, but you're both doing amazing things in your work. Ruth's going to an award dinner tonight, so fingers crossed you when I'm sure you will.
Speaker 1:You can connect with both Lauren and Ruth on LinkedIn. The links will be in our show notes and join us next time. Thank you so much. This podcast is sponsored by Projects, the home for better business, the two beautiful buildings open in the heart of Brighton one in the lanes and one moments from the beach plus many more set open across the UK. Projects is proud to house a community of collaborative businesses. They change and operate inspiring spaces that make everyone feel included. Projects combines co-working areas, dedicated desks and fully serviced offices with meeting and event spaces, cafes, bars and a gym and this podcast suite. Find out more, book a tour and arrange a free trial via their website, wwwprojectsclubcredituk. Plus, you can let them know that you've heard about them via the spaces that shape us to receive 25% off your first podcast suite booking.
