When businesses and bosses foster an environment that prioritises mental well-being, as highly as physical well-being, they often end up with more productive teams, optimised outputs and positive work cultures. You may already be aware of the business benefits of creating a mental health-friendly workplace, but how do you begin to achieve this? It might seem like a daunting task in workplaces where there is a higher level of stigma, or a challenge to change mindsets in environments that have never previously implemented any support structures for mental health.
From offering and advertising mental health first aid courses for employees to promoting open conversations and reducing stigma, there are a ton of real-world ideas that can be adapted and implemented across a range of working environments. There are several starting points for creating a more mental health-friendly space, whether you are working in an office that is particularly quiet when it comes to talking about sensitive topics, or if you work on a construction site where individuals may not be keen to share personal stories or feelings.
After all, there can be a lot of crossovers between mental health at work and nurturing everyday human connections that can create an opportunity to implement even small changes that can make a big difference to the way mental health is viewed in your workplace circles.
Speak The Language of Laughter
If you work in an environment that is stereotypically difficult to begin conversations about mental health, or work with individuals who aren’t used to discussing personal issues, perhaps try to relate to your colleagues and teams using an approach they understand. If you are used to putting on a brave face and facing everything with a sense of humour, utilise this to begin breaking through the standard responses to “how are you” interactions.
Laughter, humour and jokes are used in a lot of scenarios and for a lot of reasons. To cheer people up, to deflect from something, to communicate in a softer way. Think about how putting a light spin on a conversation can make someone feel more comfortable and ultimately lead to a deeper discussion. Approaching the angle of conversations from a more relatable approach can often yield better results, consider taking short courses such as our ‘Creating a supportive workplace’ E-Learning course or through our free modules such as ‘Empathetic Communication’ or ‘Recognising Mental Ill-Health', to learn the skills that support your goals.
Create Alternatives to Face-to-Face Conversations
In some work environments, some individuals could find it daunting to approach a manager or a colleague to begin what could be a difficult conversation. Especially if prioritising mental health is new for the business. In addition to encouraging open conversations and encouraging important conversations through scheduled one-to-ones or other regular check-ins, think about what other channels could be another easy and less pressurised way for people to check in and share emotions.
Idea #1: Traffic Light Quick-Check
For example, if your workplace has a main entrance, could you place a suggestion box for people to share thoughts, or provide colour-coded cards for people to choose daily or weekly to represent how they are feeling? Individuals could place cards into a box to indicate how they’re feeling - green means good, yellow means okay, and red means struggling. The key here is that it’s a private choice, so it can be returned to at any point in the day whenever an opportunity for privacy is presented, and the manager can then check in with individuals who are feeling yellow or red, but in a non-intrusive way. In a more tech-friendly workplace? Devise a way that this can be done online to help retain confidentiality.
“I noticed you’re in the yellow today – is there anything I can help with?”
If you are starting from scratch when trying to create a more mental health-friendly workplace, something like this can start to help you gauge where your teams are at overall and have people share anonymously before moving on to incorporating names. Practise sharing thoughts and feelings before moving on to opening conversations individually.
Idea #2: On a Scale of 1 to Terrible
In the modern age of technology, could you set up a short 2-question survey and send round to your teams via email, Teams or WhatsApp on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? This questionnaire could be as simple as:
- On a scale of 1-10 how are you doing today?
- Or, if we were to incorporate some humour: On a scale of 1-10 how hard was it to get out of bed this morning?
- Or even: Pick the following:
Today when I arrived at work I was ready to: - A) Say hello to my lovely colleagues
- B) Have three coffees and move on
- C) do my work and leave again
- D) Kick, scream and go back home.
If nothing else, you have opened another optional avenue for your colleagues to express emotions in a less pressurised way. You have used humour to minimise the difference in tone when approaching mental health conversations. You have started to understand the people around you without asking them to share something in a clinical or uncomfortable way.
Idea #3: It’s The Game of Life
Another unique idea to encourage mental health conversations at work can be to gamify your feedback scheme. Whether you are in an office, on a site, or share breakout spaces with your colleagues and teams, we all love to break up the day with a chat or a game, so why not use this innate drive to play and turn it into a way to see how people are doing? Using three large bins, a dart board, or three areas of the room, give everyone a small ball, dart or other object with their name on. Colour-code the bins or allocate each one a sentiment for people as they leave for the day. Sentiments could include “I had a good day today”, “my day was ok” and “today wasn’t great” and open another way that people can communicate emotionally without the formalities.
Ultimately, there are still many workplaces that are caught up in an archaic view of mental health prioritisation. If you’re in a position where you want to make your environment more mental health-friendly but feel up against closed mindsets, reluctance to share, or perhaps push-back on budgets, perhaps try a unique, creative, relatable or humorous way to help the mission of breaking down stigmas on mental health in the workplace. The first step in improving work environments is encouraging people to share, however that feels comfortable for them, before moving on to creating solid support networks that can truly save lives.
These are simple ways to start taking action when it comes to mental health awareness, and with Mental Health Awareness Week starting on the 11th of May we’ll be sharing more tips in the coming weeks to help empower you to become visible, confident, and proactive champions for mental health at work and beyond.
Whether you are ready to fully train members of your team to become designated mental health First Aiders, looking simply to introduce advocacy representatives in the workplace or feel as though you are starting from scratch and want to provide basic levels of awareness into your teams, take a look at our options for mental health training. Our courses are designed to deliver the right coverage of training for your workplace, whether you are experienced at starting important conversations, or just starting out.
Discover the ways that St John Ambulance can help, read more about comprehensive mental health first aid training, advocacy training, E-Learning mental health courses or browse additional mental health resources today.
