Following on from the previous video on managing long-term sickness absence, Helen discusses mental health issues in the workplace. Helen makes the point that it’s important for organisations to foster an environment where there is open communication about mental health issues and that they need to have some kind of employee assistance programme whereby employees can raise issues that they have confidentially and get help and support for those issues.

Transcript

Mental health issues are becoming increasingly complex and difficult for HR professionals to deal with.

Yes, they are. I was reading something the other day and it said that mental health issues are costing UK employers 100 billion pounds a year. So, it is a problem now, and it seems to be a growing problem.

The most usual issue we do come across would be stress or work-related stress, which is very difficult because quite often employers are not sure what they should be doing and employees sometimes are not sure what they should be doing either.

But if an employee goes off sick with stress, whether it's stress or work-related stress, you should just be dealing with that in the same way as you would be dealing with any other long-term sickness issue. We dealt with that in a lot of detail on one of the previous videos.

Is it appropriate to contact somebody if they are off on sick leave because of stress?

Well, it really depends on the circumstance, but if they're off on sick leave with stress and unable to come to work, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are unable to meet with you to discuss it. And remember, when we're dealing with long-term sickness, we're talking about four to six weeks. So, really, you're not contacting somebody when they are just gone off sick and probably their stress is very acute.

But the key issue is if somebody is off with work-related stress, then you have to contact them because you have to address the stress, you have to investigate it, and you have to try and deal with it before that employee is ever going to be able to come back to work.

What if an employee tells you that they are too ill to attend a meeting?

That's not unusual. That quite often happens and our clients would phone us about that very problem. Perhaps delay it for a week or two, and then write them again and say, "It's now been a couple of weeks since we first asked you to attend an ill-health review. Are you in a better position to do so?"

But if they are still insisting that they can't attend, that they're too ill to attend, then what I would do is write them and ask their permission to contact their doctor. And when you are writing to the doctor, one of the questions you're asking is "Are they able to attend an ill-health review?"

If somebody is off on sick leave with a mental health issue and you have received a medical report, how do you then proceed?

You arrange to meet them to discuss the medical report and you move through the capability procedure. And we dealt with that in quite a lot of detail in one of the previous videos, which was handling and managing long-term absence.

What would happen if an employee, rather than being off on long-term sick absence for mental ill health, is taking long short regular periods of absence due to mental health?

Well, you would deal with it really in the same way as you would deal with a long-term sickness, in that you would sit the employee done, you would discuss it with them, you would see if there's anything that you could do to resolve it. You may indeed have to write to their doctor, or you may have to write an independent specialist to get further information on their condition. They say it's due to mental health, but indeed it may not be. It may be just that they have got reasons that they don't want to come to work.

So, you need to decide, "Am I dealing with this through the disciplinary procedure, or am I dealing with it through the capability procedure?" If it is just regular absences from work, which are not related or potentially related to a disability, then you would deal with it through the disciplinary procedure. But if it is related to a disability, you should be dealing with it through the capability procedure.

Surely most jobs carry a certain amount of stress.

Most jobs carry a certain amount of pressure. We all need a certain amount to pressure, so the experts tell us, to even get ourselves out of bed in the mornings. But it is the reaction to that pressure that cause a stress if people have difficulty with it.

I must admit I was reading recently that 19% of us at any one time are suffering form some form of mental issues, which could well be stress at work. So, it's very usual, and companies need to understand how to deal with it. They need to look at the triggers that could be causing stress. Are they heaping too much workload onto individual employees? Have we got some managers who are unreasonable and maybe are not treating employees entirely correctly? And also then looking at individuals who normally were well performing, who are now not. This could be an indication that something is wrong.

But also, employees need to feel that they can be open about any mental health issues that they have. And they need to feel that they're going to be able to come to their company or their HR department and it is going to be dealt with confidentially, they're going to be shown empathy, and they're not going to be stigmatised because of their mental health issues.

They may feel that they will or they may feel their career prospects will be damaged because they admit to some underlying mental health issues. So, companies need to foster an environment where there is open communication and it's got to come from the very top.

Tell us about employee assistance programmes

One of the things that could be very helpful to companies is to have some kind of employee assistance programme, because those are mechanisms whereby employees can raise issues that they have confidentially and get help and support for those issues. And I was quite surprised to understand that only about 6% of companies actually have an employee assistance programme in place.