If workplace culture remains negative, no burnout interventions or wellbeing strategy will be effective, suggests Dr Tarun Gupta. He explains why employers should have the ‘shared responsibility model’ in mind when considering employee wellbeing.
There has never been greater awareness of mental health in the workplace; consider the benefits, support, awareness initiatives, resilience training and stress risk management being taken seriously by employers now.
So why are mental health-related sickness absence and economic inactivity at an all-time high? And why is the UK at risk of becoming a burnt-out nation?
Arguably, with greater awareness comes greater collective responsibility to create the conditions for positive mental health, rather than only addressing individual concerns and overlooking the factors that cause problems.
As a GP with a specialist interest in occupational health and psychiatry, I understand that if workplace culture remains negative, burnout interventions or wellbeing initiatives are unlikely to be effective. Addressing the negative culture first is paramount, and this requires a collective effort.
Shared responsibility
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The shared responsibility model was recently launched by Legal & General’s Wellbeing Advisory Board; a body of cross-industry experts, spanning clinical, occupational, vocational rehabilitation and business consulting fields.
The model centres on a partnership between employers and employees to improve wellbeing. Through various tools, techniques and action plans, it helps employers address workplace culture first and foremost – in a way that considers burnout prevention – before thinking about mental health and wellbeing services, insurance and interventions.
Shared responsibility helps turn attention to the primary layer – the culture – and make it work for, instead of against, people and business. This also helps to avoid the medicalisation of unhappiness.
This is about all of us – employers and employees – taking ownership and control; recognising that positive mental health comes from good work and working conditions. And that stress isn’t always a bad thing.
Value of wellbeing investment rests on culture
Culture represents the foundation on which everything else is built.
In our view, it is no longer enough to view wellbeing services, insurance and interventions in isolation. They represent a very important secondary layer. But getting maximum value out of all those things necessitates an ongoing focus on this primary layer.
Shared responsibility helps turn attention to the primary layer – the culture – and make it work for, instead of against, people and business.”
Right now there is a dichotomy in ‘mental health’ that we need to talk about more to meet the evolving needs of people and organisations. These include the reduction of mental health-related absence and the improvement of employee engagement and performance.
On the one hand, mental health awareness has improved over the years, but so has the use of the term ‘mental health’ as a generalisation; one that lumps together two ends of a wide spectrum, from mental wellbeing to mental illness.
Although this awareness is helping improve support for those suffering from mental illness, this generalisation has arguably also led to the over-medicalisation of normal reactions to everyday stresses and strains, as pointed out by the Prime Minister recently. The appropriate intervention for the latter is, first and foremost, good work; the kind of work and working environment that is beneficial for health.
Consequently, employers – and everyone who supports them, including intermediaries, insurers, occupational health and wellbeing professionals – need to take a ‘culture first’ approach to mental health in the workplace.
As an insurer, the support we can offer employers to help with this shift ranges from analytical tools to quantify the impact of employee wellbeing on productivity, to action plans that help employers take a shared responsibility approach to burnout prevention.
We can also provide vocational rehabilitation as part of a group income protection policy – this has a crucial role in helping the balance between fixing the individual and fixing the working conditions, so that return to work following illness or injury is sustainable.
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We all have a role to play in improving the wellbeing of our workforce, but we need to remember that it starts with culture before bringing in the tools to support struggling employees.
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