Workplace 6 | Workplace Mental Health Institute

Building a Mentally Wealthy Workplace: 6th Pillar

17/10/2016

I was chatting about life and medicine with an experienced doctor recently and he looked at me intently and said ‘you know what Peter? Wherever there is a human being there is a variable. We never have any certainty. Anything can happen’ He was talking about medicine specifically but doesn’t this also apply to any other area of life? Organisations need to understand this if they are to respond appropriately to mental health problems. How do they do that?

When an organisation makes informed responses, as opposed to knee-jerk, simplistic actions, it demonstrates the principle of ‘understanding complexity’.

People are complex. That much is obvious. But it’s depressing how quick people are to label someone who is different to them. My wife loves structure: a room, computer, a desk, somewhere to focus and crank stuff out. But to me, just talking about it… ugh. Give me a laptop at the beach, anytime, or a coffee shop, and then my mind starts flowing. To me, I couldn’t imagine putting someone at a desk and asking them to sit there for eight hours a day – surely that would be torture or they must be incredibly dull and lacking creativity. While to someone like Emi, wanting to take a laptop to the beach looks like some sort of weird learning disorder / ADD thing, lack of commitment, or simply ‘taking the piss’. And therefore we’d better put some controls in place to make sure they work and act how I think they should. That control rankles and it forces the person to perform from a position of weakness, not in a way that amplifies their talents. This is where we need to examine ourselves and say, “Are we unfairly judging someone because they are different? Is there a mental health disorder here, or a killer hidden talent?

Remember the canary. What at first instance may look like a weakness, may in fact be a sign of strength.

We are starting to see organisations respond to the mental health challenges in our workplaces. You can see it in initiatives designed to build awareness, like ‘R U OK?Day’. Building awareness is a good first step, but what happens when you ask someone, ‘are you ok?’, and the answer is ‘No.’ Awareness is powerful, but without knowing what to do next, it’s next to useless.

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I’ve often reflected on the role of the manager being ‘to bring certainty and structure to unstructured situations.’ That’s a tough job. We are surrounded by unstructured situations. It’s called life. I think it was John Lennon that said, ‘Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans’. We can expect things not to go exactly to plan. And when things don’t go to plan, managers like to have a process for figuring out what’s wrong and how to fix it. That’s smart! Unfortunately people are incredibly complex. They have different goals and values. Different work styles and preferences. Different belief structures. And events affect them differently. There is no manual for ‘fixing’ a mental health problem – only a range of approaches you can try, some of which seem to work better than others. Would you believe the professionals still disagree about what mental illness even is? They argue amongst themselves and they write long, impressive papers about it, but in the end, there isn’t a consensus.

The point I’m trying to make is that, for a manager, there isn’t much to be gained by being able to diagnose a mental illness and prescribe a treatment plan. It’s not your job to do so. But by recognising that people and situations are complex, taking a step back, and coming at the problem with an enquiring mind, and an intention to help the individual, you can achieve a lot.

Take care, and talk soon.

Author: Peter Diaz

Peter Diaz is the CEO of Workplace Mental Health Institute. He’s an author and accredited mental health social worker with senior management experience. Having recovered from his own experience of bipolar depression, Peter is passionate about assisting organisations to address workplace mental health issues in a compassionate yet results-focussed way. He’s also a Dad, Husband, Trekkie and Thinker.

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When Fear & Stress In The Workplace Raise Their Ugly Heads

29/09/2016

Ever wondered how people screw themselves up?
Simple, we do it because we are afraid. And it’s ok. Fear is a natural survival mechanism. It’s a good thing, designed to protect us. But what happens when fear runs rampant? When your body reacts to a deadline at work with the same intensity as if it was being chased by a T-Rex? Then that’s not so good anymore, is it?

And it’s insane. It’s been said that 98% of the things we are scared of never come to fruition. Thank goodness, right? So, why do we make problems out of things that are highly unlikely to, ever, come true? It’s puzzling, isn’t it?

And when we keep doing that, fear, and anxiety turn into stress. And we all know what stress can do to our mental, not to mention physical health.

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But, did you know that stress is actually good for you? Weird, right? But hear me out for a second…

Without some level of stress, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. We wouldn’t bother going to work, and we certainly wouldn’t take on challenges and strive to better ourselves.

However it’s the amount of stress that’s the key.

The Performance-Arousal Curve shows us that performance increases with stress to a point, beyond which additional stress becomes counterproductive. Spend too long past the optimum point in the stress curve and we risk exhaustion, anxiety and eventually a breakdown.

But here’s where it gets even more complicated. The ‘optimum’ level of stress is not the same for everyone! That’s right, each individual will have their own version of this graph. But the good news is, it’s not set in stone. It can change.

As leaders, we want to build motivated, resilient and high performing teams. And wouldn’t it be great if our teams could do two things;

First, adjust their ‘optimum stress level’, so they are more resilient in the face of inevitable pressures and challenges.

And second, self monitor and self correct if approaching overload and burnout? That’s what I’d like to see in our workplaces. That’s my vision.

In order to achieve this, workplaces need to teach team members how to recognise when a colleague tips into the right of the curve, and how to catch that person before they start to spiral down.

BUT in order to be truly effective, this education needs to have a strong Recovery approach. At the Workplace Mental Health Institute, everything we do has a strong Recovery approach applied to the workplace. We focus on recovery not illness. This may seem a subtle distinction, but it’s a vital one. We don’t teach people how to look for problems that aren’t there; we teach them how to minimise risk, and confidently identify & deal with the typical warning signs of the most common mental illnesses. So their teammates can get the help they need and recover. (And the evidence is now pretty clear that the overwhelming majority of people DO recover)

We don’t need to teach employees and leaders to be mental health practitioners, but we can give them the basic skills to intervene early, before things get out of hand.

Btw, if you’re responsible for managing the mental health of your employees, and you need some help, please hit me up. We can help you meet your compliance obligations, foster a happy, high-performing environment, and significantly reduce risk.

Author: Peter Diaz

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What Does ‘Recovery’ Mean?

22/09/2016

Often, when I deal with health professionals and people in training, I get a range of responses when they learn that people can recover from mental disorder. Some are surprised, some intrigued by the concept since they’ve never heard it before and others oppose the idea of recovery with a vengeance. Why? What’s going on?

The concept of ‘Recovery’ from mental health problems has been around for hundreds of years, and yet for many people, the fact that people do recover from mental disorders is something that still surprises many people.

There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the traditional model of psychiatry has explicitly stated that people do not recover. We now have oodles of research showing that this simply isn’t true. But nonetheless, the misconception persists.

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The term ’Recovery’ has a long political, social, and clinical history, and its meaning has been much debated particularly over the last 10 to 20 years. I won’t go into the details now, (I could write a whole book on it, and probably will one day).

For now, what you need to know is that the term ‘Recovery’ has particular meanings within the mental health sector (even though many working in that sector still do not understand it fully).

So here is my attempt to summarize some pretty complex ideas, into a few simple explanations of what ‘Recovery’ means to us here at the Workplace Mental Health Institute:

The Recovery approach adopted by the Workplace Mental Health Institute emphasizes and supports a person’s potential for recovery.

1. We believe Recovery is not only possible, it’s probable.

1. Research over the last hundred years is showing that on average around 57% of people with severe mental health problems do recover. And the statistics are much better for people with less severe mental distress, those who get help early, and with newer therapeutic modalities now available.

2. We view mental distress as mostly psychological, social or spiritual in nature, not as an illness. Though there maybe physical consequences and interactions.

1. Treatment therefore can come from a range of alternatives. We are all unique and one size does not fit all.

3. We focus on ability, not disability.

1. A person experiencing mental distress has strengths, skills and personal characteristics despite their current emotional state. Research indicates that when people recover from a mental health problem, they are actually more productive at work than they were before becoming unwell, due to their increased resilience, and strategies learned.

4. We define Recovery as the absence of severe or abnormal distress, and the presence of positive emotions and wellness.

1. Everyone has some stress from time to time, but if mental ill-health is defined as severe emotional distress, then recovery would mean the person no longer experiences that level of distress.

Author: Peter Diaz

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Building a mentally healthy workplace: 5th Pillar

14/09/2016

Mutual responsibility is another trait of mentally wealthy workplaces, where a culture of blame is replaced by a culture of shared concern.

From a workplace safety perspective, if someone sees a cord in the office over which someone could trip, whose responsibility is it to do something about it?

The person who left the cord there? Of course, but what if they didn’t realise it was unsafe?

Is it the workplace safety manager? Sure, she’s responsible for making the organisation safer but she’s working interstate for the week and knows nothing about the cord.

Is it the cord-leaving employee’s manager? He’s accountable for the performance of his employees, but he’s been in meetings all morning and hasn’t spotted the cord either.

The answer of course is, the person who saw the cord.

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Hopefully you twigged to the metaphor. Everyone shares responsibility for mental health – their own and those of their team members. We must move from a culture of blame:

“The employee should have looked after their own health so they could present fit for work.”

“That team should have looked after its own a lot better.”

“That manager could have avoided this by not being such a slave driver.”

“My organisation didn’t provide me with a physically and psychologically safe workplace.”

…to one of shared concern :

“Yes all of those statements are true, but it’s no one person’s responsibility. We’re human beings in the same plane at the same time, and if someone is unwell, let’s take care of each other.”

It’s not all about the manager and they shouldn’t feel the need to move heaven and earth for someone with a mental health issue. Likewise the person with a mental health issue is not a victim. They’re not powerless. They are also responsible for their side of the deal. It’s a mature, balanced way of thinking. And it empowers everybody.

Talk soon and have a mentally healthy day.

Author: Peter Diaz

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‘Work-Life Balance’ is a trap

26/08/2016

A colleague of mine was putting together some guidelines for her company about how to minimize workplace stress, and stay mentally and emotionally well at work, and she asked me to have a look over it and provide some feedback.

Looking at the list of strategies her company had come up with, I noticed that about 90% of them focused on things like limiting work hours to the 8 hour shift, making sure to ‘switch off’ from work as soon as you leave, not accessing work emails and phones outside of work hours, and basically adhering to a strict distinction between “work time” and “life” time. Now this isn’t an uncommon idea, we’ve all heard of the phrase ‘work-life balance’, but let’s delve in a bit deeper.

If you look at the language used in this expression and the subconscious connotations it sends, you might come to the conclusion that it would be better not to use the phrase at all, and definitely not promote it.

Firstly, when we juxtapose two ideas like this next to each other, we are implying that they are opposite of each other, or at least very distinct and different elements. This is especially dangerous when we compare ‘work’ and ‘life’. Let me ask you – what is the opposite of life? …. It’s ‘death’, right? So by juxtaposing work and life, we are actually equating ‘work’ with death! Are you not alive at work? When did ‘work’ become a bad thing?

Now I know this isn’t what is intended when people use the expression, or recommend it to others, but, psychologically, this interpretation can be made very quickly and subconsciously, without us really paying any conscious attention to it. After all, it’s not what we mean, but what is being heard.

If we really buy into the idea of work-life balance, it often is not long before we experience ‘life’ as good, and ‘work’ as bad, and then it makes sense to want to put some limits and boundaries around how long we spend in that ‘bad’ place. As a manager, is that the message you want to send your staff?

But what if work wasn’t bad at all? After all, the research shows that overall, work is good for your mental health and for recovery from mental distress. And what if work was simply a part of life? What if you even enjoyed, looked forward to, and found fulfillment in your work? Would you want to limit how long you spent in that state?

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Now of course, our lives are rich and full of different aspects. It is important, and most people get a great sense of fulfillment from spending time, energy and attention on other things too, like family, friends, health, travel, hobbies, etc. We should make sure we do have time for these activities. But there is inherent danger in separating work from these areas, and viewing it as a negative part of life.

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Our recommendation would be to find work that you do enjoy, and is fulfilling, where you are not spending each day watching the clock and measuring, to make sure you give no more than you have to. If you love what you’re doing its not work anyway.

If you look at the people who are very successful in their field of endeavor, whether its business, sports, creative arts, parenting, or anything else, they don’t usually stick to a minimum number of hours. They don’t need to ‘switch off’ afterwards, because they love thinking and talking about their passion.

So, next time you catch yourself talking about ‘work-life balance’, think about this. It’s all ‘life’ – there are 24 hours a day and your life is made up of how you choose to spend your time. I hope you’re doing something you enjoy.

And if you’re a manager, I’m sure you appreciate a team of people who enjoy doing what they do, and are flexible enough to take on some additional responsibilities from time to time, or do some overtime occasionally. And of course, as a manager who is conscious of mental health and wellbeing, you wouldn’t take advantage of that flexibility, and you would appreciate and recognize that person’s contribution.

Author: Emi Golding

Emmaline (Emi) Golding is a registered psychologist and Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. With experience both at the frontline and in Senior Management positions within mental health services, Emi is passionate about educating and expanding people’s knowledge of mental health issues, particularly within workplaces. For her own well being, Emi loves to dance and spend time with friends. She also enjoys learning languages and travelling to new and exciting places around the world.

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What Can YOU Do About Stress at Work?

15/08/2016

When it comes to workplace stress, and what to do about it, most people, most managers, will start to think about things in the workplace environment. Things that I would call ‘external factors’ like workload, overtime hours, the physical environment, etc. And these are all good considerations.

Yes, we should look at them. But very rarely is any attention paid to the ‘internal factors’. Those qualities, characteristics, or skills that reside inside each individual, and impact upon how much stress they will experience, regardless of the external environment. You see, in the same workplace, given the same conditions, different people will experience different levels of stress. Some people thrive on a challenge, work non stop and love doing it! Where as others seem to fall apart at the same challenges. There are individual differences, but that’s not to say that they are necessarily fixed. The studies are indicating that although people may be born with different sensitivities, and have different experience in their upbringing, personal resilience can be learned, like any other skill.

Therefore, when people respond differently to a pressure-filled environment, like many workplaces are, that is due to a combination of things relevant to the individual.

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Think of the analogy to the camel carrying straws on it’s back. We can carry only so much weight before we start to feel a bit strained by it all, and our knees start to shake.

But if we’re the camel, we can also build our muscles so that we become stronger, and able to carry more weight with ease. And that is ‘personal resilience’ or ‘emotional fitness’. If we do certain things to build our emotional stamina, when life (or work) does throw that extra challenge your way, you’ll be much more able to handle it in your stride.

We recently released our on line short course called ‘Creating Personal Resilience‘, which introduces people to some of those techniques that can be used to minimise stress and build emotional stamina or resilience. It’s designed with workplaces in mind, but really, the strategies are tools that can be used in any area of life – after all, we’re still human wherever we are, right?

Building your own personal resilience, focussing on those internal factors, is particularly helpful for those people who might not be in a position to change their work environment. Similarly for managers, if you can’t make changes to the workplace itself, why not think about helping your team members to develop their emotional fitness to better handle the challenges.

Author: Peter Diaz

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Workplace Stress – what are we really talking about here?

10/08/2016

‘Workplace Stress’ is a term I am hearing people use more and more lately. And I like it. It highlights the fact that anybody can experience stress or distress in the workplace.

You see, the Workplace Mental Health Institute specialises in the field of workplace mental health, and when we think about mental health, we think about mental health at every stage of the continuum. Let me explain:

‘Mental Health’ doesn’t just refer to people who are severely distressed, who have perhaps have been diagnosed with a serious mental disorder, or are having an acute mental health emergency.

‘Mental Health’ also refers to people who may be feeling a bit down, a bit anxious about something happening in their life, or just going through a rough patch. We would also describe that as someone experiencing some mental health problems at the moment.

But not only that, mental health can also be used at the other end of the scale (in fact ‘health’ is usually considered a good thing right!!!). So, looking after your ‘mental health’, can mean the person who is coping really well with life, happy, fulfilled, and waking up every morning feeling positive about work and life in general.

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You see, when we think about it this way, mental health is relevant to everyone. We all sit somewhere along that scale all the time. We move up and down that scale too – it’s not fixed.

I think sometimes when we talk about ‘mental health at work’, people tend to assume we’re talking about the severe end – when everything goes wrong, when someone is suicidal, or has an episode at work. And that if that is not happening, then everything is OK.

But that’s not it. Not at all. There are plenty of people who may not yet be suffering enough for it to show up as a crisis, but have no doubts, it is still impacting on them personally, on their productivity, on their relationships with team mates and their manager. This ‘workplace stress’ needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed quickly – before it escalates into something much more serious. In my next article, I’ll look at some of the different approaches to dealing with it.

But for now, remember ‘workplace mental health’ is a constant. It always exists, its just a matter of where along that continuum it is right now, for any one person, or for the whole group. And depending where it is on that continuum, there are different mental health activities which need to be happening (more on that soon too).

Author: Emi Golding

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How is your workplace’s Mental Wealth?

08/08/2016

Back in 2014 I coined the new term ‘Mental Wealth’. Workplace Mental Wealth describes the business potential of an organisation, as a direct result of how well it fosters the mental health of its people. But what is it exactly?

It’s a measure of your organisation’s ability to create, collaborate, problem solve and take initiative. It’s a measure of your team’s resilience and ability to keep going when things are tough and uncertain. These ‘soft’ factors are more important these days than ever. It’s the passion, creativity and collaborative efforts of an organisation’s people that creates wealth for shareholders.

Mentally wealthy workplaces display the following characteristics:

People are focused, creative and highly productive, and free of debilitating chronic stress and anxiety
The dynamic between people in an organisation is one of respect and inclusion, where people feel free to voice opinions and contribute ideas, for which they are valued as an employee and as a person
Leaders truly recognise the value of people, encourage diversity in values and styles, and actively curtail behaviours that diminish or demean others
There is a positive organisational climate, absent of bullying & harassment, mental injury, stress claims and mental health crises

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How does your organisation measure up?

If you are interested in developing your management team so they can create a mentally wealthy workplace, then the Leaders Masterclass will help. Contact the office for more information at admin@wmhi.com.au

Author: Peter Diaz

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Why do so many workplaces fail at mental health?

01/08/2016

There seems to be this idea floating about in the business world that in order to be profitable and productive, one needs to be hard and tough. Yet another contradictory idea seems to be that mental health is fluffy, soft, weak. Many people’s idea of good mental health is extreme. One where people have full love, consensus and agreement for all. Like everyone holding hands and singing Kumbayah. Nothing could be further from what’s required to promote and maintain a workplace’s mental wealth. Maybe that’s why so many organisations and leaders do so poorly at mental health. Either they adopt the “toughen up! take a spoonful of cement” approach, or they go too far the other way, with a “touchy, feely, anything goes” approach.

Meanwhile, 1 in 5 Australians suffer from a mental disorder and countless others detest going to work. (The stats are similar in other developed nations by the way). How has it become such a pervasive problem in our organisations and why isn’t more being done about it? To understand why, we need to look at the dynamics between the players in our organisations and ask ourselves what might be stopping them from taking action.

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The prevailing management style through much of the last couple of centuries has been to keep a professional distance from staff members. The manager’s job was to set the direction and manage the performance of the employee, and the employee’s job was to reliably perform their tasks to the best of their ability. It’s a similar relationship to that between a machine and it’s operator, which is not surprising, given much of the early work was done by men on assembly lines in factories. Employees were cogs in a machine, so to speak, and much of the management and HR thinking was (and still is) centred around ensuring enough employees are available to maintain production, and that they perform reliably and at maximum efficiency. It would be ridiculous for an operator to ask his machine, ‘Are you ok?’. Similarly, many managers today feel that asking an employee about their mental state is not appropriate – it’s too personal, or taboo, or simply ‘not my job’.

The reality is that the prevailing management paradigm is fundamentally not equipped to deal with mental health issues. And that’s the main reason so many workplaces fail. A new paradigm is needed, for a new world of work.

Author: Peter Diaz

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Category Archives: Workplace

Building a Mentally Wealthy Workplace: 6th Pillar

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Expert insights and tips on how to build resilient and mentally healthy workplace cultures delivered straight to your inbox each month.

When Fear & Stress In The Workplace Raise Their Ugly Heads

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What Does ‘Recovery’ Mean?

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Building a mentally healthy workplace: 5th Pillar

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‘Work-Life Balance’ is a trap

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What Can YOU Do About Stress at Work?

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Expert insights and tips on how to build resilient and mentally healthy workplace cultures delivered straight to your inbox each month.

Workplace Stress – what are we really talking about here?

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How is your workplace’s Mental Wealth?

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Why do so many workplaces fail at mental health?

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