Mental Health Strategies 2 | Workplace Mental Health Institute

First Aid for Mental Health Problems – W.A.R.M.

01/08/2018

So you think someone you know maybe experiencing a mental health problem? Then the big question is ‘so what do I do? How do I respond now?

There’s no perfect thing that will always ‘work’ 100% of the time, because people are people, and we are all different, but there are definitely some clear principles, that are considered best practice when responding to someone who might be becoming unwell.

We’ve put together an acronym to help you remember the steps. And it’s called WARM.

It’s a reminder that as you do each of the actions in these steps, you are dealing with a person, a human, being, so be warm and friendly in your approach. Remember to use good body language and non-verbal communication that shows you really care. (If you are a manager, we encourage you to look into running a Workplace Mental Health Masterclass for Leaders in your workplace to make sure your team has the necessary skills. In the meantime, you might want to check the blog ‘How to Ask ‘R U OK?’)

Lets have a look at the WARM steps:

W stands for Watch – look for the signs and symptoms. Be observant.
It doesn’t mean that you have to be going about your day, nervously staring at everyone and looking for signs and symptoms. If you do that, you will start to think everyone has them! But it does mean to just be aware. If you see some things, and start to be concerned, don’t ignore it.

A stands for ASK – Approach the person directly. Ask them. This is the simplest, and best way to respond. By going directly to the person it avoids getting in a situation where you are talking about the person or making decisions about the person without having all the information and without them being involved. By going directly to the person, it can also help to minimise any fear or paranoia they may have bout office gossip.

So how do you ask then? (We deal with these topics more in detail in the Mental Health Essentials course)

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We usually recommend, that if you are able to choose your timing, then before lunchtime tends to be a good idea. That means that after this conversation the person can have a bit of a break before they go back to work.

The conversation might not be a big in depth one, but we want to be prepared just in case it does bring things up for the person.

R stands for Refer – refer on to professional and other help. Here, it is important not to be too eager to jump in with ‘suggestions’ as to what the person should do. Remember, each person will have their own view of what is going on, and the action you think is best, may not resonate with them at all.

So again, questions are best. You can ask things like ‘have you seen anyone about this, or done anything to get some help with it?’. It is quiet possible that they are already getting some professional help.

Or you can ask them ‘what do you think we could do to get some advice with this?’. Notice the ‘we’ language, helps the person to feel like they are not all on their own with this. You’re in it together.

Or you can ask who or what has been helpful in the past? When the person identifies what they think will be useful, they are much more likely to follow through and actually seek help, than if you told them where to go.

Of course, if they really cant think of anything, then you might like to make a couple of suggestions. Make sure to give a few different options, from a few different filters. For example ‘have you thought about seeing a doctor, or a counselor, or even a life coach?’.

Your aim here is to make sure the person knows what options they have available to them, and if possible has agreed to take some steps to get help.

M stands for Monitor – Finally, the last step is Monitor. Check in with them over the next few days or weeks, and continue supporting them by being available to chat or to help with any practical assistance they may need. If they have said they will get some help, just check in and ask how it went. Keep these check-ins casual, and make sure you also talk with them about other, non mental health related things too. You don’t want all your conversations to be about mental health!

So that’s the WARM response. Easy to remember, and easy to do. As long as you follow those steps, you have gone a long way to assisting someone with a mental health problem.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they WILL get help, or that they WILL get better. But remember they are responsible for what they choose to do. You have done your part to help, and followed the best practice we have for responding to someone who may be experiencing a mental health problem. It also means that this person now knows they are not alone. This is very powerful.

If you are ready to get practical, real skills around this subject, our Mental Health Essentials course does just that over one day. Perfect for workplaces of any sort.

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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What Most People Don’t Know About Psychological Injury at Work

22/08/2017

Traditionally, when speaking of Workplace Health and Safety, psychological injury is not something we thought about. But, as many professionals have realized lately, a Workplace Health and Safety strategy is severely incomplete without taking psychological injury into account. (for help creating a Mental Health Workplace Strategy visit www.wmhi.com.au) Psychological injury is also known as psychiatric injury, and it includes all mental, emotional and physical injuries acquired from the place of employment. Employees that suffer from a psychological injury due to an employer’s negligence can take legal steps against their employers, so it is essential to create a safe working environment to prevent such occurrences. Legally, it’s no longer ok to ignore the psychological safety of employees. Managers are now liable.

Yet, how do we know if an employee is at risk of psychological injury at work? One symptom of employees that are suffering from psychological injuries is a noticeable and measurable reduction in their production or in the way they handle, or their inability to handle, emotional issues. For example, they may become acutely defensive even when feedback given in a reasonable manner. Unfortunately, many businesses refuse to recognize that a place of business can have a severe psychological impact on its employees. However, considering that employees in full-time employment spend a significant portion of their time at work,it is clear that a workplace plays a vital role in an employee’s life. As well as their psychological state.

Read more on psychological injury at work and recovery…

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Traditionally, psychological injury was thought to be brought about by stressors in the workplace such as extremely high workloads, difficult employees, unrealistic deadlines or unrewarding work. Under this assumption, it was thought that a combination of stressors in a place of business increased the risk of psychological injury significantly. However, according to recent studies, other crucial factors can affect or cause mental injury at work. According to these studies, relationships at work and the level of support given to employeesis more likely to cause psychological injuries than anything else. In this regard, the less supported, the less valued and the less understood an employee feels at work, the greater the risk of a psychological injury.

This not only indicates that a change of attitude and behavior is required from employers;it also emphasizes the need to establish interpersonal relationships with employees. A positive relationship between employers and their employees creates a platform to handle conflicts well, which reduces the number of psychological injury claims made by employees. Additionally, through positive work relationships, collaborative behavior is encouraged, which promotes the establishment of considerations that can regulate the number of psychological injury cases that may arise.

A business that supports its employees through flexible arrangements makes employees feel valued, which encourages productivity in the personal and business lives of employees. To reduce conflict brought about by psychological injuries, it is essential for employers to create a safe work environment that is free of discriminatory practices and one that fosters positive work relationships between employees of all levels. By instituting training, campaigns and prevention strategies, employees can become more engaged, happier and less inclined to take legal action.

It takes effort, from both the employers and their employees to reduce the instances of injury. But, ultimately, it’s the employers responsibility to take the initiative to create a psychologically safe environment at work.

We help management create psychologically safe environments, and minimise psychological injury, with our many programs. In particular, our flagship course the Workplace Mental Health Masterclass for Leaders. Check it out and see if it can help you too.

Author: Peter Diaz

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Mental Health and Productivity. Why Managers Need Mental Health Courses

15/08/2017

Workplace Mental health is an issue of grave concern. In fact, it is one of the leading causes of absenteeism from work. Mental health problems at work can cause immense suffering to those experiencing them, and those around them. As such, there is an overwhelming need for managers, business owners and employees to address the issue of mental health at work. Managers particularly should play a significant role in promoting mental health among employees. However, it is essential that managers receive the right support to assist them to handle this task efficiently. If we are to empower supervisors and staff to make a positive impact on mental health it will involve giving them the proper training from industry experts and professionals through mental health courses.

A course on mental health would create awareness and understanding among managers, as well as teach them important lessons such as how to categorise common mental health disorders. Besides learning how to classify the signs and symptoms of mental suffering, they would also be counseled on practical strategies that can support members of their organisation.

The major benefits of taking a mental health course include:

Gaining the ability to understand and appreciate the stigma surrounding mental health at work.
Giving employees the confidence to handle clients or workmates suffering from mental health conditions in a humane manner.
Awarding employees and business owners the opportunity to understand the legal requirements surrounding workplace mental health care.
Teaching people techniques and strategies for managing employees with mental conditions.
Improving one’s understanding of stress and how it impacts morale at work.
Reflecting on our own attitude towards mental health problems. If the attitude is a negative one, then we can take measures to change and improve.
Allowing participants to learn possible interventions for workplace mental illnesses.

Read more on workplace mental health strategies…

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The outcome of a good mental health training course should be to help management and their employees create a work environment where personal resilience is enhanced, and the comfort and safety of all employees is protected. This will enable the workforce to respond effectively to the challenges that arise while working, which in turn will enhance their confidence, allowing them to produce their very best.

Organisations often lose out on the expertise of capable workers due to mismanagement. Knowing what to do and how to manage the mental health of teams can be tricky. For most people suffering from mental health conditions, their last resort is often, sadly, a choice between a decline of their mental health or abandoning their jobs. Employers have a duty of care to their employees and investing in a course in mental health is the best way to secure the mental health of a workforce. The training should be practical and applicable so that the psychological safety and wellbeing of the whole organisation and its employees is enhanced. Good workplace mental health is good business and at the Workplace Mental Health Institute we want to help.

Author: Peter Diaz

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Building A Mentally Wealthy Workplace: 7th Pillar

14/11/2016

How does your organisation demonstrate a commitment to developing its mental wealth?A clear tell tale sign is a preference for considered mental health initiatives over band aid solutions. That demonstrates an organisation’s commitment to developing its mental wealth. And these carefully considered and designed mental health initiatives must be ‘wrap around strategies’. That means that your mental health initiatives are, at its basic core, complex and have to take a holistic view of a person’s journey through a mental health problem. As I mentioned in the previous Pillar, awareness programs are useful, but they can’t be the only strategy. Likewise with Employee Assistance Programs. And with anti-bullying and harassment training. And with wellness programs. And so on. Each of these initiatives by themselves is useful, but when used in isolation, they have little sustainable impact.

We need to think more broadly than the bookend strategies of making people aware of the potential for trouble and mopping up after it happens.
You need to look at your prevention strategies. What are those? Are they a part of a complete strategy or an add on?
You need to look at your early intervention strategies. Do they move beyond the basis of EAP referral and leave?
You need to look at your wellness programs. Are they eclectic and are they giving you the results you are after?
You need to look at your leadership development programs. Are they complete?
Do these programs exist? Are they being used?

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Building a mentally wealthy culture doesn’t require a massive bolt on program, but it does require you to ensure the psychological needs of a diverse workforce are catered for. Diverse not just in age, gender or ethnicity, but diversity in work style, talent and life outlook.

Recognition of mental wealth is a paradigm shift. I realise that. So kudos for you still being here, not throwing the book down and running away. What you have been told about leading successfully: the macho, tough leadership style (even when dressed up with some sophistication and political correctness) creates less valuable companies in the long run than displaying genuine compassion and a willingness to work with people to achieve a common goal. This is not a ‘soft’ approach, it’s a proven approach. One that gets results.

And that’s such a game changer. Highly worth it, don’t you think?

Read about all the 7 Pillars of Mentally Healthy Workplace…

Author: Peter Diaz

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Building a Mentally Healthy Workplace: 4th Pillar

26/07/2016

What do mentally wealthy organisations differently to others? Good question, right?

What Mentally wealthy organisations do is they see resilience and wellbeing as an integral part of their culture, in the extraordinary cases – it IS their culture. It’s not just an add on.

Think back to your time in organisations over the past maybe 10 to 20 years or so. How many ‘strategic initiatives’ can you recall? I can think of a stack of them: Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, Employee Onboarding, Activity Based Costing, Management by Objectives, Triple Bottom Line Accounting… And quite a few more. How many of these really stuck and became part of the fabric of the organisation? How many are you actively practicing today?

Probably not many, right?

And this is the problem with bolt on initiatives. The Board or the leadership team will get hold of an idea from somewhere and decide it will be the next silver bullet that’s going to give them a strategic advantage over competitors and transform the industry landscape. Project teams are established, consultants are hired, strategic plans are announced, budgets are approved and work begins. But before long the project team encounters the headwinds of organisational inertia. When push comes to shove, for example when a leader’s bonus rides on hitting a sales target, they will prioritise business as usual over supporting the project team. With bolt on initiatives, what looks like commitment is actually in-principle support, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of ‘the important stuff’.

Read the other Pillars of Mentally Healthy Workplace….

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There is a ROI of 2.3 on average direct correlation between the mental health of your employees and your organisation’s financial performance. It is no-brainer. Therefore it is too important to chance employee mental health to the success of your ‘Wellness Program’ or ‘RUOK Awareness Day’. Mental health built into everything you do cannot be an add-on to what you do. It needs to be in built into everything you do. It needs to be part of the how you think or how you talk in your organization. It needs to permeate your policies. It needs to permeate how you move the organization.

You can cut logs and carry them to the nearest town and then put them on a truck. Or, you can chug the logs onto the river and let the flow take it to the nearest town. Which one is easier? Don’t make your employee mental health initiative a bolt on that you have to expend additional energy to execute. Make it flow by incorporating it into the way your leaders lead.

It can’t be like, “Oh, did we talk about mental health this quarter? We need to put something in the Board report.” No, it happens as a matter of course. It’s what we do. It’s not a bolt-on, it’s totally integrated.

That’s it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this Pillar.

Talk soon and have a mentally healthy day.

Author: Peter Diaz

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Top 3 Tips for HR Managers

13/07/2016

Recently, I was asked by a National HR Director for three tips she could give to a meeting of HR Leaders. She only had one hour. Here are my top three tips (mind you, these are the ones that come to the top of my mind straight away but by no means the only ones! Any surprises?

The top three tips I would give are:

1. Don’t be in a hurry to send people home
– often, when someone has expressed some problems with mental health, managers panic and their first response is to send someone home. In fact, that is not necessarily the best thing for the person’s well being nor for the business. If the person goes home, they can start ruminating about challenges at work, feeling like a failure for not being able to perform at the level they want to, and returning to work becomes harder and harder. Statistically, once a person has been absent due to stress of mental ill-health for more than 3 days, the likelihood of them returning to work is very slim. We know staying at work is better for their mental health. And for the business, when someone has gone home, others have to pick up the extra work, leading to more pressure on those team members, and resentment towards the absent person (or their manager). It’s much better if you can work with the person to negotiate a way they can stay at work – perhaps some reasonable adjustments are needed for a certain period of time. But in order to navigate these conversations, managers have to have good skills and a solid understanding of the complexities of mental health issues.

Read more on workplace mental health and wellbeing….

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2. Play nice and be kind
– given the research shows that between 20-30% of people will experience a mental health issue each year, it is not anything to be frowned upon, or which should be a surprise for managers. It doesn’t discriminate according to your job position either. It just as likely could be a supervisor, a senior manager, or the CEO who is going through something challenging like this. So when we are responding to mental health in the workplace, we need to consider how we would like to be treated if it was us? The relationship that the staff member has with their direct supervisor is the most critical indicator of how a mental health problem will impact the workplace. Whether it is a small matter that gets dealt with early, or whether it unravels and becomes a psychological injury claim. Managers need to watch their own frustration with people experiencing mental ill-health, in order to manage it in the best way possible. This takes a high degree of resilience and emotional intelligence.

3. Have higher expectations of people with mental health problems
– returning again to the statistics of 20-30% or people, that means that up to a third of your workforce may be experiencing mental health problems in any one year. Mental health problems may impact on their work, but for many people work becomes a safe haven, where they can feel productive and contribute. Just having a mental health problem does not necessarily mean the person has lost any intelligence, skills or capability. However they may need some extra support. At the WMHI our position is that we need to support employees to meet the expected level of performance, rather than lower the expectations. This is another conversation that managers need to be able to have skilfully.

That is what I’d like to communicate to your managers too. If this sounds right to you, I’d be happy to have a chat with you about these concepts if you think it would be useful.

Author: Peter Diaz

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Are Managers Being Set Up to Fail?

05/03/2015

I probably don’t have to remind you that leading a team is a tough gig.

We place huge expectations on our leaders to meet budgets, hit deadlines, come up with creative solutions to keep demanding clients happy… The list goes on.

And I often question whether we’re doing enough to set our leaders up for success.

A leader gets things done through their people, and you’ll know that the best leaders create teams of high performers. Teams that keep coming up with the goods even when the odds are against them.

But as the pace of change and the market intensifies, it’s getting harder to do that. Team members are under constant pressure – they’re stressed, they’re exhausted, and in increasing numbers developing or suffering through with a mental illness.

The problem is, even as we expect our leaders to produce a great team effort, we aren’t giving them the tools to manage anxiety, depression and substance abuse-related mental conditions in their teams.

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How do they deal with the, at times, irritable, or withdrawing behaviour of a mentally ill team member?

What do they do when an employee tells them they’re considering suicide?

How do they return the team to high performance without being insensitive, or without the risk of harassing or bullying an individual, or ostracising them, or making their mental state worse?

We know that 1 in 5 employees has a mental illness, and research around the world is telling us a worrying fact:

Individuals are hiding their symptoms because they don’t have faith that their leadership will treat them well.

The Workplace Mental Health MasterClass for Leaders is our answer to this problem. Over an intensive 1 day format, leaders will receive the practical skills from qualified workplace mental health professionals, to address mental health in their teams.

They’ll know the warning signs to look for, how to positively address the behaviour and performance of a mentally ill team member, and they’ll know how to handle the ongoing conversation on mental health matters within their teams.

Click here to see what you’ll learn in the Workplace Mental Health MasterClass for Leaders or please share this blog to a colleague who may benefit from these skills.

Author: Peter Diaz

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5 Signs You May Have a Mentally Ill Team Member

26/02/2015

A certain amount of stress is normal, even desirable, in the workplace. But there are some red flags that point to a mental illness. Here are the 5 signs to look for:

Getting into arguments with co-workers over trivial matters
Reacting to disappointing news or events with angry outbursts
Going out of their way to avoid people, or changing the subject when asked if they’re ok
Difficulty completing tasks that previously they’d have no trouble with
General irritability and prickliness

These behaviours not only affect the performance of the person, but they cause disruption and conflict in the team.

If you’re faced with managing mental illness in the workplace, we’re running a 1-day Workplace Mental Health Masterclass for Leaders in all the capital cities in Australia as well as many other countries.

We’ll teach you exactly what to do and what to say to help someone who’s struggling with mental illness become a high performer.

Find out more signs and symptoms….

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Author: Peter Diaz

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Tag Archives: Mental Health Strategies

First Aid for Mental Health Problems – W.A.R.M.

Don't forget to subscribe to our monthly eMag - WorkLife

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

What Most People Don’t Know About Psychological Injury at Work

Don't forget to subscribe to our monthly eMag - WorkLife

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

Mental Health and Productivity. Why Managers Need Mental Health Courses

Don't forget to subscribe to our monthly eMag - WorkLife

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

Building A Mentally Wealthy Workplace: 7th 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.

Building a Mentally Healthy Workplace: 4th Pillar

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Top 3 Tips for HR Managers

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Are Managers Being Set Up to Fail?

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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.

5 Signs You May Have a Mentally Ill Team Member

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