Employer’s Guide to Mental Health: How to Make Reasonable Adjustments at Work

More than ever employees are willing to speak openly about experiencing stress, anxiety, trauma. However, the employer’s response doesn’t match the employees’ expectation of support. For employers, experience and skill may challenge their confidence and ability to fully engage in the conversation, understand what their role and responsibilities are, or how to start a conversation broaching the subject when concerned about an employee’s mental health.

One in four people in their lifetime will be impacted by mental ill health, and one in five will experience suicidal thoughts. It’s a silent, growing, pandemic. In positive news there have been huge steps forward in a generation – someone who was typically quiet unsociable, may have been considered a quiet and introverted person. However, through increased awareness today, changes in a person’s usual behaviour such as withdrawal from social engagements and interactions could be a sign that they are struggling with their mental health and may need support for employers to truly embrace their obligation under the Health and Safety at Work Act focusing on employee’s wellbeing, there needs to be more awareness of what mental ill health actually is.

Early Indicators – Mental Health

In most cases, Mental Ill Health can be identified through the casual absence process. People may be taking time off work to rest or avoid others, and although it could be recommended that time away from triggering situations can be positive, it may not wholly resolve the issues.

When somebody has time off for a physical injury, for example, they’ve broken their leg, naturally we know what to do, usually it would be “Oh, I’m going to need to make sure that they can get the lift to get up to the second floor to work”. But when it’s something that you can’t see it’s a little bit more challenging to be able to truly understand if somebody needs reasonable adjustments. It’s also incredibly easy to overlook, especially because mental ill health symptoms are all unique and personal. One solution may support and fix a challenge for one person, however, following the same approach with someone else could open a whole new challenge. The only solution is meaningful, individual and open conversation.

What should you do?

First of all, complete your return-to-work interviews!

Your return-to-work engagement is really important, If the COVID pandemic taught us anything, it’s that people get ill. We can’t stop that from happening, but what we can do is put reasonable expectations and adjustments in place to help reduce the need to take unnecessary time off. A positive and successful Return to work meeting should leave the involved parties understanding the actions and expectations in reducing the need to take time off work unexpectedly moving forward.

A common expectation we see is ensuring the employees seeks medical support. Following up on return-to-work actions, such as going to the GP is an important and often overlooked tool. It’s all too easy for any of us to say, ‘yes I will go to the GP’, but as leaders, if we get into the habit of setting measurable targets that could help improve a person ability to create coping mechanisms and wellness, we may help minimise the risk of a mental health crisis.

Not only this, ensuring the correct information is recorded can help fulfil your obligation under the Health and Safety at Work Act – If your Forklift Truck driver has been prescribed sleeping tablets with side effects to help them manage stress induced insomnia – you need to know!

Ask openly if anything in the workplace is contributing towards their ill health – very often the answer will be no. But on occasion if could be that they are struggling to deal with normal workplace conflict – are the usual management meeting debates leaving them feeling anxious? If the answer is yes – you might need to make a reasonable adjustment for a period of time, until that person is in a place of resilience, or until they’re getting help to support them in dealing with the core ill health.

If an absence continues or is repeated, it’s very important to look at previous return to work records and continuously review the expectations and adjustments made. Has that employee done everything that they possibly should have in line with those expectations to reduce the absences? Have you as an employer made the adjustments required and were they adequate and relevant? Have both parties tried everything they can?

For example, if you’ve set the expectation for the employee to go and get a GP appointment, and they go off again two weeks later, and when they come back in, you ask them, “Did you make that GP appointment like we asked?” And they said, “No, I didn’t” then you will need to consider if there is a behaviour that needs correcting.

Behaviours are different!

Behaviours are something that we can manage. Ultimately, behaviours can be challenged through understand if they are born from a persons WILL or SKILL. We obviously need to be mindful that individuals’ behaviours might be affected due to Mental Ill health.

As most employers are not medical practitioners, it would be unrealistic to know how to set reasonable expectations, or to understand if a behaviour is due to a person’s skill or will in every situation. Despite this, not many employers have an occupational health provider on hand. However, anyone can have access to an occupational health provider at any time. For some employers, it might not be affordable, rest assured there are alternative services that are available.

For example, we can ask the employee for their written permission for us to write to their GP. If permission is given an employer can to the employees GP asking for specific information, such as requested reasonable adjustments suggestions- this can take time due to GP workloads and some may charge an administrative fee.

Other support like, Access to Work, is a service that’s available for employers to access support for people in the workplace, and it can help financially.

Risk assessments are a great tool, the HSE website is a free resource and can offer some reasonable adjustment support and risk assessment.

But the big one that can really help with mental health adjustment is the Mental Health First Aid England website. Here, they’ve got a nice section which is dedicated to supporting employers. Training and qualifying certain members of staff to be Mental Health First Aiders is a great and cost-effective initiative. Mental Health First Aiders are not trained to be counsellors, but they are able to support your employees in a crisis. They will be given an armoury of tools to help raise awareness in the workplace! You could help form a committee of Mantal Health Champions who would be able to review challenges that keep coming up that are affecting people’s mental health at work. Open dialogue is your greatest tool!

Mental Health is not the next ‘back pain’ as it is portrayed by some! Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Employers and everyone connected with businesses, including fellow employees, have a responsibility to support their peers under the Health and Safety at Work Act to be well!

For assistance regarding this topic, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at Altum Employer Services at 0800 048 5764.

Resources:

• HSE: Stress and Mental Health at work: https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/index.htm
• Access to work: https://www.gov.uk/access-to-work
• Mental Health Helplines: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/seeking-help-for-a-mental-health-problem/mental-health-helplines/
• MHFA England Resources: https://mhfaengland.org/mhfa-centre/resources/

Make your team aware that there is always support available during times of crisis. Here are some numbers that may be useful to make people aware of:

Mind support line

Call Mind’s support line on 0300 102 1234.

This is a safe space for you to talk about your mental health. Their advisors are trained to listen to you and help you find specialist support if you need it.

They’re open 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday (except bank holidays).

Samaritans

You can contact Samaritans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year:

• Call 116 123 (free from any phone)
• Call the Samaritans Welsh Language Line on 0808 164 0123 (7pm–11pm every day)
• Email jo@samaritans.org
• Visit some branches in person

Samaritans is there for anyone who wants to talk.

National Suicide Prevention Helpline UK

Offers a supportive listening service to anyone with thoughts of suicide. You can call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline UK on 0800 689 5652 (6pm to midnight every day).

Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) 

You can call the CALM on 0800 58 58 58 (5pm–midnight every day) if you’re affected by suicide or suicidal thoughts. Or if you prefer not to speak on the phone, you could try the CALM webchat service.

f you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please reach out immediately to any of these services:

• Call 999 for an ambulance
• Go straight to A&E, if you can
• Call your local crisis team, if you have their number

If you can’t do this by yourself, ask someone to help you.

Mental health emergencies are serious. You’re not wasting anyone’s time.

References

Mental health facts and statistics – Mind (2020) Mind.org.uk. (Accessed: 07 October 2024).

UK Government (1980) Health and safety at work etc. act 1974, Legislation.gov.uk. (Accessed: 07 October 2024).