CIPD podcast: Why investing in mental health matters

Jennifer Jackson

Hello and welcome to a People Management Insight podcast in association with Zellis, where we’ll be discussing why you should be investing in mental health and prioritising the human factor of the workforce. I’m Jennifer Jackson, contributing editor to People Management Insight. And here’s the fourth part of our six-part series on wellbeing in the ‘Workplace of now, I’m joined by two expert speakers who will be sharing their guidance and specialist advice on wellbeing issues. So here with me today, I have Peter Kelly, Senior Psychologist at the Health and Safety Executive, and Jackie Summons, Chief People Officer at EMIS Health. First, Peter, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself and what you do, please?

Peter Kelly

Yes, so I’m a Senior Psychologist for the Health and Safety Executive and I’m principally involved for the last 22 years around mental health. Be it from defining work related stress, and then what we’re doing at a national level through the regulation route. More recently, over the last 10 years, pretty much concentrating on mental health and wellbeing. I have some strong views, and I’m sure they’ll come out as we go through the podcast. I do feel that at the moment, we’ve gone back to the 1990s, and where we’re trying to teach people to cope, and we’re not really addressing some of the systemic organisational issues, and hopefully, we’ll talk about those, which are impacting people’s mental health.

Jennifer

Sure. Thank you, Peter. And Jackie, thank you for joining us again. Can you tell us a bit about your role? And what can you tell us about why investing in mental health is so important?

Jacqui Summons

Well, thank you very much. So, I’m Jackie Summons, I’m the Chief People Officer at EMIS Health. And I combine that role with being a Non-Executive Director for Zellis. So, I like the fact that you’ve referred to me as an expert, I guess I’m only an expert on the basis that I have worked in human resources for 35 years. So, I have seen quite a few changes in in that time. And the way in which employers – and also the way in which the human resources function itself – supports people through mental health has changed considerably from my very early experience back in the in the 1980s. Absolutely. I’m really looking forward to actually being able to talk about this subject and hearing perhaps a bit more from the real expert in the room, which is obviously Peter, to help us along the way. But I would say that the pandemic has shifted considerably the way in which employers are looking at this subject, and it’s brought it certainly further up the agenda as far as the human resources function is concerned as well.

Jennifer

Great, thank you, Jackie. Now, figures published by the Health and Safety Executive show that of the 1.7 million workers suffering from a work-related illness in 2020 to 21, 822,000 were caused by stress, depression, or anxiety. That’s 50% of all work-related ill health cases. So, with mental health related illness rising, what can an employer do to invest in their staff wellbeing in a meaningful and uplifting way? And how can it be much more worthwhile and rewarding than just a box ticking exercise? Peter, what do you think?

It’s actually 57%. I’m being a geek. It’s, by the way, it’s the most days ever in a year, lost to stress, depression and anxiety, and an increase on the previous year of 200,000. So, first thing I’d say is we had a problem before the pandemic. And we very definitely have a problem during and after the pandemic, because we’ve seen a 25% increase. In answer to the question, investing in wellbeing cannot simply be about teaching people to be mindful and resilient anymore, it cannot be simply about head massages and fruits and pears on the table. It has to be a systemic approach to seeing the wellbeing of your staff as one of the core functions of a successful business. And I’ve said this for nearly 10 years now – if you look at the top companies to work for in the times 500, the top 100 all have one key element. They have robust wellbeing and health programmes, which are beyond just teaching the individual to cope. So for investment purposes you need to be thinking about looking at the organisational elements and how you manage those. It’s no use, effectively teaching people to cope and manage better. And then constantly exposing them to a toxic environment.

Peter

I once had some goldfish in a pond outside and I killed all the goldfish and Pete the pond man came to my house and I said

“Pete, you’ve done the pond, all the fish have died.”

And he looked at it and he said,

“Water is filthy, Peter.”

And he lifted up the filter, and the filter was bunged up with frog spawn. And he said,

“It’s not the fish. It’s the water. It’s the environment they’re in.“

And we need to remember that, you know, actually, we’ve got to create the right environment for people to thrive. In that wellbeing so kind of answered the question, but also wanted to say I think there is far too much investment, going into the individual and not trying to change the organisation.

Jennifer

Thanks for that nice analogy, Peter. Jackie, what do you think?

Jacqui

Well, yeah, sort of building on that, I think it’s, it’s absolutely correct, as Peter describes it, and I often speak to companies where they have less money to invest in this, and they will sometimes turn around to me and say

“Well, you know, it’s, it’s all very well for you, you’re a bigger organisation, you can invest in, you know, wellbeing apps, and you can help your employees with gym membership”

And exactly as Peter describes there, but, you know, fundamentally, actually, you don’t need any money at all in a business to be able to support people from a mental health perspective. It is about the environment that you create, it’s about the degree to which people feel that it’s okay to talk about things to each other, to their managers, to the HR function, without there being any kind of retribution. And then they feel they have the ability to say, actually, this is all too much, I’m going to step away for a period of time and a little bit of time, to sort through a few issues. So I’m not trying to say that our company are perfect at this, we’re absolutely not. I do think we have been helped over the last few years by having, particularly with our CEO, and also with our Senior Executive group of people who genuinely do say to people

“It’s family First. it’s your time first.”

So if ever issues have cropped up, particularly from the CEO, I’ve always felt that we have a supportive environment. There will be people that will undoubtedly, say that we don’t always do that. And sometimes we are quite, you know, driven as any company is to do well, and to make a profit. But I think it’s a whole series of different things. I did set up about four years ago, a programme of Mental Health First Aiders within the work force. It doesn’t work for every company, it’s worked really well for us. So we do have that sort of really informal approach to it, that people can talk to a colleague who is trained to at least have that first discussion with somebody. And we also have external counselling advice as well to people. So that’s part of it. But I’m with Peter, it’s much more about how you run your business day to day and how you support people through that. So they can work really effectively, but also can feel that they’re supported, because I’m absolutely sure that a lot of the stress, depression and anxiety that is showing up – and it’s definitely showing up in our company, by the way, so I would support those stats – isn’t necessarily caused by work in every case. It’s often something outside of work at the moment. I would say very much to do with financial wellbeing, is creating an enormous amount of stress. But if you don’t think you’re getting the support for those issues in work, then it certainly can be very difficult.

And I think it’s really, I mean, what I think, you know, Jackie said is absolutely 100% Right, which is if you’ve got the right leadership, people who are prepared to talk about mental health care to talk about family and talk about real issues for the staff, then that makes a fundamental difference. And so, every time I go into a business, and I say,

“Why do you stop talking about mental health? When you walk through that door? Do you become a different person than the person you are at home?”

Because we talk about mental health. We talk about family issue. In work, we should be able to do that. And I think leadership that leads by that example is really, really important.

Jennifer

Thank you, Peter. Now we’re currently in a cost-of-living crisis. And this makes investing in anything difficult for many businesses as they see their budgets cut. So, what are the business benefits of investing in, and promoting, good mental health and why is it crucial to prioritise the human side of the workforce?

Jacqui

Yeah, so I think the obvious answer of it, around this is that, if that kind of level of stress is behind some of the absence, then it’s a really obvious piece that if we don’t get on top of this, we don’t actually have employees able to work. And so that’s a big issue. But interestingly, I don’t think it is about so much the absence away from the workplace, I think it’s more around the inability to give fully of yourself, if you’re not in a good place from a mental health perspective. So, it’s not, to me, so much about ‘is somebody present in the business?‘ it’s, you know, ‘how do they feel each day? And therefore, how are they interacting with their colleagues? How are they able to sort of give their best on any particular day?‘

We’re doing some pilots at the moment about, in terms of reducing our working week in terms of the number of hours that people are working. And, you know, I have a little theory that actually, by spending a little bit more time taking care of things outside of work and having less actual time physically in work, people are actually going to give far better in the point that they are with us, and they’re going to want to work more effectively, because they feel that we’re giving something back to them in terms of some of their own time. So, it’s yet to see how it goes. But, that kind of thing, I think is something to certainly think about. It’s not just purely around absence, I think it’s that sort of extra thing that you give when you’re in a good place mentally.

Jennifer

Sure, sure. And Peter, what do you think?

Peter

Well, I mean, if you look at the report by Ernst and Young that the return on investment for investment in mental health is one to five, so for every pound you put in, you get five pounds back. What was very interesting actually, it used to be one in seven. One of the things we found during the during the lockdown periods, and the isolation, everything else that have gone through, we found that, if you’re investing in systemic responses to mental health and stress, you got a greater return on investment.

I don’t know about you, maybe of your experience during the lockdown. But I mean, simply providing someone with a computer and a large screen and a desk didn’t in itself actually constitute your responsibility as an employee to manage their mental health, it was really about how we developed innovative ways to have conversations with people. So, I think the return on investment argument is there. And yes, we are in a cost-of-living crisis, where more than ever, we need our people to be healthy and happy in work. And, to facilitate that we need to look beyond the cheaper options of teaching our people to cope and actually think

‘Well, what can I do to make my business more effective?‘

Because, if you actually look at the organisational issues that you’ve got in your workplace, and you change those two, they reflect and support your people, your business will be able to properly mitigate some of the fallout that’s coming. Whereas if you are constantly putting your people into a state of strain, because of the pressure that you’re putting under, and not actually changing the business model itself, then I think you’ve got problems. And that’s what we’re seeing. And I guess my call is to do the individual stuff, but also to do the organisational stuff. Because actually it’s going to be good for your business if your people are healthy.

Jennifer

Makes sense. Thank you, Peter. Now a key part of investing in wellbeing support is being able to spot the warning signs of mental health issues. And the HSE’s Working Minds campaign helps businesses and workers understand the best ways to encourage good mental health and prevent work related stress. So, what can employers do to recognise the early signs of burnout? And what methods can be put in place to relieve this? Peter, do you have any insights on this?

Peter

Oh, yeah, obviously HSE’s Working Mind campaign is about making it routine to talk about mental health and to address mental health in the workplace. And when we talk about mental health, we’re talking about work-related stress and mental illness. And what we’re trying to do is to get organisations to reduce that. The justification obviously – we’ve talked about it – is because it’s at the highest levels ever.

To make it routine, you need to do four other elements. So, one is you need to reach out if you see people are not right and distressed or not behaving in a certain way, you need to recognise the symptoms. And there’s lots of information out there now about mental health, we’ve seen that during the lockdown. And during the pandemic. You need to respond ‘Oh, there’s a problem, I will ignore it.’ No, you need to respond and do something about it. If you’ve got five or six people having the same problem, you have to do something about it. And that’s part of the legislation requirement anyway. Then you need to reflect on what you’ve done and if the thing that you’ve put in place to reduce the work-related stress isn’t working, then change it before you go through a whole year and wait to find out it doesn’t work. And ultimately, we want you to make it routine. So we want you to have conversations with people, we want you to engage with your workforce. And we want you to do those ‘Five R’s”.

1. making a routine
2. reach out
3. recognise
4. respond
5.  

And guess what? They’re the same five steps are the risk assessment process that we require you to do, as well. So, you know, this is a great opportunity. If you’d asked me when I first started 20 years ago, that we’d have a year or two-year campaign on mental health, that was a long, long way away from my imagination at the time. So, we’re really going to be concentrating around this area, we’ve made it part of our 10-year strategy, and you will see us being involved in this area. And that may include regulatory activity as well.

Jennifer

Great. Thank you, Peter, for your insights there and taking us through the five R’s. Jackie, do you have any thoughts?

Jacqui

Yeah, I do have a thought, which is that. And it goes back a little bit to what we were saying earlier about the fact that this is not just necessarily at the organisation level, but it’s also down to the individual managers. I think that one of the things that that has become very clear is that we have managers at the moment who are really very effective at managing through some of these issues, and we have others that find it way more difficult. We certainly tried to support the people that are finding it more difficult. I suppose my thought around this is that with your own team, it sometimes feels as though you’re dealing with them – or it should feel as though you’re dealing with them in a way that you would deal with your family. So within your family, you recognise different signs that people have. You know when people are perhaps not as happy as other times, you can kind of see the signs of that. We’re trying to encourage managers to think about that as well. What’s different about the way the person is reacting now to the way they were before? And there are lots of, you know, through the pandemic, when we weren’t seeing people that were lots of signs, you know, somebody who perhaps, you know, typically would be on camera, but then started not to be on camera. You know, it was sometimes not appearing to be quite as clear in terms of the way they were speaking. There were lots of things we did pick up those signs. The one thing I would say is that one thing that works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for somebody else. And, this is where we have to come down to what’s the way in which you’re going to find out how that individual is feeling, or how your whole group feels? Because there can be differences.

I’ve encouraged people in my team to – now that we’re starting to get back to face to face – think about if you want to have a conversation with somebody, and it’s becoming really difficult to understand really where they sit, because they’re on a Teams call, and you can’t really work out what’s going on. I’ve sometimes found it really helpful to go and take a walk with somebody. So, if you don’t live too far away, if you have that one-to-one, actually walking around and having a conversation is really interesting how people open up and tell you a little bit more about what’s going on for them than they perhaps would if they’re sitting across what is quite a harsh interaction really over a laptop. So I’d certainly encourage people to think about that. But I love the sound of the five R’s. I think it’s a really, really good message to get across and it’s a really good way to remember what you should be doing as well. So, I think that sounds fantastic.

Jennifer

Brilliant. Thank you, Jackie. Now, work-related mental health illnesses were already rising before COVID-19 hit. But with everyone having to adjust to a new way of living and working during lockdowns unfortunately rates increased during the pandemic. It has however given employers a chance to reflect. So, how have you seen a change in attitude among employers towards mental health and well being? And what support networks should be available to staff in need of mental health support? Jackie, what do you think?

Jacqui

I guess it builds a little bit on what I was saying before about different things for different people. You can have programmes in your in your business that you could feel quite comfortable with doing. So, I talked about the Mental Health First Aid program that we have. And that works for some people, it certainly wouldn’t be something that everybody would reach out to. So, we’ve also taken opportunities to make sure that the external support that is available to people is readily available, so that when you’re having a particularly bad point. I remember I was told quite a long time ago by a colleague that she was in a particularly bad place in a domestic situation at home, and actually really hadn’t sought help at all. And then went into her kitchen in the workplace. And there was a poster on the wall. And basically, it had a number and there, she just saw it, and it just made her think, Okay, I’m just going to call somebody now and have a conversation about the things that are going on. But actually, for months and months and months she hadn’t really done anything about it. So, it’s some sort of trigger, I think, helps people just to bring it to the front of mind, we certainly found that to be to be quite helpful. But you have to work a little bit harder at that when people are not necessarily all physically face-to-face. You have to put a little bit more effort in than you would have done in the past.

Jennifer

Yeah, sure. Peter, what do you think?

Peter

Yeah, essentially everything that has been said. But you know, I mean, to me it is self-evident that the lockdown, and the pandemic was a huge seismic shift in how businesses manage their people. For many, many years, the system has been king, system over person. And many times people say

‘Well, I’ve got a computer and I need to answer these emails, I need to do them at two o’clock in the morning. I’ve got a mobile phone, I’ve got it next to my bed.’

So actually, we’ve made the system King, and I think the what the pandemic has taught us is actually we’ve got to put our people first and you don’t have a business unless you have functioning, healthy people in it. And, in terms of the investment argument, which is, you know, obviously we’ve been talking about that. The return on investment on what we call tertiary or individual issues is substantially less than the return on investment on organisational issue. So, use the pandemic to be an opportunity to look at how you do your work and how your work is processed. I think that’s really important.

When you go back to 1980, and you look at the Spanish flu pandemic, two things occurred directly after. One was a global recession. And the other one was an outpouring of mental illness globally, as a consequence of what happened during the Spanish flu pandemic. What we’ve got at the moment is exactly the same characteristics. So, we know actually, that if you put a global recession together with a pandemic, you do have the possibility to have substantial mental health. So I think businesses, in preparing for the future, and in managing people’s wellness and reimagining people’s health, they need to focus now on what they can do to make themselves healthy organisations. Many times we create organisations that incubate illness that don’t actually incubate healthy workers. I know it sounds very much like ‘Star Trek-y’. But it is true, you know what I mean? And that’s sort of a long-winded answer to your very brief question. Apologies.

Jennifer

No that’s great. Thank you, Peter. Thank you both. Now, workload pressures, as you say, tight deadlines, too much responsibility, lack of managerial support. These are cited as the biggest triggers for workplace stress and depression and anxiety. So that leads us on to; what fixes can employers make to ease those pressures and prevent this work-related stress and how can these fixes improve staff retention as well? Jackie, what do you think?

Jacqui

I mean, I think it goes back to something that I talked about earlier on, which is the fact that there is a there is a tendency to drive towards a number of hours that people work and having to you know, I’ve had conversations recently, where people have been some concerns about productivity. And so, the answers come back

‘well, how can we monitor and make sure that people are working for the eight hours a day?’

And I think actually, it’s almost turning that on its head and looking at it the opposite way, which is, you know,

‘What are the number of hours that somebody could work to be effective that are perhaps less than they have before? And what could you build into a normal day that would give people some kind of time that back that would help them to manage their mental health?

You know, the thing I said before, I’ve got a theory, which I’m hoping will play out in stuff that we’re planning to do for the next few months, which is actually, if you did something quite radical and said,

‘Well, we only really want your work, we don’t want you working eight hours, we actually want you to work five really productive hours in a day.

But we want you to use some of the other time that we’re giving you to take a walk to do some exercise, If it’s right for you to sort of take some time away from the screen, read a book, talk to your colleagues, you know, have an informal conversation been one that’s necessarily focused on a specific objective or a piece of work?’

And so, so giving back sort of balanced back to people, in my mind, I think would lead to those hours when somebody is actually working being way more effective. I still see in our business, too many long meetings set up with no clear agenda, no indication of what you’re actually sitting in that meeting for, for the next two hours, you know, do you need to be in that meeting for two hours? could it all be done in half an hour? So, trying to just encourage people to sort of rethink the way in which people work and the time that they give to the to the deadlines that they have. Because you’re absolutely right. I mean, we hear these conversations a lot that people don’t feel that they’ve got enough time to get work done. There’s this constant pressure. I mean, I’m also a huge fan – and I haven’t always done this – but there have been times in my career when I’ve done this. I’m a huge fan of actually stopping people working out of normal hours. So literally, you know, some companies I know have gone the route of cutting off, you know, email access, during non-working hours. When people go on holiday. Certainly in my team, I do not expect people to be contacting me when they’re on their holiday. And in fact, we push back if they do, and say you need your break, you need your time away. I see too much of somebody being constantly in touch, which doesn’t work well. So there’s some of the things that we’re certainly thinking about the moment.

Jennifer

Thanks, Jackie. And, yes, so these fixes, how do you think they can improve staff retention?

Jacqui

I think they absolutely, absolutely do. And I think it’s interesting that when people are coming, particularly younger people are coming to join the business, the questions they ask around the working pattern, you know,

when are they expected to do this?

what kind of level of holiday?

But we were also thinking about, as an example, allowing people to take their very standard bank holidays, but to take them when they want to take them and not when we’re forcing them to take them at Christmas and Easter. So quite a radical change. But for some people, it’s that that would be really a great thing, because they’ll actually want to do different things with their family and can have that time back. So, I think it’s interesting, the demand is now for a more flexible working arrangement than more than it’s ever been. We certainly, when I started work 35 years ago, you wouldn’t have dreamt of asking questions around, you know, ‘how flexible can my work in working week be?’ You absolutely knew you needed to be there for eight plus hours a day and to show up every day that I think that’s changing enormously, which is a fantastic thing that people are now prepared to have those conversations. I actually think it would help people to retain staff without a shadow of a doubt.

Jennifer

Great. Thank you, Jackie. What do you think, Peter?

Peter

My word, where do I start? Yeah, I mean, that the absolutely central – all the evidence suggests that working at doing an organisational intervention is far more effective than then than the individual element. And if you do the individual element on its own, it’s really ineffective.

If you want to retain people, create workplaces that people feel engaged with, workplaces where people go to work, and they come back the same as they went. So they’re not made ill by work, they’re actually sustained.

Neuro-psychologically, because it’s where I came from before I came into this job, we know that eight hours of the day your brain functions effectively at a very high level of processing. And that’s why we, you know, we’re most engaged during that eight hours, we need eight hours of sleep, I mean, also need eight hours doing something else. And effectively, you can split it into those three elements. And actually, if we now look at flexible working, we say, okay, we want you to do eight hours, but we don’t mind when you do the eight hours, as long as that interjected by the fact that people get quality time, where they’re able to do the things that gives them a sense of enjoyment, obviously, you do need to go to bed. And you know, you can’t sort of think well, I’ll, I’ll stay up till three o’clock in the morning, because actually, your brain is not wired to stay up till three o’clock in the morning, all the time, unless you obviously work in the night-time economy. So the point is, I think, giving flexibility is dead important.

You look at the way you manage work, can the work be done in a different way? Do we need to send that email?

Absolutely, do not be getting mission creep when it comes to Zoom, Teams or Wave Cast, or Clean Feed!

So what you have to do is get yourself into a place where you are looking at your people as a resource, and as something that’s going to help you achieve what you want to achieve in your business. And very often I don’t think people do that. They see the process and system as being the thing that they’re trying to deliver. But actually keeping people sustained in in a workplace is really, really important. And you can do that relatively cheaply, by actually asking them what, how they want to do the job? How can the job be done differently? What are the issues? So I think, if you’re going to generally do wellbeing, then it has to encompass a range of options. And remember, when I when we first started this journey, wellbeing was health and wellbeing. Now well, being has over six or seven tentacles on this, like big, massive octopus. Focus on the elements of wellbeing that are important to the to that your team, your unit, or your organisation or group that you have. And as you know, yes, have individual issues, but also think, let’s talk to our people about how we can do the job fair,

Jennifer

lovely, thank you very much, Peter. Now, it may come as a surprise, or maybe not small workplaces have a statistically significantly lower rate of work-related stress. And in contrast, medium and large businesses have a statistically higher rate. What can medium and large enterprises in particular do to address work related stress? And what could they perhaps learn from small businesses? Peter, what do you think?

Peter

Right, let’s look at it. When we look at businesses SMEs, what they’re doing, is they see the problem straightaway, they address it, they’re often quickly on the process, they’ll put something in place to change it. If there’s 10 of you working in a factory, and one guy comes in, and he’s absolutely riley, and he’s narked and he’s kicking off, and it’s very obvious that he’s not happy, you can address it really, really quickly. And that’s one of the things is being aware of your people, and the changes in the people around you. And medium enterprises and larger enterprises put a system around that, and then somehow that delays the process and response. that well actually I went in, we went into work and there’s 250 people, and there’s one person over there that you know, and then they go, ‘Well, we got to report it to HR, we’ve got to do this. We got to do that.’

So, sometimes, we overcomplicate what should be an easy an easier process, which is to go over and see how people are going, how they’re travelling, you know. If you ask people, ‘how are you?’ they’re going to say, ‘I’m fine.’

If you say, ‘how are you travelling?’ You give them an opportunity to talk.

Jennifer

Thank you, Peter. Jackie, what do you think?

Jacqui

Yeah, I found this really interesting, actually. I wouldn’t have known this to have been a fact but if somebody else asked me to guess, I probably would have guessed that this would be the case. Having worked in small businesses and also much bigger companies.

The one thing I would say about smaller organisations as well as the excellent point that Peter makes about the fact that you see things that you can deal with them. Is that I think there is just more focus in a smaller business on the things that are really important, as far as work is concerned. I certainly have – my organisation is an enormous – but I’ve noticed even the size of it in comparison with the previous company, there is this inclination to slow things down, sometimes we need a policy for this, we need to have a meeting to discuss this.

So you just tend to put more obstacles in the way of getting things done quickly and effectively, in a larger organisation. So I think, you know, to Peter’s point, they have to work even harder, almost breaking down those barriers, you know, thinking about the small work team, what can you do within your small work team and just get on and do it, and not have to wait for the whole organisation to respond to something which you see within your, your own your own smaller team. I think we are we are guilty in bigger companies of sometimes being almost paralysed by the fact that there is a view that you can’t just do something to change something without creating a lot of policy and process around it. And, you know, it is hard. I mean, we’ve, we’ve gone through this discussion recently about how we want to change our flexible working approach and how we want to change, I talked about the possibility of changing our approach by bank holidays, for example, that sort of thing sometimes takes an awfully long time to get agreed through a bigger organisation. And if you were just, you know, a 10-person company, you’d probably have just done that very, very quickly if you thought it would work. So, I think we have to work much harder, in that in that bigger company and making these things happen quickly. And almost, you know, putting that small mindset in place, even if it’s a bigger organisation, but is it it’s really interesting, I think we’ve got we’ve got a lot to learn from those smaller companies, for sure.

Peter

Absolutely. And the problem, the thing is, we constantly say, oh, SMEs, are this, they’re that, or this and that, but actually, in this area, they do have the possibility to, to teach lessons to larger organisations who overcomplicate mental health, and make it make it structurally difficult to report, you end up with problems.

Really, we should just be talking to our people and make it routine. There you go five steps to talk about mental health. We shouldn’t be like, oh, John in the corner has got depression, what’s the process? What’s the system? What do we need to do? You need to have all those, but before you do that, you need to talk to him.

Jennifer

Great to recognise some of the learning points we can take from smaller businesses, though. Thank you very much.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to our speakers today, and that they’ve provided you with some useful information to better assist your teams. Thank you again to Peter and Jackie, for being excellent guests and providing us with your insight and expertise about this rapidly growing market. And thank you to Zellis for partnering with us on this series. I’m Jennifer Jackson, thank you very much for listening and have a nice day.