Workplace Mental Health - All You Need To Know (For Now): Tom Oxley (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Tom Oxley’s talk titled “Workplace Mental Health – All You Need To Know (For Now)” at TEDxNorwichED conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Busy Workplace

What’s it like to work where you work? School, somewhere else, busy, right? Everybody being asked to do more with less. Hands up, who gets their work email on a device at home? Hands up, who sleeps in the same room as that device?

Hands up, who works evenings and weekends just to do more work the next day? Hands up, who sometimes wakes up in the night, thinks about work, can’t switch off, speaks to the phone before their family in the morning? Ah, yeah, early signs of stress, okay, sorry to tell you. Hands up, who is so busy they have their breakfast on the toilet? No? Good. Just my brother-in-law then, that’s reassuring.

But most of the things I talked about are common. It’s the new norm, before we leave the house in the morning our rucksack is half full. It’s no surprise then that the third or half of us will experience some kind of stress, anxiety and depression during our working lives. Those conditions are common and they are responsible for 30% more absence than anything else, including musculoskeletal and physical injury.

Struggling at Work

30% more. And yet we struggle in, we struggle on. See, I review workplaces and how they support people or not on mental health. And I’ve interviewed more than 170 people and looked at the information from 15,000 survey respondents.

And mental health is complex, but this much I know. People who have poor mental health, they want to be at work on the whole. And they struggle in to do that. When they’re at work, they have difficulty concentrating, communicating, juggling tasks and they get cranky sometimes with the customers and colleagues. But they can’t speak up to their manager. The manager doesn’t know how to have a conversation.

The employee doesn’t know if the manager is going to support them or stigmatize them or say, “Well, we’re all stressed, mate.” Or manage them out of the organization. So our employee who wants to be at work doesn’t know the support choices, can’t have a conversation about it. They feel significant stigma, sometimes from the organization, sometimes from themselves.

Rumbling On

And it just rumbles on, right? They don’t take the time off that they need, or if they do, they give a different reason for that absence. And here’s one of the reasons, because we just don’t talk enough about mental health in our workplaces until we’re past breaking point.

How do we get to this? Well, I thought we were all supposed to be resilient these days. In the workplace, we are supposed to have resilience. How do you get resilience? Well, you ought to have a good work-life balance. That’s the first thing.

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Life Outside Work

Oh, okay. Life. Life. Life. The field of flowers that I skip through to and from work, right? If your life’s like anything like my life, it contains things like separation and grief and dental bills and peas that get stuck up your child’s nostril and exhausts that fall off your car the day after the MOT. But we soldier on. Our rucksack now is three-quarters full.

We’re taught to. And we go into work when we shouldn’t really be there. Presenteeism, it’s called. And presenteeism costs the workplace 1.8 times that of absenteeism, being away. But we don’t even get that bit right, because we go in and we say to our manager, “I think I might be struggling. It might be stress, anxiety, and depression.”

Seeking Help

I go, “Don’t make that noise.” I go, “Well, you must be going to your doctor.” And so we go after the doctor and we say, “Hi, I’m really struggling. I’m losing sleep. I can’t talk to my manager. I’m having my breakfast on the toilet.” And the doctor says, “Well, if we’re in this country, you go, that’s interesting. I’m going to sign him off for two weeks.”

It’s the first NHS response. Okay, it’s well-meaning, and I get that. And sometimes time off from work is a really good thing. And seeing our doctor is a good thing. But it’s not the first place for that conversation. It took an employment lawyer in King’s Lynn in Norfolk 28 seconds to be signed off from work, having entered the consultation room.

Disengaging from Work

It’s not the first place for that. So you leave the surgery with a label, a diagnosis, and you’re staring down a packet of pills and daytime television. And it’s really scary. I’ve been there. And just so quick to disengage people, we need to be having these conversations in the workplace rather than disengaging. So let me tell you about disengaging, and then I’ll illustrate the business case for this.

So I interviewed somebody called Nick. He was a senior manager in a global firm, constantly exceeding expectations at appraisal. Because at our appraisals, remember, to get more money, we have to do more work than we should be doing.

Nick’s Story

Different point. But anyway, so Nick’s mum died. He had his two or three days compassionate leave, and he came back to the organization. And he tried to organize himself some flexi time. Work more during the week, have a bit more time off on Fridays. And his manager said, “No.”

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On the basis of that, and I quote, “Everyone will want it.” Nick’s a lovely guy, a really lovely guy, and really diligent. But of course, he was unable to talk to his manager. So he called out. He went to the doctor. He got lots more time off. But this was sickness, and he disengaged, and he never really came back to the organization properly. Unions cost a lot of money and was entirely avoidable.

Sally’s Story

Sally’s story. Sally is, well, Sally’s dad died.

But she was working for an international charity. Again, again, successful manager. And her manager said, “Sally, I don’t think you’re right. I think you need some more time off. I think we can do some work from home and a phased return.” And you won’t be surprised here that Sally still works for that organization. Is still a high flyer. Okay, and she’s an advocate of the employer.

So had the global firm that Nick worked for acted like the charity, it would have saved itself many thousands of pounds. Okay, so what should we do?

What Leaders Should Do

Leaders, head teachers, project managers, whoever, wherever you lead, you need to talk about mental health in the workplace. When you speak, other people listen. The conversation, the positive language, it cascades down an organization. You don’t make more people unwell by speaking about mental health. You give them the opportunity to seek help sooner. Remember Nick, remember Sally.

Leaders who talk about mental health universally gain respect. Same with managers. Managers, you need to talk about mental health in the workplace. And you need to train managers. Train them to spot the signs and the symptoms. Know what to say.

What Managers Should Do

Know when to say it. Know when to shut up. Know when to listen. Know how to have a human conversation. If you’re a manager, use this rule of thumb. Be the manager you’d like to have if you were experiencing stress, anxiety, depression.

I can pretty much guarantee that your school’s and your workplace’s policies on stress, anxiety, depression or absence and those sorts of things are probably too long, full of jargon, self-serving. Same with the absence procedure. When somebody calls in sick on that first day, that’s a golden conversation for a dialogue on mental health. Who’s listening? Who’s writing this down? Where’s it going?

Supporting Employees

Who’s offering support? And this is the same thing for your people, right? You’ve got to offer support to your people. Therapy is fantastic stuff. But to the NHS it’s going to take you eight weeks, three months, something like that. Six lessons of therapy, 300 pounds.

What’s that compared to a great bit of time off and that disengaging? So offer your therapy. The other thing we do with people when they join a workplace is we teach them how to lift a box, which is great, and thank you for that.

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But why don’t we talk to them about how to have a conversation with a colleague? Call it when they’re struggling. So if you’re out there and you see somebody struggling, then say something.

Continuing the Conversation

Say, “How are you?” Make them a cup of tea. If you think you’re struggling, then you should say something. This is not just a once-and-done conversation. It’s not just a poster on the back of a toilet door. It’s a cultural shift and it takes time. But the wonderful thing is that everybody can do this.

All you need is a tray of sandwiches and a packet of Post-it notes and a bunch of people who’ve been off while they’ve been working for you. They’ll give you all the information that you need. You could partner with a charity like Mindful Employer, if you like.

You could hire a consultant, if you must. But you really ought to be listening, making adjustments, changes, and writing this down. The Health and Safety Executive expect you to be doing this already, by the way.

Future Innovations

Right in the future, we’ll be talking about some of the things that have been mentioned today. Mindfulness meditation in meetings. Virtual reality glasses to train managers. Reporting on workplace illness as well as injury. Little robots that pop up on your screen to ask you how you are. Psychotherapy through our mobile phone.

Those things are being trialled right now. They’re just around the corner. But here’s the thing. Your people don’t need to throw loads of money at this. What they want from you is your commitment that they can speak safely about mental health.

Making a Commitment

I said you all have the resources to do this. Look around you. This is what mental health is. It’s not just a one in three. We all have mental health all the time. Hands up who’d like their employer to do more on mental health. Right. As an employer, all you need to do is give your people permission to speak safely and be prepared to listen. Thank you.

Workplace Mental Health – All You Need To Know (For Now): Tom Oxley (Transcript)