The Rainy Day Trust has joined forces with the Mental Health Foundation to produce a guide aimed at helping recognise and support mental health issues in the workplace.
Called ‘How to support mental health at work’, the 44-page guide, which The Rainy Day Trust is making available to industry businesses free of charge, outlines how to recognise mental health issues in the workplace, whether you or colleagues, and shows ways of building a strategy towards good mental health.
The introduction highlights the impact of poor mental health and wellbeing on business. It says ‘the value added to the economy by people who are at work and have or have had mental health problems is as high as £225 billion per year, which represents 12.1% of the UK’s total GDP.’
In the introduction, the guide also says that addressing wellbeing at work increases productivity by as much as 12%.
Once employees have read the guide, it says they should have an idea of how to manage their mental health at work, how to reach out to a colleague in distress, and how they can work with other to make their workplace more mentally healthy for everyone.
Bryan Clover, ceo at the Rainy Day Trust, said all businesses in the home improvement industry should look more closely at mental health issues in the workplace: “It isn’t always obvious and there is still very much a stigma attached to it, where people don’t want to discuss it.
“This guide gives good practical advice and information on how to bring it into the open and build a strategy of support for those staff who need it. Everyone will benefit, not only in terms of their mental health and happiness but also as a business from a financial point of view as highlighted above. It really is a win win.”
To order your digital copy of the Mental Health at Work guide, email bryan@rainydaytrust.org.uk.
