#8 - Mental Health and Safety: Your Employee's Mental Wellbeing Needs Protection Too

Transcript

Voice Over  00:02
You're listening to Get Talking, a podcast aimed at educating and opening up discussion about mental health issues. Here are your hosts, Jason Welch and Christine Haworth-Staines.

Opening Song  00:15

Jason Welch 00:28
Hi, I'm Jason, a business leader with a personal interest in mental health.

Christine Haworth-Staines 00:32
And hello, I'm Christine, a chartered psychologist.

Jason Welch 00:35
Today we're going to discuss a subject that's very close to my heart: Mental Health and Safety at Work. We're pleased to say we have a guest with us, Charles Haworth, who's a senior leader at a large corporate and shares my passion for this subject. We'll talk about why mental health support should go hand-in-hand with other safety procedures and explore what leaders can do to create a healthier work environment. But before we start this discussion, let's go over to Christine. I know you feel strongly about this subject too. So as a psychologist, what do you think the issue is here?

Christine Haworth-Staines 01:14
Okay. Well, I like to think of it like this: if there's an accident, or a near miss event at work, when someone might be injured, it's generally investigated, isn't it? If someone loses a limb, or develops back problems, then the machinery, the systems, the office furniture, whatever, the protocols are all gonna be reviewed. Safety mechanisms are gonna be put in place and so on. This is Health and Safety at work. If, however, there's a mental health, psychological type of injury, or near-miss event at work, I'm not really sure what happens. Are there mechanisms in place to investigate this? And if so, is it investigated to the same degree? Because I've seen many people in my private practice who have been signed off sick and had to even, you know, leave positions because of work-related mental health issues. Are companies developing policies and procedures to prevent this? And if they are, then my question is, why do these mental health issues still occur? I wonder whether companies are focusing on the individual more than they should be doing and not sufficiently exploring what the organisation themselves could put in place.I mean, many companies nowadays are pretty good at wellness and wellbeing initiatives and I applaud that. You know, they're encouraging the staff to stay fit, you know, organising workshops, inviting speakers to talk about stress management, maybe even offering yoga and mindfulness. And there's the latest initiative: wellbeing days off, which is great. However, if an individual cannot find the time to get to the gym or is so worried about losing their job because they literally can't get through that pile of emails, or meet that unrealistic deadline, well, none of these initiatives are gonna help. You know, I just wanna talk about an experience I had yesterday, I was chatting to a young woman that I know who is at the start of a career. She's in her early twenties, in a tech company. She's incredibly conscientious and hardworking. And she told me that the staff in the tech company have been allocate two wellbeing days a year, which is great, and she really appreciates this. But then she said, she was told that the first one must be taken before the end of March. And the result? She felt stressed. She felt stressed, instantly, trying to work out how on Earth was she gonna get through all of her current workload so that she could take this wellbeing day off she's been instructed to take off. So my question is, are we going in the right direction here? Shouldn't we be talking about Mental Health and Safety and giving it the same weight as Health and Safety, and tackling it in a systematic and logical manner? I don't want to sound overly critical here because I'm really not being critical. I want to acknowledge that it's tricky. Because, unlike other accidents at work, the causes obviously can be rather blurred. You know, if someone loses a finger in the office paper shredder because the guard was missing, well, we can't, you know, it's clear, we're not gonna blame what's going on at home, are we? But if someone has a mental health injury, such as extreme anxiety, and begins having panic attacks in the office, then the lines may be blurred as to the causes. You know, is it the children homeschooling that's taking its toll? Or aging parents causing stress, or maybe a divorce? But equally, it could be lack of sleep caused by unrealistic deadlines and expectations and workload. So, I think what I'm trying to say is, none of this is gonna be straigthforward, but that's no excuse to not tackle it. So let's open up the discussion.

Jason Welch 05:09
Yes Christine, let's do that. So, without further delay, I like to introduce Charles Haworth, who's someone I worked closely with in the past, and we share many ideas and concerns around mental health. He also happens to have a mother who is a chartered psychologist...no prizes for guessing who that might be! (laughs) Thanks very much for joining us today, and why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and what you're doing now.

Charles Haworth  05:37
Hey Jason, well, thanks for the intro and thanks for inviting me along to join your podcast, which I've been following from day one, you know, not because I was forced to by my mother (laughs) but because of my interest in the topic. No, but you know, I'm very happy to be here talking to you two today. It's a topic I'm really interested in so we're going into that in a second. Just a brief intro for all the listeners, who I am: I'm a business leader, I'm working in General Eletric, so big American, international company, for the past 14 years. I've spent the last 12 years working in Renewable Energy but in general across the Energy space, industrial powerplants and those kind of things. I'm primarily working in the commercial space so sales, and commercial contracts, and commercial risk. And right now my current role is, I'm responsible for our Commercial Operations team, globally, for Offshore Wind. So my team is responsible for trying to get sales for offshore wind turbines, we're bidding big, tall utility companies and all the gas majors around the world. And my team is responsible for negotiating the contracts and hopefully, if we're successful, you know, signing the deals and getting it closed. And it's a role...I've been in this current job for just over a year now, but I was doing similar things in Onshore previously which is when you and I used to sit next to each other, Jason, in Bracknell.

Jason Welch 06:59
Yeah, exactly. So what part of the world are you in now, Charles?

Charles Haworth  07:04
So I just moved eight months ago to Paris. I was living in Dubai prior to that, so I spent three years in Dubai covering all of the Middle East for Onshore and now I'm living in Paris. So a lot of international moves with the kids and everything else, I've been dragging them around.

Jason Welch 07:18
Yeah, very, very big cultural differences between Dubai and Paris but, yeah, wow. Jetsetting lifestyle, hey?

Charles Haworth  07:27
 Yeah, it's been a journey, but a really fun one, I have to say. And I've been learning and enjoying things every step of the day, so I can't complain. It's been fun.

Jason Welch  07:38
Excellent. So, this topic, what is it that you wanna talk about? And why?

Charles Haworth  07:47
Yeah, so it's something I've been aware of and interestingly, you know, through some of the interactions with you over the past couple of years, so we were talking about the topic of mental health in the workplace. And frankly this is something that came onto my radar really only about, say, three, three or four years ago, when I started becoming a people leader. So when I started leading teams in the company. After about six months in the role I started to focus more and more on how to, how to get the best out of the team, how to get people to perform, how to get people to enjoy they work and come to the office every day feeling inspired and wanting to do their best. And mental health is one of those things, it was a big, I would say, a difficult topic to know how to tackle it. And then the other thing with mental health in the workplace is, it's not really talked about very frequently. And it's a topic that it's quite sort of taboo, and it's sometimes hard to breach, and at that time, three, four years ago, I was a new manager and it was something I wasn't really sure how to handle. And then so over time I've been thinking more and more about it and...and then the other thing is, I was reflecting at those days. We used to spend, you know, the company has a super high priority on health and safety. So if someone gets injured at work it's reported, you know...I think they call them there different categorisations, level A, B, and C injuries. If there's a level A injury and above the CEO of the whole business is informed immediately and no matter what time of the day or night, you know, there's a whole team mobilised to look at it. And now thinking about that...so I'm in an office-based role, you know, we're putting together proposals, we're bidding, and the biggest risk to my team in all of my organisation is not that they're gonna injure themselves, cut themselves on a machine or anything like that. The biggest risk in reality is breakdowns, high stress, potentially, you know...you see people maybe having heart attacks and other things. And sometimes that can be linked to stress, potentially, because I think that's the driver. So, if I look at my organisation and what I, what is my whole in health and safety at work, I actually think my primary task should be mental health and safety. And that's a topic that I don't know a lot about, and I've not had a tremendous amount of training on it, and it's a topic I'm interested in.

Christine Haworth-Staines  10:12
Yeah. Actually, can I just come in with some facts here as well that some Stanford researchers, I can't remember what year this was actually, we'll... I'll search this out again and put it in the show notes. You know, they've come up with a figure of around 120,000 deaths a year, which they believe are related to workplace stress in the United States. I mean, that's a, that's a shocking figure, right?

Jason Welch  10:38
It certainly is.

Charles Haworth  10:40
The thing is that people don't link it together. This is one of the things I wanted to talk about and get your insights into, both of you, it is...how could you get more visibility on this as a topic within companies? And maybe I'll ask the question to you Jason 'cause, 'cause you see it, but one of the things, one of my kind of mantras at work  for all different topics is, you know, if you want to solve a problem you first have to measure it. And so if you can see, you know, measure the problem, put some figures and facts behind it, you can put implementation programs in place to fix it and then you can see if it's doing better. How do you do that with stress and mental health when it's kind of invisible and it's not easy to link to the workplace?

Jason Welch  11:24
Yeah, you're right, because when it comes to mental health, what are you trying to measure? And where does it go? And I think that some of the challenges around this is that mental ill-health touches so many different things, so it's really difficult to try and put a true measure on it. Is it absenteeism? Is it days away from work? You know, all of those things could be things to look at. But equally at the same time it could be productivity. Because, you know, as we've talked about in a previous podcast about presenteeism, you know, that's a massive factor in all of this.

Christine Haworth-Staines  12:06
Yeah, can I...can I come in with some stats that as well that I found, that I think are really insteresting. To answer your question, Charles, I think one of the things that you do is talk. You know? I mean, this is where we...this where we started from on our podcast journey., the importance of talking. You need to talk to your staff. It's about communication and, you know, if you wanna know whether the staff are feeling stress, about what the mental health issues are, you need to ask them. And there's been...there was an interesting survey...There's a Gallup poll, I think it was 2019, that came up with the five top reasons for burnout. You know, burnout is...it was debate for some time what exactly burnout was, you know...is it a real phenomenon? But in fact the World Health Organization have recently included it in the ICD-11, which is the latest revised edition of the International Classification of Diseases. And they've included burnout as a phenomenon. Now, they've rather confused the issue somewhat by later sort of clarifying that it's not actually a medical condition, but an occupational phenomenon. So, from where I'm standing, if it's in the ICD-11, it's a problem. It's a health issue, this is the World Health Organization. And, you know, going back to what Charles was saying, you know, how do we determine...there are ways that we can measure anxiety, depression, and mental...there are very good, well-validated questionnaires and so on. But that's getting into the field of psychology, psychiatry. But to understand a little bit about, say, burnout...the Gallup poll, a huge survey of individuals in the workforce, the five top reasons for burnout were given as: unfair treatment at work; unmanageable workload; a lack of role clarity; lack of communication and support from a manager; and unreasonable time pressure. I think these are the things we can go and talk about in a minute, but I think what I'm trying to do is to say to you, you know, how do we identify the problem? How do we measure the problem? Well, you ask people, and you come up with statistics. You do the research and the research has to start with a definition of burnout and people's understanding of it.

Jason Welch  14:42
Just to jump in quickly...you touched on it at the start there, Christine. It's about starting that conversation. You're not gonna be able to measure anything if you can't get people to start opening up about it. And that's the thing for me, the more and more you can start some conversations and you can get people talking about it, the more information you're gonna get. There are some statistics out there, as Christine quite rightly said, you can start to look at some of those. You can then, you know, you can go down the route of questionnaires. But again, if you haven't started the conversation, and you haven't got people comfortable, talking about the subject, it's not gonna go anywhere.

Charles Haworth  15:16
Yeah. What's interesting looking at these Gallup top five reasons for burnout that we've just went through...I actually see, interestingly, we're tackling some of these things already at work and I'm spending a lot of time, I would say, indirectly tackling some of these issues, and probably not realising that that would be a way of tackling mental health and stress in the workplace as well. So it's kind of an interesting parallel forme. I'm tackling with maybe a different reason but I'll give you some examples: one of the things we're doing very heavily at the moment at work is that we're polling the employees. We're looking at two things. We're looking at, you know, how to engage the teams, but we're asking questions about, you know, transparency for their managers, so we're asking questions about...are they being treated fairly at work, do they have equal opportunities, and there's a question about workloads, you know, how's their workload rated. And where we're seeing issues in this different topics, we're trying to trigger initiatives, and again, I'll give you a couple of examples from what I've been doing in my particular case. But one of the things is...I think a really important one is about unmanageable workload. And how do you tackle that? And I know that that drives a lot of stress and I see to aspects of this: one is, does the business know what the workload is on the teams? Can you visualise it? Do you actually understand the numbers, as you were laughing about? Can we measure workload in a reasonable way so that at least we can see the problem? I would say that's very hard to do, especially in the environment I'm in, which is what I call a knowledge factory. So a knowledge factory is where we're taking an object, so in this case it's like a proposal to a customer. It goes through the chain in our organisation, each person adds a bit of knowledge, the lawyer adds some knowledge, the tax person adds some knowledge, and everyone's gonna add knowledge to this product as it goes through the factory. And then we send it to the customer, we go and negotiate. How do you measure workload in that context? If it was a factory you could see...okay, I've got four people working, you know, they're producing ten cars a day, and you can measure the workload very clearly. In a knowledge factory it's really hard to do. So one of the things we're really working on is actually trying to make rules around how much work does it take to do a task and then try to put metrics around it. So that, at a minimum, the managers can see the workload, and have a dashboard saying 'oh, it's red, so that person is overloaded'. So it's like, I would say, we're doing it for a different reason, but if that can contribute to helping mental health in the workplace I think that would be very useful.

Jason Welch  17:44
It's an interesting one, actually, because again, metrics. Gotta love metrics. The other thing it's about, it's about how you use that information, right? Because that would be the other key thing for me, when you say that, right? You've just said there, you look at it and one of them is red and you think that person is overloaded. But does that person see that, see it as a red, and think, 'oh, bugger, I need to do more work because I need to get that metric back to green and that means I've got to work harder', therefore increasing their stress and anxiety?

Charles Haworth  18:13
Yeah, and that's, that's the next part of it, because when I said...you know, the statement was 'unmanageable workload'.  So one is, what is the worload? Can you see it? And as you said, when do you say, 'oops, that's now unmanageable, and that's a problem'. And this really comes down to, as we were saying before, do the employees, and the managers, and the board, you know, does the organisation have a transparent and open communications? So it also says, that's one of the bullets from Gallup, lack of communication and support from the manager. That's very much linked to that, because you should have an environment where any of the employees, if they start to feel the unmanageable part of the workload, that they can come and voice the concern. And then it should be that, you know, as a manager it's your job to try and figure out the problem and solve it, right? I'm frequently having conversations with my team where they come and say 'hey, I've been asked to do three things but I can only get two done this week, which one do we do?' And that's my job to help prioritise. But what's interesting is, again, I'm solving those problems probably without a view of the impacts on mental health. I'm doing it because I'm seeing is as an operational thing, you know, in my day-to-day work. But what I can see is that a lot of these things that you can do to make your business better, you know...if you can streamline the work, you do, if you can visualise problems, help solving the problems, that's actually a good indicator of something that could potentially help your employees feel better about turning up to work everyday.

Christine Haworth-Staines  19:40
It's a very important point, this communication, isn't it? Because, I suppose, if workload is unmanageable, that is very hard to measure objectively. It's the subjective feeling of the individual, if they're not sleeping at night, that they're taking their work home with them, that they can't switch off, that they can't relax. And the only way to measure that, to get a feel for that, it's not a sort of quantitative thing, it's qualitative, it's about talking, it's going back to this talking. And it's, well, it's what you've alluded to, Charles, you know, staff needs to be able to get, to go out to the managers and feel able to say, 'do you know, I'm not sleeping, I'm not coping very well, can we talk about this?' and know that the manager is not going to see this necessarily as a problem with them. I think that this is the fear, that people don't want to be seen as weak, or incompetent, or not coping. So maybe they're afraid to have this conversations. So it about the companies being able to offer a safe and secure environment where the employees can come forward and make those statements to problem-solve.  Because this is what this is about, isn't it? To problem-solve?

Charles Haworth  21:04
Yeah, I'd like to pick up on two things, at least two things that worked really well for me in the past couple of years. I'll give a plug for a book that I read when I first got into managing teams, it was really impactful for me. And it's a book called Radical Candor. And it's a book that I read, as I said,  probably six months into my journey of leading people. And it's really about how to give feedback and create a kind of transparent and candid work environment, where you get feedback in both directions. And one of the tricks from that book that I implemented after reading it was having one-on-ones, so with my direct reports. And that was a real game-changer for me as a leader, in that every week, and they're only short, 20 minutes, half an hour, sometimes they do run on and on depending on the topics that we have to do, but I make sure that every week I have a one-on-one session with all of my direct reports where they set the agenda. I don't even tell them what to talk about, and I try actually not to talk about the project so, you knowthe bids, or I'd say, the day-to-day work, but I try to talk, get them to talk about general topics. And I've made like, a short, kind of, I'd say, some bullet points , general topics, and the first one on my list is self - I get them to tell me about themselves.  You know, how are they feeling, how are they doing, how are they managing with that. And just that little 30-minute conversation every week, that's my most valuable time I spend with my team. And it's the place where you find that information you just mentioned, like 'oh, you know, yeah, I really love running but I've not been able to go running the last two weeks'. When someone says that to you, that flags a red flag in my eyes, like 'oh, okay, why is that employee not able to go running anymore?' Is that something that we're doing wrong? And is that an unmanageable workload problem?

Christine Haworth-Staines  22:54
Yeah, I think that sounds like a really brilliant solution and that's a really good starting point. And it's about, when a person comes to that space with you, Charles, you know, and I'm sure they do, you know, feeling that they can be open and honest. And that's where the company culture has to facilitate that, that openness and that honesty. But I was just gonna say that,as you were talking I was thinking about, you know, these conversations with staff, you know, between staff and managers that might normally in take place in a rather casual way, around the sort of, you know, coffee machine or something, you know, how are the kids, or how are, you know, and so that managers are getting to know their, their staff in more informal ways. Or going for lunch or something. It's not happening now with Covid, is it? With the distance working? You know, how do we...this is something I think that we all have to be very aware of, you know, that these Zoom calls, they're so...they don't allow for that social chit-chat.

Jason Welch  24:00
That's true. I think the coffee machine in the old Bracknell GE office was guilty of solving many a problem, right?

Charles Haworth  24:10
And a lot of talking about running as well, not just work. Right?

Jason Welch  24:13
Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, exactly. But again, just to pick up on what you've said there in terms of what you...your approach. Firstly I applaud it, because I think it's absolutely the right thing to be doing. And it's something that I do as well, a very similar thing. I guess I tend to put a few bits down to kind of set the tone of the meeting, because for me it's about driving that culture. So I do kind of put an agenda in with my team and, I'm gonna be open about it,  and so we don't always hit it. But it is about, and you've said self, it is about asking them, 'right, how are you doing?'. And they'll go, 'yeah, I'm fine'. And then I'll go 'Now, how are you really doing?' You know, so it's not just they say I'm fine, I'll go and probe again. And then I think it's about having those conversations in, really making it acceptable to kind of have that discussion. And i completely agree, when they turn round and go, 'well, I haven't done this for the last week because I haven't had time' - red flag. Right, okay, why haven't you had time? So I absolutely applaud you for that approach because I think that's, that's the start of it. That's starts to drive that discussion, that culture around, 'it's ok to talk to my manager, my leader, about these things'.

Charles Haworth  25:31
Yeah, and that's a... as I said, that engagement with the individuals is where, I'll say again, it's my most productive time , where you can probe into it. And the other part, which then comes into that time, it's when you see these, when you have these conversations (I'll pick up on Covid in a second), but the other way also to help your teams is also to be a little bit vulnerable and share yourself. So it was funny because I'm giving this example of running. I've talked about all different topics with team members, but I was talking to somebody recently and I told them, you know, they've been working really, really long hours supporting, you know, a customer and, you know, it was work that I'd asked them to do. But I said to them, you know, 'do you realise I ago running three or four times a week?' And I actually put a calendar block in my work calendar saying 'Running', and I go out and I go for a run at that time. And I have to do that because otherwise people put meetings in my calenda. And I said, 'so, if I'm the boss and I'm doing that, at least you should be able to do the same'. And giving little tips, and I'd also say showing, you know, you need to lead by example sometimes. And if you're someone that's working 24 hours a day, answering emails on weekends and doing all that, you'll drive that culture in your team. So there's a little bit of, you need to model the right behaviours yourself, you know. Telling an employee that  they shouldn't be working on weekends when your sending 50 emails in a weekend, you know, they see through that pretty quickly. So it's also about modeling the right behaviours, and I think that's an important one. I think that Jason has something that you, you've tried to do a lot of, right?

Jason Welch   27:08
No, 100%. And the other classic one for me is, 'right, you definitely need to take a holiday' and you go on holiday and you send emails all the way through the holiday, and then you wonder why your team members do. So I employed a nice little strategy with my team that's you go on holiday, you find a,...you find a deputy that looks after your business while you're on holiday. And then, when I first started doing it with my team, I picked one individual I got on very, very well with, and I rang him in the middle of the holiday. And he answered his phone. And I said 'what are you doing answering your phone?', and he said 'you called me'. And I said, 'can I speak to your wife?', 'No bloody way, she'll kill me!', and I said, 'Then don't answer your phone again!' (laughs) So, you know, it just drives that kind of, as you said, lead by example, Charles. So I think that's great. Another question for you there, so...so what effects you think the situation and I do wanna come on to Covid because, you mentioned it earlier, it's definitely driving a different level of stress and anxiety and challenge within the workplace. But we'll come to that in a bit again. But what do you think some of your behaviours, what would you think that's doing for your team?

Charles Haworth  28:15
Well, what I'm trying to model, and coming back to having a transparent workplace where people can engage in talking, I'm just really trying to create an environment where...there's a couple of different things I'm doing, I'm trying to do some stuff systematically with processes and other things like that, I'd say more like business operations stuff. But I also, just creating an environment of transparency, where I'm kind of insisting that people say what they're thinking, that people contribute, you know, if there's a meeting, I wanna hear different people talking. And also that people share their views, whether or not, you know, it could be in conflict with all you're saying. So, you know, being transparent about what people think, having open conversations, and just leading that environment. Because that takes out one of the stress factors that people have in the work, which is, 'well, I don't know...you know, I've been told this but I don't know if that's the truth', and this kind of...you know, potential office politics things, where people are maybe not being completely truthful, or candid, about what they're doing. So I think that, again, it starts by...if you're leading the way and you're very transparent and you say 'hey, I think this' or 'I don't like that'. And by saying it...one problem I have to acknowledge there about being candid and transparent is, if you do it in an uncaring way, you come off, and I'm gonna use a bad word now, like an asshole. So, you know, you can come off being harsh, you can come off badly, if you're just going around being blunt and saying 'hey, I don't like your shirts'. Okay, well, that's not very nice. But if you say 'hey'...take them aside and say 'look, we're in an office environment and, you know, you're an important employee to me, but I know that the way that we dress is perceived by customers, you know, in a certain way, you may want to think about...' whatever the feedback is on that time. So putting context of why it's really important. But setting that that environment, it's gotta be the way to do it.