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Dr Jo Burrell, Clinical Psychologist & Co-Founder at Ultimate Resilience

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In this special episode of the HRD Talks podcast, host Nic Elliott interviews Dr Jo Burrell, clinical psychologist and founder of Ultimate Resilience.  She's also HR Magazine's number 11 most influential thinker!

Jo shares groundbreaking research that exposes the hidden mental health crisis in HR. Drawing from a survey of over 1,400 HR professionals, she reveals how the expansion of HR responsibilities - from pandemic management to being the emotional dumping ground for workplace issues - has created unprecedented pressure without corresponding support systems.

The mental wellbeing of HR professionals has reached crisis levels, with nearly half experiencing clinical depression and over 60% suffering from burnout. But who supports the supporters?

"Everyone expects them to just cope," Jo explains, highlighting how HR professionals absorb distressing situations while maintaining the appearance of having all the answers. This expectation creates barriers to seeking help, with only 13% of respondents feeling adequately supported in their workplace.

The solution may lie in clinical supervision—a structured support approach standard in psychology but revolutionary for HR. This regular, ongoing support provides a space for professionals to process the emotional toll of their work while developing skills and preventing burnout. Organisations implementing this approach are seeing it become their "fastest-selling service," suggesting a desperate need for this type of support.

Beyond individual interventions, Jo advocates for a systematic, strategic approach to workplace wellbeing rather than "piecemeal, ad hoc" initiatives. She encourages HR professionals to connect with peers, emphasising the power of normalisation: "It's so powerful when you meet someone else experiencing something you might feel shame about."

For leaders and organisations, the business case is clear: well-supported HR professionals demonstrate better mental health, reduced burnout, fewer absences, and greater retention. The question isn't whether you can afford to invest in HR wellbeing, but whether you can afford not to.

Download the full HR Mental Wellbeing Survey at HR Mental Wellbeing Report | Ultimate Resilience.

Find out more about HR Supervision services at HR Supervision | Ultimate Resilience | UK.

Supplier shout out: Gethin Nadin | LinkedIn

Jo’s LinkedIn: Dr Jo Burrell| LinkedIn

Nic’s LinkedIn: Nic Elliott | LinkedIn

 

We hope you enjoy this episode!

The HRD Talks is brought to you by Actons. For more information on our podcast please visit our website.

Nic Elliott:

Hello everyone and welcome to the HRD Talks Podcast, where we have a little break from the norm. So I'm really pleased to welcome Dr Jo Burrell, who's a clinical psychologist. She's also HR magazine's number 11 most influential thinker, and she's not an HR person, but she is doing great stuff with the HR profession, supporting their well-being, and I'm really excited that she's here. Hello Jo.

Dr Jo Burrell:

Hello.

Nic Elliott:

So tell us a bit about yourself.

Dr Jo Burrell:

So, as you said, I'm a clinical psychologist by background. I spent over 20 years in working in the NHS as a clinician and leader, and 10 years ago I set up a company called Ultimate Resilience with my business partner, who's also a clinical psychologist, and we set it up because we were interested. Really, we came, became very interested in workplace well-being, having worked in the NHS and seen lots of people in mental health services whose difficulties originated in the workplace and in the NHS. The sort of the service model is such that you can't really address those problems at source, and so we were interested in doing that, you know, and thinking about how can we tackle these difficulties before they become real problems for people, before they develop into serious mental health issues. So that's my background. And then more recently, we became particularly interested in the wellbeing of HR professionals.

Nic Elliott:

And why was that?

Dr Jo Burrell:

Well, it's really interesting because traditionally the people who commissioned our services were HR professionals, so we got to know quite a lot of HR people, but they weren't the people who were utilising our services, so they were commissioning our services on behalf of other people in their organisation. So they were approaching us wanting some training or some coaching, perhaps for their people. And then in the period during the pandemic and just post-pandemic, they suddenly are started to ask us for help for themselves. And this was a sort of notable shift from our perspective and we wondered why this had happened.

Dr Jo Burrell:

and our first question as academics and people who you know uh, you know was trained researchers was where's data, where's the research out there that tells us about the mental well-being of HR professionals? So we went in search of that data and found….

Nic Elliott:

Let me guess.

Dr Jo Burrell:

Indeed.

Dr Jo Burrell:

There wasn't any, yeah basically, I mean, the CIPD do a member survey, I think, every couple of years, and they just introduced two questions about the well-being of their members, and that's amongst. You know, I don't know how many questions, but there's a lot of them, and so, apart from that, I really I found nothing. So I thought, well, let's create some data. You know, if this is an unresearched area, let's create some data. So we decided to design a survey and in the back end of 2023, we published that survey and we had 100 respondents.

Dr Jo Burrell:

So, it was a bit of a pilot really.

Dr Jo Burrell:

We were just giving it a go see what happened. We then produced a report and on the back of that report we actually got quite a lot of you know, it got quite a lot of attention, and I think that's because we were tapping into something that was clearly an issue. So, although we only had 100 respondents, which is clearly not representative of the whole of the HR profession, we were shining a spotlight on something that was resonating with people very deeply. And so then we got interested in well, if there's a serious problem here with the HR, you know, with the mental wellbeing of HR professionals and our survey results were suggesting there was what can we do about it? Are there services that we can provide that can help specifically HR professionals? And so we launched our HR supervision service towards the end of last year, and at the same time we also designed the second version of our HR mental well-being survey, which we conducted in the early part of this year and the report is now out and we had 1,421 respondents.

Nic Elliott:

I was going to say there was a few more. I understand.

Dr Jo Burrell:

Yeah to this report, which was brilliant. I mean, it was way beyond what we were hoping for. So we were so pleased to get that kind of response.

Dr Jo Burrell:

But again, I think it really highlighted that this is a very real problem for people and it really connected with something that is, you know quite deeply, that is really going on for people in the HR profession and you know, since then it's become a super passion of ours you know, in that in this past year or so, we've just become incredibly passionate about, you know, about raising awareness about the mental wellbeing of HR professionals and and talking about what the causes are and what's going on Cause I think it's actually quite a complex picture and also in really promoting the idea that HR professionals clearly need more help and support in relation to their well-being.

Nic Elliott:

So would you share some of the results from the survey with us?

Dr Jo Burrell:

Of course, yeah. So, as I said, you know, we had almost 1500 respondents and we used a range of different measures. So we used standardised measures of depression, anxiety, burnout, wellbeing, and it was important to us to use these measures because they produce statistically valid you know numbers, results. They're not just a set of numbers or people saying things. You know, this is really meaningful stuff.

Dr Jo Burrell:

And these are measures that you know, questionnaires that we would have used in our clinical work when we were doing therapy with people. So what we found was that 44% of respondents met the threshold for clinical depression. So almost half of our respondents are experiencing really significant symptoms of depression and compared with the general population, that's two and a half times higher than we would expect to see. So we're using ONS data to look at what's a prevalence of depression, clinical depression, within the general population. So this figure is two and a half times higher than that 38% meeting the threshold for clinical levels of anxiety, which is one and a half times higher than in the general population. We found, in terms of burnout, 63% were very likely to be experiencing burnout and an additional 15% at risk of burnout. So, again, well over half of our respondents, you know, struggling, clearly struggling, and then 67% were in the category for low levels of wellbeing.

Dr Jo Burrell:

And then we also asked a number of other interesting questions. So we asked about what people's main sources of stress were, for example, and the things that came out the top. So we had a selection, a tick box selection, of about 15 items, and they included things like lack of influence, lack of training and they included things like lack of influence, lack of training, attrition levels, you know those sorts of things. So people got the chance to tick their top three most you know, biggest contributors to stress for them, and the things that came out top were 50% of people said workload probably unsurprising, 41% said poor management and 29% said lack of support. And then we also had a sort of open text, other section, where people could just write in other things that they felt were contributing to their stress and recognition lack of recognition was one, toxic workplace culture was another that came out and the emotional toll of the work was also another big factor that came out in terms of identifying the kind of key contributors.

Dr Jo Burrell:

to stress, 42% said yes. So we've got a very high number of people who are feeling ambivalent, at least at the very least about their job and their profession.

Nic Elliott:

Interesting and do you have thoughts on why the HR profession's in that state? Obviously they're very revealing stats based on you know a good chunk of people. Are there kind of more general trends that you've kind of identified as potential causes?

Dr Jo Burrell:

I mean, this is such a complex question, you know, I think, and the more I get to talk to HR professionals and the more I learn about, you know, their experiences and people reach out to me and I get, you know, messages on LinkedIn and by email and so on.

Dr Jo Burrell:

And the more that I'm doing, you know, hr supervision with individuals, the more I realise how complex the picture is, and I think there are so many different factors.

Dr Jo Burrell:

I think there are individual factors, I think there are cultural factors within the profession, I think there are factors to do with organisations and the way that they perceive HR professionals, but certainly one of the things I think is that this is a problem that's been going on for a long time and I think that it's partly a feature of the fact that the HR remit and role has changed very significantly over the last 20 or so years, is my understanding and it's moved from, you know, it's been professionalised, it's moved from being a kind of essentially an admin role. You know it's moved from being a kind of essentially an admin role, you know, to a role that includes a whole range of different things, and you know that sort of I suppose you know one of the ways we see that is that there are lots of role titles now aren't there. I mean, I've struggled to get my head round all the different titles in HR.

Dr Jo Burrell:

And that says something, I think, about the sort of complexity of the job, you know, and actually you can have two people who work in HR doing very, very different things, can't you? But I think that with that broadening of the remit has come higher expectations and, I think, often people struggling to understand what HR do, and then there's that sort of disparity between actually I'm doing quite a lot and other people not really seeing it. Yeah, I think also, the pandemic was a big thing. I think that HR professionals were really, you know, the hidden sort of heroes through the through the pandemic. You know, we talked, we talked a lot about frontline workers, key workers like NHS professionals and supermarket workers and bus drivers. We didn't talk about HR and what they were dealing with, but actually so much stuff landed on their plates and then, immediately after the pandemic, a whole load of other stuff came rolling in. So you've got a cost of living crisis, you've got increasing rates of mental health struggles amongst employees, which all that stuff goes to HR.

Nic Elliott:

You've got changes in legislation, which I know you know very much about Hybrid working, whole new workplace environment.

Dr Jo Burrell:

New policies and procedures that are going on all the time. All of that's on the desk of HR, so there's been absolutely no let up for them. And then I think there's another factor which is well-being is part of the remit of HR very much now and in a very broad sense. So yes, they're responsible for commissioning well-being initiatives, but stuff related to well-being also goes to HR. So when you've got someone who's struggling emotionally, someone who's got some personal thing going on, it gets sent to HR.

Dr Jo Burrell:

that person gets sent to HR often because other people don't quite know what to do in those situations, and so HR professionals are finding themselves in situations where they are on the receiving end of some incredibly distressing material, I think, and they're also involved in some very complex interpersonal relationships and exchanges which can have all sorts of impact on them.

Dr Jo Burrell:

So they're delivering bad news. They're often in the thick of you know, tricky, toxic. You know dynamics they're being called in to deal with those kind of things. You know dynamics they're being called in to deal with those kind of things. So I think there's an incredible emotional toll that is emerging, has emerged with the widening of the remit that hasn't been met with really any sort of thought about how do we support these people who are, who are receiving all of this stuff and who were experiencing all of this stuff. There's not been, it doesn't seem to me, much of a debate or an exploration into how do we protect HR people who are so crucial in a business you know they do, they're performing such a central role. How do we protect them, given that they are receiving lots of stuff that actually lots of other people don't want to have to deal with?

Dr Jo Burrell:

They send it all to HR you know, and there's a reason they send it to HR, because it's complex and it's distressing and difficult, and there's not been a discussion about what do we need to do to protect these people and therefore, what happens is everyone expects them to just cope, and I think that's actually. They've really suffered, as a consequence of that.

Dr Jo Burrell:

I think that's actually. They've really suffered as a consequence of that, and actually organizations have suffered too as a consequence of that, because if they are suffering to the degree that our survey suggests they are, then that's going to have an impact on the whole of the organization, and they're unlikely to be performing at their optimum levels for a start. Yeah, yeah.

Nic Elliott:

Agreed, yeah, agreed, okay, and one of the really interesting things that I know that you are focusing on, therefore, is HR supervision, which is a concept that I was familiar with from the NHS, mainly because of my dad, who was also a clinical psychologist, and I remember him explaining to me you know some of the stuff that that profession has to listen to and deal with, and those kind of issues are incredibly difficult, and having some outlet for that is really helpful. Is that the same thing that you're effectively doing for hr?

Dr Jo Burrell:

essentially, I mean that I mean as a clinical psychologist myself. I've, I've, you know, received and delivered supervision all the way through through my career yeah and one of the things that I realized looking from the outside into hr was that was how beneficial that's been to me, and I had a big realisation, which was in clinical psychology supervision is an absolute given. You will be doing it.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know, there's no question, it's a non-negotiable, and you're trained in the methods and approaches of supervision right from the moment you start training, so it's embedded right across the profession. So what that means is that once you qualify, you're ready to supervise other people, and so it's a self-sustaining system. You know we're all supervising each other and we're all trained in the skills of supervision and therefore we're supporting each other all the way through our careers, and I realised that the presence of that supervision within my profession meant a lot. It meant, of course, that I benefited from it in terms of my professional development and my personal needs, as you said, the impact, the emotional impact of the work and you know a place for me to go to talk about that but it's very presence acknowledges that I needed something that the work that I do is tough, you know, and it will have an impact on me, and I will need somewhere to take that stuff.

Dr Jo Burrell:

And that's the problem in HR, it seems to me, is that there is no system of support, no clear system of support, and therefore there's an assumption that no one needs anything. So immediately I was like this is a no brainer.

Nic Elliott:

This is easy.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know, this is a model which has worked so well for me in my career that I can see will work really well for HR too. Now, what I was receiving was what we call clinical supervision, and that's designed for clinicians and, of course, hr professionals aren't't clinicians but many of the models of supervision aren't necessarily clinically focused and in fact, we already have a precedent of supervision being used outside of HR, because people who are coaches receive supervision and they're not clinicians so there's already that there's only one more step to take in order to move it into HR and it's very kind of basic level.

Dr Jo Burrell:

Supervision is really a personal and professional development approach. So it is there to support your professional skills and development, to help you with your the skills and techniques of your work, but it's also there that the personal bit is all about the, you know, helping you to process and deal with the sort of personal challenges of the job that you do. Yeah, and you know it's very much has, you know, a lot, a lot in terms of its methods and ways of working. It has very, you know, some similarities with things like coaching and mentoring and that kind of thing. There's definitely some crossovers and counseling, but it has its own models and approaches too. So it's a very clear, designated uh approach and, yeah, I just thought why, why, why has this not been happening before?

Dr Jo Burrell:

you know, and actually we're really well placed to be delivering it because we're already trained and we've been doing it all our you know all of our professional lives and so, yeah, so we launched our service in in, uh, the autumn last year and it's become our fastest selling service, our most popular service.

Nic Elliott:

I was gonna say how's it been received, but well, yeah, it's been received very well.

Dr Jo Burrell:

I mean, I think there are all sorts of barriers, you know, to this being becoming embedded in HR because there hasn't been anything like it before, and so I think there's lots of people who would say, well, we've never had it before, why would we need it now? And actually, you know, I've already talked about why I think people need it now, because this, this is a profession that's changed massively over time and the demands and the challenges have changed too, and we have the data now which demonstrates that there's been a very serious impact you know, immense impact on the profession.

Dr Jo Burrell:

So the rationale is very clear, I think, and it's like I said, it's not just about protecting the wellbeing of HR professionals, it's about the whole organisation you know because as you said, if HR professionals are on their knees struggling with burnout and depression and anxiety and so on, then they're not performing at their best, you know, and they're not serving the organisation in the way that the organisation needs them to.

Nic Elliott:

Yeah, so at that organisational level, what do you think needs to change? We've got plenty of time.

Dr Jo Burrell:

Where do I start? What I hear from HR professionals and you know it's one of the things that come out in our data is that they feel very unheard and unrecognised and unvalued and undervalued and not and they feel they lack influence often Not always. You know, I think there are some great organizations that are really utilizing HR in the way that they should be and deserve to be, and there are great organizations that are supporting them too in that way. But these are the themes that I hear from HR professionals when I talk to them. So I just think you know there's something about recognition which is really important, and we know there are connections between recognition and mental wellbeing. You know, if you feel recognised and seen and heard and acknowledged in your job, then your wellbeing is likely to be better. So, at that very basic level that you know, just recognising people, recognising that actually the job that they do is of immense value, but it also has an impact on them.

Dr Jo Burrell:

I'm a big fan of taking a systematic approach when it comes to wellbeing Because I see, as someone who's a healthcare professional, I see lots of examples of organisations taking this very ad hoc approach to wellbeing and I think it's a waste of their time.

Dr Jo Burrell:

It's a waste of everyone's time If you're not approaching this in a systematic and strategic way, and so I think organisations need to be thinking in a strategic way about how they support HR professionals over the longer term. Do we need to put in place in order that they can do their best job and be in the best place to be able to do that, and I think supervision is one of those systems. You know, and one of the great things about supervision is that it's meant to be something that you get regularly over the longer term. It's not a short-term intervention. Yeah, and the reason that it's a longer term intervention is because when you're getting that support on a regular basis, you're protected. You know. It prevents you from getting to that point where you're on your knees with depression and burnout you know, that's why it's there.

Nic Elliott:

Yeah, makes sense. And then what about the profession itself? So, obviously there's a huge number of hr people out there. They have, you know, professional body and and so on. Do you think collectively there's a, there's things that can be done?

Dr Jo Burrell:

absolutely, I do. One of the things I think would be, you know, would do hr professionals a huge favor would be to have some kind of clear standards around mental well-being for HR professionals, and that might be about measurements and metrics In order to know how well your HR people are doing. You need to be doing some measuring and having some metrics in place, don't you? So it might be about that, about organisations making sure that they're checking in. It might be about regular well-being check-ins. It might be about a minimum standard in terms of the support that people receive.

Dr Jo Burrell:

So I think that h you know, the hr professional bodies could be doing a lot in that space, in promoting and driving, you know, the notion of having some kind of clear standards in place around the well-being, the mental well-being of hr professionals. And I think the second thing that they could be doing is training hr professionals, kind of clear standards in place around the wellbeing, the mental wellbeing of HR professionals. And I think the second thing that they could be doing is training HR professionals in supervision skills in the same way that I've received. I mean, like I said, it's a no-brainer, because what it means is that you're, then you know you're producing professionals who are ready to support each other, and so you have a system already there. You don't have to get external people to, you, don't have to spend money, yeah, and you've got a system there that works. And I'm not saying it's a perfect system, you know. Of course it's got its flaws and it doesn't always work, but it's going to do a damn sight better than what's there now.

Nic Elliott:

Now, which is very little, yeah, and I guess you're building in resilience from the outset, then, aren't you? Absolutely which is which is good, and, I think, an acknowledgement that the profession is a tough one to be in at times too. Um is a is a good point. Um, what about individuals themselves? So obviously, we've kind of looked at those three different levels, haven't we?

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know, organisational employers, the profession, but there's a certain amount of self responsibility, if that's the right phrase the sort of complexity of the sort of the picture here, which is that I think that HR professionals themselves are often reluctant to speak up and I think there are good reasons for that because they're met with this expectation that they should just cope. You know, they receive that expectation all of the time.

Dr Jo Burrell:

And so it feels shameful to say I'm not coping, because people say, you know, they expect them to be the one who has, who have all the answers. You know, I know what that's like. As a clinical psychologist, I've been met with that expectation too, that I shouldn't ever suffer or struggle but, we know we're human beings.

Dr Jo Burrell:

Everyone struggles and suffers sometimes. So I think that it does make. There are these barriers in place that make it very difficult for HR professionals to say I need help or to reach out for help, but I think that the more that we talk about this, the better. So I think that's the first thing let's talk about it, let's raise awareness, and we know that with every campaign, if you think about cancer, if you think about men's health, you know the more that we talk about it, the less stigma there is and the more we're likely then to move into the action phase, the more likely we are to take action and to realize that we need to take action and do something about it. You know it's through base, those sorts of campaigns, that we've changed. You know health has changed, hasn't it?

Dr Jo Burrell:

you know, our health status more broadly has changed. Campaigns around things like smoking, yeah, I mean, it's really changed the landscape, hasn't it? Yeah, so just talking about it and raising awareness and sharing, and you know, is the first thing, and don't don't I, I say, and I know there are barriers and I acknowledge those barriers, but I would say don't be afraid to ask for help, because actually people are often surprised when they do ask and they get a positive response. I think people certainly fear that they're going to be judged or stigmatized in some way or they're going to be met with a negative reaction, a negative reaction, but many times when I'm working with people individually and I suggest that they might speak to their employer, they're surprised at how positive the response has been. That's not to say that some people don't receive a negative response, because they clearly do, and that's been.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know, once you've been batted down, once, you're not going to speak up again for a long time, are you? The trust is gone, the psychological safety is gone, and I think there are ways that people can be reaching out, because I think, you know, there's lots of HR professionals who are in loan jobs too, so there isn't a network for them immediately available, but I think there are lots of. You know, one of the great things about the internet is that there are places where people can go and networks all over the place, whether it's in social media or outside, there are places people can go to connect with others who are like them and again, the more that we do that, the more that it normalises our experience.

Dr Jo Burrell:

One of the really interesting responses we've had to our survey is that people have been emailing us after receiving it yeah and the one big thing we hear is I'm so glad to to know that I'm not alone and that actually, you know, slightly brings a tear to my eye.

Nic Elliott:

You can see, can't you?

Dr Jo Burrell:

because I I think that's so powerful because and what it tells us again is that people feel incredibly isolated, yeah, and so when they meet someone else who says I know what that's like, I've been there, I felt that too, I had that response it normalizes everything. People go oh thank, it's not just me, I'm not just crazy or faulty in some sort of way. This is normal. I'm a normal human being, just like that other person is.

Nic Elliott:

Yeah, and we should probably give a little shout out to the Elevate Hub, of which you and I are both experts in, and Claire Cathcart's good work there. I think for me primarily those standalone roles real, real benefit from those kind of networks as you've described.

Nic Elliott:

Yes, for sure, the other trend that I have noticed that is really interesting, given what you found in the survey is people leaving the profession, the hr profession, both to go do completely different things and just walking away from hr altogether, but increasingly people coming out of kind of corporate organizations setting up as consultants and kind of doing their own thing, the whole rise of fractional HR directors and all that kind of stuff. And I kind of see that that's a good thing in some ways because it gives people flexibility and across the kind of the world of work, as it were, we were seeing more of that People wanting more flexibility, working in more flexible ways. But it seems to me if everybody walks out of the profession in corporates and you end up with people just isolated doing their own thing, it changes the HR profession quite significantly and it seems like it's pretty big. You know there are consultants now who are helping HR consultants be HR consultants even. Do we need to sort of stem that tide?

Nic Elliott:

You know that was it 42% of HR people are considering leaving the profession. What do you think, I guess? Have you seen the trend and what?

Dr Jo Burrell:

do we do? Of course we do. I mean, I think surely you know CIPD doesn't want all of its HR professionals leaving in droves from, you know, paid employment into self-employment or setting up their own consultancies, like you said, and small businesses? Of course there's a need for that. But for organisations I would think it's not the most cost-effective way of utilising HR services. And we see that in the NHS too, interestingly.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know that's what I'm thinking about as someone who worked in the nhs for a long time. You know one of the worrying trends there is you've got people leaving because it's so tough to work in the nhs and then they're paying outsiders. You know they're paying agencies for nurses to come in and it costs us as taxpayers a load more money yeah so clearly that's going to be the case in HR too, and in the private sector it's going to be the same.

Dr Jo Burrell:

So, absolutely, I think we need to be stemming the tide and therefore a load of measures need to be put in place, don't they? To make the experience of being an HR professional a less lonely one, a less damaging one, distressing?

Nic Elliott:

and distressing and damaging one. Yeah, yeah, makes sense, makes sense. One of the things that is kind of coming across as part of the supervision thing is that this is a support mechanism for the profession. Why is that actually useful? Why is it powerful? What does it kind of achieve?

Dr Jo Burrell:

so one of the things that we found in our report was that only 13 percent of our respondents said that they felt well supported at work. So that leaves 87 percent of respondents feeling that the level of support for their mental well-being at work is insufficient to some degree, and actually half of our respondents it was seriously lacking. They were saying it was seriously lacking. And one of the things because we had, you know, a good response rate we were able to sort of interrogate the data a bit more, and I think one of the most fascinating findings from this survey was that we looked at if you're someone who has high or low levels of support at work. What does that mean for your mental health, for your likelihood of wanting to leave the profession, for your likelihood of having taken time off work over the last year due to stress? And we found probably what you're expecting to hear, which is, if you're feeling well supported at work, your mental health is much better, your well-being is better, you're much less likely to be suffering from burnout, you are much less likely to be thinking about leaving the profession and you are much less likely to have taken time off sick in the last year due to stress, to have taken time off sick in the last year due to stress, and so there is this incredibly powerful link between supporting people at work and all of those other factors, and this was a very statistically significant finding. So we know it's very strong, and we're.

Dr Jo Burrell:

If you're an employer, you look at that data and surely you can see there's a cost saving to be made, a massive cost saving to be made if you invest in supporting HR, properly replacing people who've decided to leave. You're saving on sickness absence. You're saving on the, you know, presenteeism, which is very common in people who are struggling with their mental health. You know people are turning up at work but they're really not performing anything like at their best. You're saving on, you know, performance being damaged by mental health issues. So you're making massive savings across the board. And, of course, as we said earlier, if your HR professionals are performing well, that's benefiting everyone in the organisation, isn't it? And if they're performing poorly, then that's having an impact too. So you're saving there as well.

Nic Elliott:

Yep Cue. Everybody sharing the episode with their boss. Absolutely, the CEO numbers listening to the podcast is about to go through the roof. No, I think that's really really useful and it makes complete sense. But you know, clearly the research is backing that in a big way. By the sounds of things, We've referenced the report that you guys produced off the back of the survey a number of times. Where can people find that? How do they get their hands on it?

Dr Jo Burrell:

So you can download a copy on our website, which is ultimateresiliencecouk, and there is a button on the homepage. You just click on there and it will take you to the page where you can download the report.

Nic Elliott:

Fantastic.

Dr Jo Burrell:

One of the other things that we do on the podcast is a supplier shout out Fantastic. One of the other things that we do on the podcast is a supplier shout out Anybody that you would kind of highlight in this space 10 years. And there's someone called Geffen Nadin who is a psychologist and an organizational psychologist, and I just think he speaks so much sense.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know, I think he's he as a psychologist. He's very evidence based. He draws on the research in a really useful and accessible way to argue the case for investing in wellbeing at all sorts of levels and all types of different. You know financial wellbeing and you know all sorts of aspects of wellbeing, but I think he just argues a fantastic case and so I would say follow gethin, yeah, yeah. And he's also doing some great work now actually lobbying governments and mps around well-being in the workplace. Okay, so he set up a policy liaison group specifically around workplace well-being and is inviting experts to be part of that, and so he's making great strides, I think it, you know.

Nic Elliott:

So he's not just talking the talk, he's really living it too you know, brilliant, and we'll tag his linkedin profile as well as joe's in the blurb for the podcast. The the other one, slightly broader joe, in terms of workplace well-being we talked, partly prompted by some new government announcements that I posted on LinkedIn about this morning the kind of the best approach for getting people back to work. So there's obviously, I think it was something like 11 million sick notes given, nearly all of them signing people off, without a kind of action plan for getting people back to work, and the post kind of has, you know, grown legs and people are talking about more proactive approaches to avoiding employee sickness absence in the first place. As always, you were very insightful on that as well. But the wider picture beyond hr it clearly includes hr, but the wider picture of how do we keep people well and in work. What are your kind of thoughts on that?

Dr Jo Burrell:

Again, it's a big question, but one thing I would say is that, you know, coming out of the NHS and working in a workplace wellbeing setting in workplaces, I was really shocked at how far behind workplaces were in terms of their kind of knowledge and understanding of how we keep people well and how we support them when they're not well.

Dr Jo Burrell:

And so what I've seen is this kind of piecemeal, ad hoc sort of approach on a light on well-being in the workplace, and organizations have suddenly seen that you know they've, they have a really, really important role to play in, in supporting the well-being of their staff and and actually that's going to benefit their business if they do that. So you know they're learning and that's fine, you know it's, it's important that they do that. But I think that I see still way too many organizations who who see the latest thing that's been marketed in a slick and shiny way and think, well, that's the thing we need then. And they haven't done their background research, they haven't gone. Well, what's the demographic of my workforce? What type of work do they do and therefore, what sorts of stresses are there?

Dr Jo Burrell:

yeah in their, in their work? Um, what are the pressure points, what are the pain points here? So if you investigate that first, then you've got some bespoke data that tells you something about what's going on in your workforce and then you can think about well, you can, you can tailor your approach can't you.

Dr Jo Burrell:

Rather than going oh, we need mental health first aid and there's nothing against.

Dr Jo Burrell:

I've got nothing against mental health first aid, but I think there are loads of organisations who've just gone oh, we'll send some people on mental health first aid training without thinking about how that's going to be utilised, whether they need it, how it's going to be utilised, how they're going to support their mental health first aiders when they find themselves in very tricky conversations with employees who might be suicidal, for example.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know what the process is for rolling out that function, and I still see way, way, way, way, way too many organisations who are doing that, way too many organisations who were doing that, and so I realised that it takes more thought to sit down and say okay, what's the problem, to investigate that problem first of all, and then to design a response on the back of that investigation.

Dr Jo Burrell:

I realise it takes more time than just go. Oh, we'll have that. But in the long term you're going to save so much more money and you're going to save in all sorts of other ways too, because actually, if you deliver a wellbeing intervention to your organisation, to your workforce, and it falls flat on its face, all you're going to do is you're going to create a sense of disillusionment and you're going to break trust. Create a sense of disillusionment and you're going to break trust and you're going to leave people feeling you're going to certainly going to leave people with potentially quite serious problems with stress or other mental health or physical health problems, and they're not going to come and ask you for anything further because the thing that you delivered the first time didn't hit the mark yeah you.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know you hadn't really asked them what they wanted or needed, and that's the simplest thing, isn't it? If you think there's a need, ask people.

Nic Elliott:

You know ask people yeah what do you need?

Dr Jo Burrell:

What do you think the problem is and what do you need? Simple, what are your ideas about? You don't have to take on every single idea. Yeah, but I think organisations are often fearful about asking those questions, aren't they? They fear that they're going to get an onslaught of, but you know, there are ways of managing that. If you do get an onslaught, there are ways of managing that too.

Dr Jo Burrell:

So I just think I absolutely encourage organisations to take this kind of systematic strategic approach because it will reap so many benefits for you if you do that.

Nic Elliott:

Yeah interesting, then approach because it will reap so many benefits for you if you do that, yeah interesting. Then taking it up a level even further, are we all just more stressed like? Is the world just a more stressful place and employers are having to grapple with some of that?

Dr Jo Burrell:

well, the figures suggest that we are. You know, certainly in the workplace, stress is the, you know, the biggest source of workplace absence now, according to the health and safety executive. And despite the efforts, additional efforts that workplaces are making now in relation to workplace well-being and other related things like engagement and that kind of thing, the numbers are still going up. So that speaks to my point about you know, what you're doing at the moment is not working, and there there's good evidence also for that. You know there was a study that was done in Oxford recently. Workplaces is workload, because actually that's the thing that comes out top time and time and time again. It came out top in our survey of HR professionals.

Dr Jo Burrell:

But it's a theme that's much broader than that and it's not just about how much work do I give people. You know how much work is on my desk sitting there looking at me. You know how much work is on my desk sitting there looking at me. I think it's also to do with the way in which work has infiltrated the whole of our lives now. So with modern technology, with phones, with computers and laptops and the internet and all that kind of stuff, we can access our work anywhere and we need organisations to be helping us to set boundaries in place. We need them to be encouraging and supporting us to do that, because, at the moment, I think the onus is very much on individuals and they feel this expectation, don't they, coming from the organisation, and they see other people answering emails at 10 o'clock at night or submitting reports at 2 in the morning, and they feel then that that's what they should be doing too, and I think that, again, we need a campaign really.

Dr Jo Burrell:

You know, a national campaign, a global campaign because this is not just happening in the UK that really alerts us to that shift. That's happened Because, you know, when I first entered the workplace, I went home at five o'clock and I didn't, you know, I might've thought about work, but I didn't have access to anything to do with my work because it was all there on my desk and so naturally it was much easier to have to protect that leisure time, and that's what we need If we're going to be well and be protected against the worst effects of stress and burnout. We need that recovery time, we need that protected recovery time.

Nic Elliott:

So we need our organizations to be helping us to have that yeah, interesting and I guess along those lines, but but specifically for hr people, and it may be that, well, it applies to all of us as humans, but you know, we're focusing on hr people. If you were to give kind of final closing advice, as it were, to hr professionals about looking after themselves, what would that? What would that be?

Dr Jo Burrell:

I would say talk to each other. You know, because, like I was saying earlier, it's so powerful when you meet someone else who's experiencing something that you might feel some shame or a stigma about that you might. That might make you feel like you're not good enough, that might knock your confidence, and so to be able to just talk to someone else about those experiences and recognize that they might be experiencing them too, or they might know someone else in HR who's experiencing them it's a simple thing. But normalising is so powerful and I know that from working in mental health services for most of my career. I did a piece of research on self-help groups way back when, and that was one of the big themes that came out was that they were powerful because people met others who were experiencing what they were experiencing and it normalized that for them and it made them feel like they weren't at fault or to blame. So yeah, I would say at a very simple level talk to each other yeah, I like that.

Nic Elliott:

Who would have thought communicating and talking to each other was so powerful? It's brilliant. It's an excellent way for us to finish. So thank you so much, Jo, for sharing all of that. I'm absolutely certain it's going to be so useful for all of the hr listeners and, yeah, we'll see you next time, thank you. Thank you, thanks for listening to this episode of the HRD Talks podcast. Hopefully, you found the discussion helpful. If so, please follow us on your podcast provider to be notified of future episodes and share with friends and colleagues. For more information on the podcast, please visit www. actons. co. uk/thehrdtalks.

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