Honesty is the best mental health policy of all
Friend, colleague, relative, the bus driver…plucking up the courage to up to someone is a great first step.
I spent a large part of last Thursday’s World Mental Health Day in a state of internal conflict.
I had been planning to write and publish what has now become this blog post on the day itself. However, after scrolling through post after post on LinkedIn I had a change of heart.
To be clear, I think that anything that promotes more public discussion of mental health is a good thing. But reading some of those posts made me question my own motivation for wanting to post on the day itself. I didn’t want our contribution to such an important topic to be seen as self-serving. This fresh attempt may still be seen that way, but that is not my intent.
If I had gone ahead with that post, it would have focused on something that we’re very proud of here at Yapster, so I’m still going to cover it briefly.
Myself and six other members of the team have now been trained as Mental Health First Aid Champions. The organisers MHFA England are doing brilliant work and we can’t recommend their courses highly enough.
I would have gone on to say that having a champion for every four people at Yapster (including the whole customer team) is a testament to the collective importance we place on looking after the wellbeing of our users as well as our own people.
Then later last Thursday something completely unexpected happened that both made me glad I hadn’t published anything and as proud as I have ever been to work here.
One of my colleagues opened up to the whole company about their mental health for the first time. Very aptly, they chose to do so in a video posted to our internal Yapster newsfeed. Needless to say, the response back was as empathetic and encouraging as we have come to expect from our lovely team.
I also realised that when it comes to mental health at work, things like MHFA training and reasonable workplace adjustments are only part of the equation. As an employer, you can only be there for someone managing their mental health if you have created a culture in which staff feel comfortable to talk about it, as our colleague did last week.
Yes, mental health policies and self-care initiatives are really important, but they will be most effective if you can also nurture a culture of honesty and openness so that no one is afraid to ask for support if they need it. Everyone has mental health, so let’s try to be honest about our own challenges and remember; “it’s OK to not be OK”.
Aimen
