What is a mental health policy?

If someone asked about your mental health policy in an interview, what would you say?
 
 A mental health policy deals with the care and services for those who may suffer from mental illness and should address the following:

• Promoting mental health, improving understanding and awareness through its leadership and management structure.

• Monitor and review indicators of workplace stress, taking steps to respond where issues are identified (a risk assessment).

• Prevent those circumstances detrimental to mental health.

• Provide a culture where mental health issues can be discussed openly in a supportive way.

• Provide a working environment free from bias and stigma.

• Provide support for people leaders to appropriately role-model behaviour and effectively manage the issues of staff.

A workplace mental health policy should not be written in isolation, it should be written alongside and in context to overall health and safety and other people policies.  

Having a risk assessment gives you the insight to address issues that are not only contributing to absence, but also poor productivity otherwise known as presenteeism.

Here are the steps to create a risk assessment for stress:

• Understand the risk factors. Engage your staff and listen to what they have to say about workload pressure, roles & responsibilities, department structures, communication, policies etc. Anything that might be a cause of stress.

• Collate the information into the relevant risk factors and establish who might be at risk. Remember that every individual is different and stress impacts in different ways. It is not a one size fits all process and may take some time to get right.

• Document what controls are already in place to mitigate the risk of stress in each risk area.

• Document what further actions may be necessary

• Ensure there is ownership of each risk factor and actions plans to carry out changes.

• Communicate to your staff and involve them throughout the process

• Ensure the assessment is owned, reviewed and updated as necessary

The toughest part is making sure this becomes a live and important part of working culture in your organisation and not a paper exercise; it should be practiced and not just professed.  Check what policies your organisation has in place today.