Swinging The Lead?

Sir Cary L. Cooper, 50^th Anniversary Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at the ALLIANCE Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, examines the state of mental ill health absence.

Recently, the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions suggested that people who take long term sick from anxiety and depression are just looking for an excuse ‘not to work’, and aren’t really ill.

The Minister, and those in senior roles who have the same view, unfortunately are re-stigmatising mental health, and encouraging people with depression or anxiety to stop ‘swinging the lead’ and get back to work. It took decades to get employers to acknowledge the reality of mental health at work, given the modern workplace is much more stressful than decades ago, when most of the problems then were linked to heavy manufacturing and engineering, with muscular skeletal manifestations (eg backache) the main health outcome. Now that most of our businesses are service-based, we have more ‘people-related problems’ (eg interpersonal conflicts, work-family issues, etc.), as opposed to man-machine issues.

There are a number of reasons that people are suffering more now from the common mental disorders of stress, anxiety and depression at work than in the past.

The Accidental Manager

First, and probably foremost, is that managers, at all levels in an organisation, are promoted or recruited to managerial roles based on their technical skills rather than their social skills. It is what the Chartered Management Institute have called the ‘accidental manager’. One gets into a managerial role by being in the ‘right place at the right time’ and having little training in terms of their ‘people skills’ such as empathy, listening, resolving conflict, building teams, recognising that their staff are not coping – in essence, in their ‘emotional intelligence’. To correct this, HR should ensure, when promoting or recruiting people to managerial roles, that there is parity between candidates technical and people skills. This will help because managers will be better able to recognise the early symptoms of people who may have unmanageable workloads or unrealistic deadlines or are having difficult relationships with colleagues at work. Early recognition and support for employees will minimise the negative long-term impact of stress at work. As Vincent van Gogh once wrote: “I put my heart and soul into my work, and lost my mind in the process.”

The Capacity to Care

Second, the NHS is not capable of identifying and treating people with early signs of mental health problems. There aren’t enough counsellors, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists available, and the ‘wait times’ are far too long in most parts of the country. The good news is that larger private and public sector bodies tend to provide Employee Assistance Programmes to their employees for counselling and other support issues. But the EAPs are overwhelmed themselves with the demand, but at least you can get an early assessment and treatment in most of them. There is a problem, however, with employees who work for SME businesses, who have too few employees or can’t afford an EAP – they have to rely on the NHS referral system.

Are You Secure?

And finally, the reality of the 21^stCentury workplace is that jobs are less secure than in the past, that organisations tend to be ‘lean and mean’ in terms of staff resource which puts up the workload on existing staff. Alongside this, people are not well-managed and technology is moving faster than people’s ability to cope with the changes (eg artificial intelligence). There are also generational differences, with Z-gen and the young millennials not prepared to work for organisations with poor working cultures; who are ‘control and control’ in their management style, deliver a long-hours culture, don’t allow flexible working and fail to provide them with training and support in their role and protection from the inevitable pressures of today’s world of work. Providing staff with a sense of purpose, trusting and valuing them for their contribution is the way to enhance employee mental wellbeing. As Mark Twain once wrote: “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great, make you feel that you, too, can somehow become great.”