Healthy Business

Taking Care of Business: coalition government policy

With one in six workers is currently experiencing depression, anxiety or stress, the figures speak for themselves. But is enough being done to make mental health a workplace priority?

In order to explore the business case for managing mental health positively, Mind – the leading mental health charity for England and Wales – were responsible for the 2011 business summit entitled Taking Care of Business, in conjunction with AXA.

The purpose of the Taking Care of Business summit was to explore employer solutions for better mental health at work, share best practice, and agree on mental health actions for businesses to promote within their sector. In our second blog post on the summit (our first Taking Care of Business post is here), we’ll be looking at mental health in the workplace and coalition government policy, highlighting the recommendations that resulted.

Speaking at the summit, the Minister for Welfare Reform Lord Freud stressed that the government’s vision for mental health at work is holistic and wide-ranging, and includes welfare reform, the Work Programme, and the public health strategy’s commitments on employment. With the focus on getting people back into long-term work and also on preventing people falling out of work in the first place, the government’s aim is to move beyond the “rigid dividing line” that currently exists between mental and physical health.

However, there are ‘barriers faced by employers and staff in the current system of state support’, says the Taking Care of Business report. One of the most obvious barriers is that – while mental health problems are one of the biggest causes of sickness absence – less than one per cent of the Access To Work budget assists people with mental health issues.

Another problem for individuals and employers is that in many cases, people move from statutory sick pay on to ill health benefits without any intervention from the employer – meaning that people fall out of the work market altogether.

With such a large percentage of sick days lost to mental health problems – they account for between 36% and 44.6% of sickness absence – it’s imperative that new ways of managing mental health are considered. In the Health at work independent review of sickness absence carried out by Dame Carol Black and David Frost CBE, the authors state that one of the main things that needs to change is the way mental health problems are thought about: ‘A key challenge is to change attitudes and  destigmatize these issues’.

A key recommendation for the coalition from the Taking Care of Business summit relates to private health cover. The government, says the report’s recommendation, should ‘explore financial incentives’ to encourage prioritisation of mental health by employers. An example of this would be a ‘feedback incentive loop’ where lower health insurance premiums would be offered to employers with good mental health management training in place.

What do you think needs to change to make sure we have better mental health at work in the UK? Do the Health at Work review and recommendations go far enough? Let us know your views in the comments – we’d love to hear from you.

1 Comment

1. I completely agree with the above point, I think we need to change peoples opinions and attitudes towards mental health, that way businesses and professionals will be able to understand, they are not just taking sick days, they need extra care, attention and help.

   Tyler Murphy

   March 21, 2012 at 12:51 pm

   Reply