Daily Coronavirus Webinar: mental health

Our Daily Coronavirus Webinar on 31 March included our regular update from Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, as well as a special focus on how businesses can support the mental health of their staff during the pandemic. We discussed a wide range of topics, and answered questions from the audience.

Overview:

• The CBI are pushing for the government to:
  • Continue to promote positive communication about keeping businesses open where possible, while also keeping the key worker list under review.
  • Utilise every available channel to ensure all parties understand the framework which determines whether a business can remain open or not - expanding the advice produced for social distancing in food and drink manufacturers to other sectors.
  • Provide additional PHE guidelines for non-food businesses – particularly in instances where it is challenging to observe the 2-metre social distancing rule.
  • And consider a more formal ‘identifier’ for employees who can work, building on the letter provided to food workers.
• Government’s Business Support website now has a page that directs businesses towards business organisations and trade associations in every sector to find out further information and support on the impact of Covid-19.
• The website is businesssupport.gov.uk – and it has a link to the CBI’s coronavirus hub on it. Please do visit to see what industry specific guidance is available to you.

Key questions we answered:

1. What are you hearing from businesses on the key mental health issues that they’re facing?

• Businesses have been focused on the health and wellbeing of their people – mitigating the risk of staff’s exposure to the coronavirus. There are five key issues businesses have told us they are facing:
  • The anxiety caused by the health risks of coronavirus, especially for staff who are/or who live with someone identified as being in a ‘vulnerable group’.
  • Isolation and not knowing how long the current crisis may last.
  • Increased pressures placed on working parents and carers by the nursey and school closures.
  • The workload demands that high staff absences place on employees – due to people falling ill or needing to self-isolate, particularly in critical sectors.
  • Worry about being paid and keeping your job due to critical drop in demand.
• The CBI would like firms to continue sharing their experiences.

2. In a business context, what are the key audiences you need to consider when developing mental health guidelines?

• There are three audiences to consider:
  • Employees able to work from home.
  • People working in industries that have effectively closed.
  • Key workers still going into the workplace and placing themselves at risk.
• We are better placed to understand how to protect the mental health of employees working from home.

3. What strategies can businesses use to avoid employees working from home becoming isolated?

• There are practical steps you can take to ensure your workers can work from home and can be contacted.
• Communication is key for employers. People have reported that the level of information on the coronavirus is overwhelming and confusing.
• Your organisation should develop a mental health plan over the next three months and communicate it to your staff. Your mental health plan should be easy to locate in one place.
• Employers should also consider how they communicate to different groups within their business. For example, what is your communication like to parents having to work from home? How regularly are you having one to one’s team meetings with your team?
• Employers need to set a culture of compassionate leadership. Line managers need to be equipped with the tools necessary to have conversations with their teams to check in on how they are.
• The charity, MIND, has free online training for small and larger businesses to this end.
• If every employer provides a wellbeing action plan, it provides the framework to have those conversations. It is a template providing a range of questions asking people what their mental health triggers are and how to spot the signs of poor mental health.
• Peer support is also key. Establish peer support networks, using Microsoft Teams to ensure peers are having regular conversations.

4. Regarding people with mental health issues who have been furloughed, how do you approach your responsibilities to them?

• Make sure that the support available in your organisation is fit for purpose in this current situation. Naturally, we understand doing this will take time.
• You need to check in with your employers to ensure they have access to external support during this time. This involves asking people what support they need in place during this time.

5. How do you recommend people support each other through this period?

• Three things to encourage:
  • Organisations have to show leadership on mental health from the top
    • It is the way in which senior people interact with others in their organisation in a personal way.
    • When you start your conversation, say ‘how are you?’ and listen. Listening is critical in demonstrating that despite being a senior leader within an organisation, you are also a human being. This will help avoid you coming across as not caring.
  • The power of stories
    • Business leaders recounting their personal stories, which may include having suffered from severe depression and recovering to become better and stronger people is inspirational and relatable for employees.
    • Again, this demonstrates that senior business leaders are people like everyone else, and that we are all going through this together.
    • Business leaders could also consider telling their employees about what they are doing to cope, logging positive stories each day.
  • Collaboration is more powerful than competition
    • It is important for businesses to learn from each other, rather than pretending any one business has all the answers in an unprecedented and challenging circumstance.

6. Looking to the future, are there any lessons we can learn on what we can expect after this lockdown has subsided?

• We have learned lessons from China, where it has been reported that the third week of working from home is supposed to be the toughest on people’s mental wellbeing.
• The CBI’s Beijing office is just emerging from their lockdown. They are giving us a sense of what the re-start after COVID-19 feels like.

7. Some employees will be experiencing grief during this difficult time. How do they navigate this process while mitigating their sense of obligation to work?

• There is a lot of good guidance online produced by charities such as Dying Matters and others.
• For businesses that are financially solvent, sign-posting employees to their internal resources is key.
• Charities are over-loaded at the moment.
• Employers should consider, if possible, to pay experts in grief counselling to provide support to their employees.

8. Do you have advice for parents with young children working from home?

• You may consider working on alternative days to organise your work and childcare responsibilities.
• Ensure senior people do not send emails to employees over the weekend. We know that an email sent from a senior leader during the weekend emboldens employees to respond.

9. How often should we keep in touch with our colleagues and co-workers when a large number of them may be furloughed?

• First and foremost, you need to ask your employees what they want and need.
• Different employees will have different asks on how they want to be kept updated and involved going forward.
• For many people, their job forms a significant portion of their identity. For those who are furloughed, employers may consider offering them alternative activities like volunteering, so they may develop as an individual during this period.
• Holding sessions to bring people together over platforms such as Microsoft Teams. This enables your employees to de-compress from the previous week. this can really lift employees’ spirits.