Talk to Me About Your Problems

Open door policy - talk to me about your problems...

Spoke with an OIM on Friday, he said Brett “our approach to mental health here at "@@@@@" works. Mental health is about people talking to each other about their problems, and we have an open door policy so we can deal with our teams problems”.

“Just last week we had a lad on here who was really struggling to cope, one of the guys found him upset in the cabin and we spent the day supporting him. I got involved along with the medic, we spoke to him, topside medical and he was home on the next flight. I had one of the guys stay with him until then. Far as I know he is now getting treatment for issues through the business”.

“Well firstly I really hope he was ok, because mental health issues at work is a growing problem and many people never return to health.” I said

“Probably quite stressful for all of you dealing with that situation also, and imagine you gave him advice on what to do without any real understanding or training”

OIM “Of course it was stressful Brett, he’s one of our guys. Nobody wants to see that, we are all human. We did the very best we could do to make sure he got the right treatment”

“Great point” I replied

So here’s my question - “do you think that your culture is sustainable?”

“What ya mean?” OIM

I responded “Well 74% of UK adults have felt so stressed at some point over the last year that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope.

And 69% of energy workers would not approach their employer with mental health issues

So is this sustainable, could 74% of your asset who reach crisis be afforded 1 day of multiple people to manage the problem, and could the business sustain the time lost for every event.

Of course then, there is a vast majority who will be struggling to cope but won’t come forward, and this could result any any number of crisis.

Can you imagine the risk this presents in terms of safety, health, costs, productivity, huge absenteeism let alone a potential major incident

So again is it sustainable? Do you think your people can sustain it?”

“Well we have just got to get on with it, there is no option” OIM

There is an option. A culture that understands mental health harm, is psychologically safe and the workplace mental health experience is visible. By doing this you can reduce the numbers of employees ever reaching crisis point, this will improve mental health, reduce accident rates, absenteeism and costs.