EXCLUSIVE: Judith Grant (pictured), associate director, health and wellbeing at construction organisation Mace, will discuss how employers can take an innovative approach to mental health at Employee Benefits Live 2017.
Her session, titled ‘Getting proactive with mental health at work’, will form part of the health and wellbeing conference stream on Tuesday 10 October, which is also World Mental Health Day.
Presenting alongside Claire Douglas, health and wellbeing manager, Europe at Pitney Bowes, Grant will supply practical tips and ideas on how HR and benefits professionals can be more strategic when implementing a mental health programme.
Grant will highlight how a successful mental health strategy should reach beyond the provision of employee assistance programmes (EAPs), occupational health services, and health insurance to also include workplace conversations. She will explain how this can help organisations take a proactive approach to encourage employees to talk about their mental health concerns earlier and therefore improve outcomes. Grant will also draw on her experience in the construction sector, where suicide is a prevalent issue among staff, and explain why there needs to be more discussion about suicide and mental health at work.
Grant will also look at the importance of internal collaboration when developing an all-encompassing mental health approach in order to ensure that the best results for employees can be achieved.
She said: “Managing mental health at work or supporting mental health at work needs to be far-reaching, so thinking about do [employers] need to train or support people to have better conversations at work? People [who] feel they can talk about their issues earlier on, maybe don’t need to go to the employee assistance programme, or rely on the health insurance. Actually having a conversation and talking about how they feel and getting help earlier might prevent a whole lot of pain for that individual and obviously cost for the business as well.
“It is about collaborating with as many different people across the organisation so [employers] can sell the idea of wellbeing in as many different corporate languages as possible so that it lands to whoever it’s reaching.”
Employee Benefits Live 2017 will take place on Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 October at Olympia National, London.
