Mental Health in the Workplace

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By Tom Wavre

I work for a large global organisation who are good at many things but do not have any policies around mental health in the workplace. I’d like to share with you a presentation that you are free to use yourself. This presentation has helped to reshape the view of mental health throughout the European division of my organisation.

I was fortunate enough to find good support within the organisation when I did stop hiding my illness from work. This though was luck, the right person, at the right time. With no policies in place there is no certainty this would be the case for anyone else.

Recently I have been challenging this within the European arm of the business. I have travelled to places such as France, Denmark and Italy advocating for a better mental health approach with the various management teams.

Tomorrow I will be talking about mental health at a conference with attendees from across the European business. The presentation below is what I have been using and what I will use tomorrow. The only change being this version does not have the branding of my organisation on it! This is available for download as well.

In the delivery of the presentation I start by talking very openly about my own experience at work:

what I was going through
how the mind was impacted
the never ending downward spiral of mental illness combined with paranoia of how you are being perceived at work and how work will react to the truth

I then cover the facts on the second slide to show the breadth of the issue and along with slide 3 how it can impact negatively on the business. Your senior management and HR teams may or may not be compassionate to their staff. However the facts show productivity, turnover and profitability all benefit from a robust and compassionate strategy around mental health.

Changing Minds

Finally the presentation gives a basic overview as to what the company ought to be committing to do to tackle this issue.

If you are interested in trying to convince your business to take on a new approach to mental health, I hope you find this helpful and I will happily give you further advice if you require it. Just e-mail me at tom@iam1in4.com.

To download the file, either click in the ‘in’ button at the bottom right corner of the slideshow, or on the hyperlink ‘mental health at work’ under the slideshow. Once on the new page, you should see a button titled ‘download’ under the slideshow.

Good luck!!

Mental Health at Work from Tom Wavre

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About Post Author

Tom Wavre

Toms background is within the construction sector having worked at a senior management level with global names such as Würth, Rawlplug and most recently Fortune 200 company ITW. Tom sees the importance of mental health in the workplace from two angles, both as a senior manager needing to get the highest productivity from his team and from his own lived experience of mental illness. In the past 2 years, Tom has worked worked as a volunteer, advocate and change maker around mental health. He is founder and driving force behind www.iam1in4.com a site and social media campaign that is followed by over 70,000 globally. Tom has driven change and a new approach to mental health in organisations in the UK and across Europe. He is passionate about helping make this change as widely and meaningfully as possible.