Pledged Employers

In October we formally rolled-out our health and wellbeing policy, covering physical and mental wellbeing. Our activity programme includes giving employees the opportunity to attend ‘mindfulness’ taster sessions, introducing methods for strengthening emotional resilience and managing stress and anxiety. And on 7 November, we’ll sign the Time to Change Pledge and promote it to our members and employees, delivering employee briefings on bullying and harassment and supporting equality and diversity through staff awareness sessions.

At Accenture, inclusion and diversity are fundamental to our culture and core values. Our commitment to Time to Change has been driven by our UK Accent on Enablement network, an employee-led forum dedicated to improving disability awareness and confidence at Accenture. By tackling the “last taboo” of mental health, reducing stigma, encouraging openness and improving communication, the network hopes to create a more inclusive environment for all our employees, not just those directly affected by mental health conditions.

We are committed to Wellbeing and we have an employee wellbeing action plan of which mental wellbeing is a theme. We have held Mind Mental Health First Aid training for staff and tenants, have launched a stress management toolkit and offer our staff access to an Employee Assistance telephone line and counselling should they need it. We are also planning a programme of Tenant Wellbeing activity in 2013. We are also planning to join the local Mindful Employer group.

We’ve signed the Time to Change organisational pledge to show we are committed to tacking mental health stigma and discrimination in the workplace. Our activities will focus on breaking down the barriers around mental health and helping people feel comfortable speaking about them, dispelling myths and raising awareness of the support available.

Julie Fidler from the Department of Health takes us through what happened in the lead-up to the government department's pledge -  and what happened next

My team leads on the health and wellbeing programme for the department and its staff. We have three work-streams that Department of Health employees can access in terms of improving wellbeing at work: physical, emotional and workplace. The workplace and emotional wellbeing strands are particularly important as we have been going through a restructure which can create added pressure and stress for employees.

The overall aim of the health and wellbeing programme is to give emotional wellbeing parity with physical wellbeing in the workplace. We combined it with initiatives looking at physical wellbeing, such as support with stopping smoking, so people would see it as all part of the same package. It kicked off in November 2011.

Why we wanted to sign the pledge

We wanted to sign the Time to Change pledge for two reasons. Firstly because of the fact that we are the Department of Health and we have invested in the Time to Change programme. It felt like we should be practicing what we preach – why should we invest in a programme that is asking organisations to pledge if we don’t do it ourselves?

Secondly, we signed because it was the right thing to do. There is a stigma around mental illness, wanted to do something practical about it.

How we planned it

I set up a mental health advisory board, and invited some of the department’s partners and stakeholders in to put together a plan of action. These included [mental health charities and partners in Time to Change] Mind, Rethink Mental Illness, and the Charity for the Civil Service. The advisory board also included representatives from our HR team and staff networks.

We met to come up with a plan for how we could start to have a conversation about mental health in the workplace. We wanted to sign the pledge and I knew it would take time to get our workforce to believe we were serious. The programme agreed on World Mental Health Day [10th October] as a date, to give us a six month lead in to run an internal communications campaign and raise awareness.

Our plan set out different ways of raising awareness about mental health in workplace so when we signed the pledge it didn’t come as a surprise to our employees. We tried to think about what causes poor mental health, whether it’s stress at work, trouble at home, being a carer, or issues around financial management, and we decided to arrange talks and provide information and signposting to give staff more choice on these issues.

Our communications campaign

In the weeks leading up to the pledge day, we promoted the day by doing some teaser campaigns. Blogs from leaders in our organisation gave the campaign endorsement. We featured pieces on our intranet, put up posters around our offices and invited other organisations to come in to talk to staff about different mental health conditions.

As a result of our campaign, some of our staff disclosed their own mental health problems, so we ran some blogs from people who wrote about their experiences.

It was great to have these interactive communications, so people could respond online, and because of these blogs more and more people came forward to talk talking about their own mental health experiences.

All this activity provided a great foundation for when we signed the pledge.

What happened on the day

On the pledge day itself, our Chief Medical Officer and [Time to Change Director] Sue Baker signed the pledge. The Minister for Care Services Norman Lamb also spoke at the signing event. We had a Time to Change stand and couple of other stands with materials about wellbeing. We also had a pledge board where staff could write their individual pledges on post it notes.

We ran sessions throughout the day, where Time to Change Champions came and talked about their experiences. We also had speakers talking about domestic violence and post traumatic stress disorder.

We ran taster sessions on managing stress, mindfulness and anxiety and emotional resilience. These were open to all of our staff, across two sites - one in London and one in Leeds - on two separate days.

We had a mixture of Time to Change materials, both online and offline - blogs, printed campaign material - available on day. We also had Time to Change Champions there to share their stories, who were best advocates ever.

We had no idea how it would go, but we had a fantastic turnout on the day, with over 100 pledges in London, and similar numbers in Leeds. We had a lot of footfall in the area where we were running the activity, due to working in an open plan environment.

What happened next

The whole of our health and wellbeing programme is now run by volunteers. We’ve really got people engaged. We have set up a support group for people with lived experience of mental health problems. Two of our staff members put a film together, which featured other staff talking about their conditions, or what it’s like to be a carer for someone with a mental health problem. When we uploaded the video is to our intranet, it went viral.

As a result of the taster sessions we ran on the day, we now regularly run emotional resilience sessions and have six trained facilitators in mental health first aid (MHFA) training, and we intend to put 100 people through the sessions per year. We’ve found that peer support is much better than line management so we’ve opened up the training for peers. We’ve also mainstreamed the mindfulness training, set up peer groups and we’re the first government department to set up domestic violence support group.

We’re now trying to take the anti-discrimination message across government, and encourage other departments to pledge.

The department runs an annual survey which is compulsory for staff. Last year our specific question on wellbeing, “does the department do good job in supporting your wellbeing?” and we found there was a 10% positive increase in people answering “yes” on previous years.

We also won the National Civil Service Award, for wellbeing in 2012.

Update on Activity

The following gives a flavour of their various activities since signing the pledge:

1. Workshops on mental health awareness including MHFA (Mental Health First Aid) and Resilience
2. Health fairs across four sites which included TTC material and dissemination of campaign key messages
3. ‘Leading from the top’ – senior staff talking about their experience of mental health problems and/or supporting family members with lived experience
4. Staff blogs focussing on the importance of mental wellbeing and openness about lived experience
5. Video campaign in production including staff with lived experience or supporters speaking out in line with current TTC campaign
6. Running an internal poster campaign across all four sites
7. Free MOT health-check with awareness raising workshops for male staff members
8. Set up Health & Wellbeing Network across the organisation with six members with lived experience of mental health problems to advise and feed into strategy
9. Mindfulness training pilot to help build awareness of alternative therapies and support within the workplace
10. Completed the TTC Organisational Healthcheck

Newcastle University Student Wellbeing service offers support to students who have mental health difficulties by offering a variety of different approaches to meet individual needs. We pledge to offer: One to one support for students with mental health difficulties Crisis intervention liaison with external agencies Self help advice Awareness days to encourage all students to discuss mental health reducing stigma and to look after their mental and physical wellbeing Support Newcastle Students’ Union with Time to Change campaigns.

As providers of both physical and mental health services, we look to our staff to be ambassadors for acceptance and understanding of mental illness and the people and families this affects. We will support them to do this. As well, we will continue to work with colleagues from other organisations to deliver the Somerset Time to Change Steering Group’s activities.