Law firms cannot afford to ignore workplace stress and mental ill-health, nor can they rely on quick-fix solutions, says Sophie Petit-Zeman
When Lord Uxbridge told Wellington during the Battle of Waterloo that he had lost a leg, the Duke replied, “By God sir, so you have”, before returning to the more pressing matter of dealing with the enemy.
For most of us, workplace stress does not compare with losing a leg or the trauma of active service in war zones. But the demands of the modern workplace have made work-related stress second only to back pain in the occupational hazards league. Mental health problems affect three in 10 employees. The corporate sector ignores them, and their causes, at its peril.
Visa International has adopted a two-fold approach to the problem: helping employees find ways to develop a healthy balance between work and personal life, and providing sympathetic and constructive support. Derrick Ahlfeldt, senior vice president of human resource management, says: “We have policies on ‘work-life balance’ in our staff handbook, ensuring that all employees know about their entitlement to parental leave, emergency leave to care for children, elderly relatives or others and sabbatical leave. We are seen by employees as sympathetic to those who have personal or health problems.”
Ahlfeldt describes other Visa perks – such as subsidised membership of an in-house gym and on-site reflexology – as “valuable, but peripheral to the main ways to help people find the right balance”. And evidence suggests that when the going gets tough, getting the tough back to the grindstone with a 15-minute lunchtime shoulder massage is not the best way forward for employers that are concerned about productivity and sickness absence.
Rather than offer quick-fix solutions for stress, employers need to ask themselves some uncomfortable questions about workplace culture. This is the view of Lynne Friedli, chief executive of the mental health charity Mentality.
“Tackling stress is a growth industry, encouraging companies to invest in solutions that aim to increase what individuals can bear. The problem with such approaches is that poor individual performance nearly always suggests a wider system failure. The only way to bring about real improvements and long-term change is by addressing working practice and culture,” Friedli says.
Psychotherapist Susie Orbach believes a more open-minded workplace will pay dividends for employer and employee. She is a co-founder of Antidote, a charity set up to raise the issue of ‘emotional’ literacy. “We aim to create a culture in which the facility to handle the complexities of emotional life is as widespread as the capacity to read, write and do arithmetic,” she says.
Defining emotional literacy – the capacity to understand what is happening to us at an emotional level – is as difficult as defining mental health, and identifying where this tips into illness, but emotional literacy and mental well-being do seem to be linked. Antidote’s director, James Park, says: “We live in a world that is undergoing rapid change, where the social connections that generate inner security are weakening. Some people can adjust positively to this situation, others feel bewildered.”
Antidote and Mentality are not alone in promoting emotional and mental health. In March, the Department of Health launched a 12-month campaign to identify those who discriminate against employees with mental health problems. As part of the campaign, the Industrial Society is trying to find out how much HR managers and employers know about mental health, and what policies they deploy to improve it and to deal with its breakdown. The indications are that many employers devote insufficient attention to the subject.
Management cannot afford to duck the issue of workplace stress and mental ill-health, nor can they rely on the stoicism of employees with stiff upper lips and socks pulled high to carry them through. As Orbach says: “Connecting to our feelings is not soft; disconnecting from our feelings is not clever.” Those highest up the corporate ladder should take heed.
Sophie Petit-Zeman is a freelance journalist. This article was originally prepared for
executive search consultants Spencer Stewart Talent Network.
