employment and mental health: workshop

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Employment and Mental Health?What would good look like?A workshop Exercise

Prof Jim McManus, OCDS, CPsychol, CSci, FFPH, FRSB, FRSPH, AFBPsS

Director of Public Health, Hertfordshire County CouncilJim.mcmanus@hertfordshire.gov.uk

July 15th 2016St Albans Strategic Partnership Awayday

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Why?• Economic Issue• Population Health Issue• Employers’ Obligations• Employee Engagement• Preventive Agenda• Skills Agenda• Productivity and Employee relations – the

Psychological Contract

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What?

• Systems approach• From preparing for employment to getting and

keeping people in employment and helping employers’ create and keep healthy workplaces

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A Schema

• Australian Model https://www.comcare.gov.au/promoting/Creating_mentally_healthy_workplaces

• This diagram is a good schema to look across the system

• What else might we add?

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How? Starting Places1.  Build a positive psychosocial workplace/happy

workplace– Values and behaviours which value people– Diversity across all diversity strands – Train people to be resilient– Embed resilience and self care skills into managers

and staff– Pleasant working environment – Encourage people to be open about MH issues

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Starting Places2. Embed work-life balance into policies and working arrangements3. Leave policies4.Deliver MH first aid training and also awareness training5.Ensure your MH Policies are up to date6.Ensure people can access support when they need it7.Identify return to work packages for people with MH issues

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Where I get help?Herts Public Health Employers’ Offer

• Free training and services to Herts Employers

• 650+ MH Champions in workplace trainedContinues till 2017

• 11 Elected Member Champions – how are we using them?

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Some Tools

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Some Resources• http://www.mind.org.uk/workplace/mental-health-at-work

/

• http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/get-involved/get-your-workplace-involved/support-employees

• http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/get-involved/get-your-workplace-involved/support-managers/make-your-workplace-healthy

• http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1900

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What’s next?

• We’re going to go back to the Schema and do an exercise

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Exercise 2

What are we doing well?

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Exercise 1

What do we need to do better, by working together?

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Thank you

• Jim.mcmanus@hertfordshire.gov.uk • Public Health Pages• www.hertsdirect.org/healthinherts • JSNA• http://jsna.hertslis.org/