The Importance of Mental Health Awareness at Work
This week marks Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK and Mental Health Awareness Month for the month of May in other parts of the world. With this is mind, we wanted to shine a light on the importance of having a Mental Health at Work initiative in place and having the mental health of our employees at the heart of our Company’s culture. In 2020, we launched our official Mental Health at Work scheme, which brought together important initiatives we already had in place, such as our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), and combined this with actively communicating with our people and sharing helpful information and advice on a regular basis.
Each of our global locations has a trained Mental Health Champion who is a point of contact for team members, who can signpost them to the right care and assistance that they may require for different needs. Our Mental Health Champions have been a great asset to our business and continue to help colleagues when they are in need of assistance. Further to this, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic we introduced regular communications, which shared helpful advice from articles to videos and an online resource hub, along with the 24/7/365 counselling service available through our EAP programme. These resources helped to process the change in our way of life during the periods of lockdown and the sickness and loss experienced as a result of the pandemic.
As restrictions in some parts of the world began to ease in early 2022, we felt it was important to bring our colleagues back together in a fun and exciting way, whilst helping to improve their mental and physical health. In April, we launched our first Global Steps Challenge, which gave our team members the challenge of virtually walking around all our global sites over a period of 30 days. Working in teams of five, starting on a virtual map in Santiago, Chile with the aim of generating as many steps as they could over the course of the month and finishing back in Santiago, Chile! As participants progressed we could see the map completing its route with each step generated. We not only achieved the target of 99,700,000 steps, we surpassed it, completing 109% of the route!
The buzz and excitement could be felt right across our global locations, and it was thrilling to hear so much positive feedback as the challenge progressed. Feedback included;
“In the beginning, I didn’t think I could do a lot of steps, but I have to say the challenge has motivated me to go out and move more often. Thank you so much.”
“Please feel free to do more of these challenges, it is so nice to see people participating from all the different countries.”
“It’s been great to interact with colleagues in departments I wouldn’t usually have to chance to on a day to day basis. I have really enjoyed it.”
“Everyone here in the US is really enjoying the Steps Challenge. We take a couple of walks a day as a group and enjoy the weather.”
We recognise that Mental Health is more than just a week or month of the year, and we continue to embed Mental Health at Work into the culture of who we are at David Brown Santasalo.