How to create a mentally healthy workplace

Our recommended approach

The business case• Positively managing mental health underpins good employee engagement and benefits everyone – employees, employers and the bottom line. • If you look after your employees’ mental wellbeing, then levels of engagement will rise and so will staff morale and loyalty, innovation, productivity and profits.Employee engagementThe strong relationship between levels of staff wellbeing and motivation and business performance is often called employee engagement. Increasing engagement is a major priority for UK leaders because engaged employees have been shown again and again to deliver improved business performance.The twin goals of increasing employee engagement and creating a mentally healthy workplace are interdependent. Fundamental to both is the need for strong leadership and a positive, transparent and clear organisational culture which values staff. The Deloitte Millennials Survey 2016 is a strong evidence-base for this.Employers – especially line managers – need to take the first step by sending a signal that staff mental health is valued and that people can feel confident that disclosure will lead to support, not discrimination.

We recommend employers adopt a three-pronged strategy which includes: 1. Promoting wellbeing for all staff.

2. Tackling the work-related causes of mental health problems. 3. Supporting staff who are experiencing a mental health problem.