Mental health at work – what have we learned post-pandemic?

Since the pandemic, the workplace has undergone monumental change and employee mental health has been significantly impacted. Back in 2022, The Lancet published a report which explored how the pandemic had impacted work experience and practices. It also looked at how this has shaped population health and wellbeing.

Over the last decade, we had already been experiencing a workplace transformation of sorts. Changing leadership styles and more employee-friendly work practices were evolving. This was in line with advancements in technology and an increase in social, purpose-led values. These trends have been accelerated by the pandemic, although the propensity to capture, monitor, evaluate, and respond to these changes have been somewhat arbitrary across many sectors so far.

Adding up the data

The lancet report emphasised how workplaces and their working conditions are central to addressing the sociodemographic determinants of health and inequalities. These could be related to income, race, ethnicity and gender. We also did our own research during the height of Covid. We found that organisations with an embedded culture of trust were able to adapt more quickly to the shock. They were able to hit the ground running, pivot and become more adaptable.

Workers who were entrusted to work from home in a way that fitted best to their individual needs were more productive. Their mental health was also rated higher than those who had the opposite experiences with their employers. These employees typically felt safer, more supported and more motivated, leading to better outcomes. Our own organisation managed to achieve its most successful year ever during the worst of the pandemic. This was in contrast to others, who struggled to motivate and maintain their staff morale.

It became evident that these emerging work practices were also helping to balance out some of the inequalities that we had identified among our own workforce. These included those juggling familial responsibilities, who were finding flexible work patterns more helpful.

Adapting and learning

After the pandemic, Greenacre kept many of these work practices in place, along with a continued emphasis on supporting mental health. Significantly, we have been growing year on year since the pandemic, and have become a stronger, leaner, more efficient team.

As the workforce started to migrate back into the workplace post-pandemic, we adapted, expanding our office space to include social and quiet areas. We also keept flexibility and autonomous working at the heart of our culture. In short, the mental health of our team has directly impacted our outcomes. The Lancet report backs this observation up with its own data. Their report states “workers who have higher autonomy, flexibility, and supportive supervisors and colleagues also have better wellbeing and health.”

In addition to the benefits it brings to the organisation and our employees, we have found that a supportive mental health culture also spills out to our customers. They regularly feedback (unsolicited) positive experiences with our staff. We are also being recommended to clients and candidates by a number of our competitors. This is practically unheard of in the recruitment industry, and highlights just how widely impactful a positive mental health culture can be.

Mental health - a growing concern

Post pandemic and fast forward to 2024, the UK is in the midst of a growing mental health crisis. This is not only occurring across society and the workplace, but also in schools and colleges. A recent NHS publication suggests that  just over one in five (20.3%) children and young people aged from eight to 16 years in England now have a probable mental disorder. This is a steep increase from 2017, which was recorded at 12.5%, with mental health issues more prevalent among girls and those within the LGBTQ community.

But it’s not just the mental health of UK young people that is deteriorating. The latest report from the Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Youth Mental Health shows that this is a global crisis, with influential factors including “an interconnected set of socioeconomic and commercial forces.”

The statistics show that the mental health of our workforce has a direct impact on our socioeconomic outlook. We are only now catching up on and acting on the data we have collected post-pandemic. As we head forward into a data-led future it is becoming more apparent that mental health impacts the bottom line. New laws such as the Employment Rights Act are coming into force which aim to protect the rights of workers. Employers will need to start playing a bigger part in supporting the mental health of their workforces, whether they like it or not.

We’ve been making some great strides in tackling our future mental health. The world is set to become an even more uncertain place as we move forward. We need to make a collective effort to ensure we remain committed to imporoving the mentla health of our workforce.

Alma Sheren, Communications Lead