Tis the mind that makes the body rich
“Tis the mind that makes the body rich”
Water Wellbeing debates the taboo health issue in the workplace
Leading wellbeing and health business, Water Wellbeing, hosted a thought-provoking event on one of the big taboo workplace issues at the Globe Theatre, London on 21st October 2010. Providing a forum for HR and risk professionals across both the public and private sector, the event took the mental state of one of literature’s greatest characters, Hamlet, to open a debate on how mental health is dealt with in the workplace.
“Mental health in the workplace is the big taboo subject” explained Rory Murphy, External Affairs, Water Wellbeing. “Many employers find it hard to define – and when they do identify it, they are not entirely sure how to manage it.
“Our goal with this unique event was to provide a forum where professionals could discuss the issue openly and learn from experts on the best way to tackle it. And we brought the subject to life through the words of Shakespeare.
“Hamlet is probably Shakespeare’s greatest troubled man – examining the spiral of mental deterioration he went through, through a monologue presented by actor Tom Mallaburn, gave our expert speakers the opportunity to debate the ways in which mental health can be managed in the workplace.”
With continued pressure on employers to manage employee attendance and absence, health and wellbeing in the workplace has to stay at the top of the business agenda. But Water Wellbeing believes that mental stress is a particularly difficult issue to manage. Its event therefore examined the mental stress issues that affect health and wellbeing in the workplace and how those issues are handled by employers as well as the support they can provide to employees.
Hosting the event, Ben McGannan, Managing Director, Water Wellbeing encouraged HR professionals to more proactively engage with employees to confront the issues of mental health.
“In Shakespeare’s words, ‘Tis the mind that makes the body rich’ and we fervently believe in this philosophy. Quite rightly, there is a lot of focus on the physical wellbeing of workers – indeed through our healthcheck kiosk we provide employers with a non-confrontational way to engage with staff to manage their physical wellbeing, with proven positive results. But we think it is equally important to provide the tools for businesses to look after the mental health of workers too. And the first step in achieving this is to actually be able to recognise and handle sensitively stress and mental health issues.”
Guest speakers at the event included Eugene Farrell, a qualified health economist with a Psychology Degree and more than 20 years experience in the UK healthcare arena. Eugene has worked in a variety of roles in both the public and private sectors. He currently provides health and wellbeing consultancy services to major employers in the UK including managing absence and sickness presence as well as delivering training for managing stress at work. His focus was on sickness presence and its detrimental impact on the workplace.
With over 25 years’ experience in employment relations and training, Coreen Nugent led the debate on stress in today’s workplace. She facilitates workplace groups to develop productive, harmonious and efficient working relationships and is passionate about the need to resolve unhealthy conflict at work as early as possible to minimise work related stress levels and costly disruption.
Dr Steven Sperber, a consultant occupational physician and the Medical Director of Nexus Healthcare, examined the impact on workplace productivity of health issues. Dr Sperber has substantial experience providing occupational health advice to a wide variety of employers of differing sizes and across most industries.
“With more than 40 HR professionals attending our event, it is clear that mental health in the workplace is presenting some real challenges for UK employers” concluded Rory Murphy. “There was a very passionate debate about how to handle the issue, with honest acknowledgement that it’s not always easy to identify mental health problems in the first instance, let alone know the right way to tackle them.
“Whilst this isn’t an easy problem to fix, we certainly broke down some of the barriers on this subject. And we strongly believe we gave the employers who attended the event some real opportunities to improve how they handle stress and mental health in their organisations.”
Ends
October 2010
For more details of individual speaker presentations or further comment from Rory Murphy, please contact the Water Wellbeing Press Office:
Louise Fowler/Wendy Harrison at HSL
020 8977 9132