This topic is receiving more and more coverage these days, possibly as a result of so many high profile individuals being open and honest about their own experiences and issues.
Obviously it is something that needs to be treated with high levels of integrity, however there will alway’s be an element of people who seek to take advantage of this situation to make excuses for themselves and seek sympathy, equally there are Companies and Boss’s who are disparaging towards the conditions and see it as purely an excuse from an employee to overcome their short failings.
Understandably there are significant costs associated with the impact of mental challenges in the workplace, as any employee suffering such issues cannot expect to be 100% productive, so this drop in production results in increased costs to the company.
If the situation is caused by issues and actions within the workplace, it’s fair to say that the company should do something about these and take the hit of costs and equally invest in counselling help for their employees.
Companies such as Mind-Berry.com offer an excellent service in this situation, allowing the employee the option to speak with counsellors in a secure confidential format.
However what if the issue is not caused from within the work place and is caused by scenarios such as todays lockdown and remote working?
Who pays then?
If workers are having to work from home to follow government guidelines, and this in turn is causing mental issues, should the company have to suffer this cost?
Should this be the responsibility of the employee to take actions that will enable them to deal with this change of working environment ?
It seems that a lot of companies have lost sympathy for their staff and feel they should no longer have to pay and the responsibility should fall back onto the employee.
Maybe this is just a cop out, or maybe it’s been caused by too many people just taking advantage of an incredibly complex scenario.
At VOS we work with Mind-Berry and experience tells me that these instances are really challenging for people, situations that for the majority of us would be nothing become insurmountable challenges, it has certainly taught me to be more considered in responses to people in seemingly normal everyday conversations.
The thing is, we never really know what’s going on so we need to consider our own responses and also more importantly our actions.
My wish would be this, is you say you are going to do something, then do it, reply to an e-mail acknowledge a job application, return that call, even if your news is bad news, that is better than doing nothing which simply increases the feeling of being ignored and the damage to an already low self esteem.
Please take a moment and consider your own actions, being considerate and kind costs nothing, however it can make a huge difference in a positive way.