The importance of workplace culture

November is Men’s Health (including mental health) Month, it is also the month when we mark International Stress Awareness Week (4-8 November) and National Stress Awareness Day (6 November). In addition to that, the festivities and festivals start to ramp up with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Bodhi Day, Pancha Ganapati, Hanukkah and so on, with the associated adverts for seasonal food and gifts, special offers and sales. Therefore, now is a poignant time to think about the impact this time of year has on all of us, and how the culture at work can either support or undermine our mental health.

Not only are November, December and January busy months in our personal lives, but they are also busy workwise with year-end, planning for 2025, rebudgeting and forecasting. For key sectors - transport and logistics, retail, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, health and more – it means even more time away from home with the added pressures that brings, financial strain, relationship issues but also loneliness for many. With all of the additional pressure you can see how easy it is to reach the point of burnout.

What is burnout?

According to the World Health Organization, ‘Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and
reduced professional efficacy.’ [1]

As we have discussed previously in this blog series, ‘Employers have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. This is the same duty you have to protect people from other health and safety risks.’ (Health and Safety Executive). [2]

However, we know that despite that, employees still experience unmanageable stress and burnout, resulting in sickness, presenteeism, reduced productivity, staff turnover etc. (estimated to cost £56 billion a year for UK businesses) [3]:

Stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 49% of work-related ill health and 54% of all working days lost due to ill health in 2022/23. [4]
A recent survey also found that, ‘47% of employers said they offer regular workload reviews to their employees, but just 14% of employees said they receive this’. [5]

Clearly something is going wrong.

What are the common mistakes when it comes to workplace culture?

Our vision is ‘positive mental health in and through work’ because the two are irrevocably interrelated. Saying to someone, “Leave your problems at home,” is the same as someone at home saying, “Don’t bring your problems home with you.” I remember my mum saying to me how some nights it felt like my dad’s boss was in bed with them, as he tossed and turned unable to put to rest whatever had happened during the day.

We can’t compartmentalise a physical illness or injury to only one area of our lives, so why would anyone think it was possible to do this for mental health? By acknowledging the two parts of everyone’s life it will help to make the workplace culture more embracing.

Another mistake is not communicating with your teams. So often, it appears as a one-way street, organisations informing employees about changes, policy, offers etc., however, there is seldom scope for checking that the messages are getting through and that they are understood. A recent study found that, ‘While 54% of employers claimed to have asked what mental health provision employees need, only 15% of employees said they have actually been asked’ [6]. Whether it is asking what employees would like to see, what works for them, what motivates them, what they need in terms of mental health support, all empower employees to help in the decision-making process and is therefore more likely to get their buy-in.

But, by far the biggest mistake is doing nothing, which as we saw earlier, can lead to ill-health, burnout and potentially worse. It is also worth noting that an engaged and supported workforce are more productive, there is reduced absenteeism, presenteeism and staff turnover. Conversely, it has been estimated that, on average, a single job loss can cost an employer £8,000 in recruitment costs and business output. [7]

To counteract these negative outcomes, start with defining what you want your workplace culture to be – then work through the steps laid out in this blog. Remembering to check in with your teams on a regular basis to ensure that you are achieving your aims and that everyone agrees and is engaged with it.

What does a healthy workplace culture look like?

A healthy workplace culture is one where everyone shares the same core beliefs and values. This creates a sense of belonging, feeling safe and respected, trust and importantly trusted, a notion that you are all working for a common good, i.e., everyone will benefit from your joint enterprise. However, the key here is ‘shared values’ – it is not going to work if it is a top-down edict, or something that is mentioned during interviews and inductions, but otherwise generally ignored.

To work, the beliefs and values must be exhibited by everyone, including the senior leadership. It also means, calling out any examples of someone exhibiting inappropriate behaviours, e.g., bullying, ignoring requests for support, using offensive, prejudiced or stigma inducing language.

The elements that make up this culture include:

Being supportive / feeling supported – checking in on those around you.
Assessing and mitigating stress risk.
Reviewing workloads and providing solutions.
Encouraging open conversations.
Empowering staff to ask questions of, and make suggestions to, senior leadership.
Enabling people to discuss their mental and physical health without fear of reprisal or ridicule.
Feeling valued, and rewarded for individual, team, and organisational contributions and achievements.
Being and feeling trusted – this includes autonomy, e.g., when giving employees a job/project/objective, explain why they are being asked to do it and why it is important, but then empower them to find the solution and work to achieve it, obviously ensuring they know you are there to support or guide if/when needed.
Challenging, educating, and developing staff so they can maximise their potential.
Ensuring recruitment practices are fair, objective, consistent, and non-discriminatory.

Above all, it is a culture of prevention, designed to support individuals before they reach the point of crisis, it builds positive mental health in and through work.

Many years ago, I watched a promotional video in which they talked about ‘staff wanting to skip over the work threshold in the morning’ and it stuck with me. It’s my yardstick as to whether I’m enjoying my role and/or the organisation I work for. Do I start feeling anxious on a Sunday afternoon? Do I wake up during the night thinking about work? Do I metaphorically skip over the work threshold each day?

The power of buy-in. Another example, many years ago I worked for a company during an economic downturn, to survive the company needed to reduce staff costs. They had two choices – plan a) to keep as many staff as possible on full pay but have to make several redundancies, or plan b) ask everyone to lose one day’s pay per month (staff could take an extra day off each month, whilst the senior team would still work the time), this option meant we would only need to lose one role.

The management brought the whole company together and presented the two plans – saying we would not proceed unless 100% of the workforce agreed to the same plan. We all signed up to plan b) and as soon as business picked up, we all returned to full time and full pay. It worked, because we could see that the management were trying to protect as many jobs as they could, whilst securing the future for the company, it worked because the senior leaders led by example and they demonstrated that they trusted us to be informed of the full facts and empowered us to buy-in to the solution.

How to create a healthy workplace culture

In the section on ‘Strategies employers can implement’ in our blog How to support others to optimise their mental wellbeing – part 1  we laid out the steps to build a culture of prevention. To recap it included:

Management buy in and leading by example.
Assessment of where you are now. How will you know what goals to set, what risks or problems you are trying to mitigate, and whether you have achieved your targets if you do not know where you started from. ‘Nearly two-thirds of businesses (64%) say they have seen a rise in absenteeism because of employee mental ill health’ and yet ‘less than half (44%) collected data on employee mental health conditions, whether anxiety or depression’ [8]
Targets to define where you want to be.
Education to ensure everyone has the skills, knowledge, tools and confidence to build a safer workplace.
Support in terms of provision e.g. Mental Health First Aiders, Employee Assistance Programmes etc.
Plus, the importance of communication and assessing progress.

Building on the above, the next steps include:

Mentoring – creating peer support networks across the organisation, supply chain, contractors etc. These networks are not just top down, but also bottom up. The aim is to educate and support all employees – a senior leader and an apprentice could be a powerful network – the senior leader gaining insights into the pressures the apprentice is under, including working and studying at the same time; the apprentice can learn about the pressures of senior management, ideas could be exchanged and developed, helping to gain the all important buy-in from the wider organisation etc.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) – as part of your inclusive culture, it is vital that your diverse workforce know that their needs – physical, mental, financial, religious, physiological etc. – are known, understood, respected, valued and integrated. DEI is not just about protected characteristics, it is not a tick box exercise, not something that you include on your company website and annual report, but it needs to be ingrained in everything you do, and say, including the language you use (Supporters please see the Language Bingo cards on the Portal).
Policies – ensuring that you not only have the right policies in place, but that they are regularly reviewed and updated as circumstances change. Policies and documents include, Mental Health Policy, Individual Stress Risk Assessments (there are templates for both of these documents in the Supporter portal), and the usual policies that help employees understand not only their rights (e.g., in terms of sickness, requesting flexible working, maternity and paternity policies) but also what is expected of them (e.g., in terms of IT policy, GDPR, DEI etc.). These policies also help to set and reinforce the behaviours and values expected of all employees.

Next steps

In this blog we have looked at how to optimise mental wellbeing through workplace culture. In December our blog will provide an overview of the ten blogs in this series and how they are interrelated. 

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