Top tips to improve employee mental health

Now a University of Salford psychology student, who has set up his own consultancy business advising on HR practices, has offered his three top tips for managers to help boost the mental health of their workers as many return to the office.

Mike said: “Good mental health practices are crucial within a workplace, it helps managers at all levels of organisations to support, motivate and develop employees. It also helps businesses design and build better work environments and ways of working to enable their teams to flourish.

“The three key things that need to happen are; developing a clear sense of purpose, creating a trusting and supportive environment and destigmatising mental health issues.”

Mike wants to help organisations and teams work culture that has genuine trust and understands why people get up in the morning and why they go to work.

He went on: “Its fundamental that employees feel supported in their organisation, to flourish in a sustainable way requires bonds of trust and the mechanisms to support team members when they are not ok.

“Basically, it’s having the fundamental belief that your employer is going to support you.

“Looking at the way a business operates from more of a holistic approach, allows employers to see where more support it needed and ensures changes have greater impact.”

“What are the top drivers of good mental health for people in context to work? It starts with having a clear purpose and having something meaningful that people can buy into and understand how their role contributes to the bigger purpose that they kind of belong and contribute to.”

With 20 plus years’ experience in management consulting, Mike is using his new MSc degree from Salford to combine applied psychology and the approaches he knows work to deliver improved individual and team effectiveness and efficiency.

“Ultimately, I’m aiming to improve business’ performance, in a sustainable way. I’m creating a new model of consulting to ensure these changes can be carried through.

“The more I worked with companies on large scale transformational projects, I saw that it is the human element that makes a difference. I saw so many organisations struggling to create high performance teams in a sustainable way. They were great at getting focused for a short period of time but not in creating engaged teams that endured and developed.”

Having spoken to several companies, he’s seen a need in the market for help surrounding mental health and wellbeing. He stresses that companies have a growing understanding of their obligation to their employees, that’s where he can utilise his applied psychology degree to combine it with management methods to develop and implement plans that deliver measurable outcomes.

Mike has been supported business incubator Launch@ Salford.  Launch@ Salford provides support to students and alumni in their business venture, offering create spaces, financial aid and expert guidance over a six-month period.

Mike said: “The networking has been brilliant, I’ve been in contact with some digital marketing businesses and copy writers. The potential to communicate with others in similar positions or that might require your services is great. This works especially well for myself since I’m newly establishing my business in the north.

“Despite my 20 plus years of experience, it is still invaluable to learn new things or even be remined of things. It’s been extremely useful.”