Photo credit: Student Minds.

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week 2019, Ann Henshaw talks mental health and wellbeing.

A profound experience

As the carer of a family member who had bipolar disorder, I saw first-hand the stigma of finding work and being at work and the difficulty in accessing medical support if you have a mental illness. This profound experience made me want to bring about change in my role as an HR Director. Three years ago, it also inspired me to become a Trustee of Student Minds, the UK’s leading mental health charity for students.

Each year, one in six people experience poor mental health; that’s around 11 million people in the UK and a significant proportion of those at work. I believe there’s a lot that employers can do, both in the areas of prevention and wellbeing and to provide the right workplace support when someone has anxiety, stress, burnout, depression or a mental illness that requires clinical support. When I joined British Land, I wanted our workplace to be a place where you know you can easily find help for your mental wellbeing.

Bring your whole self

One of our core values is ‘bring your whole self’. This means celebrating diversity of thinking, cultures, backgrounds, perspectives and beliefs, and that you can turn up for work at British Land as you are. So, I come to work knowing that I have this first-hand experience in mental health and that I need to do all I can to change attitudes, make it safe for employees to speak up and also make sure that everyone feels equipped to support colleagues. 

In the workplace, people often feel that they might be judged differently if they open up about mental health and the issues they face. It takes real courage to talk about it; people can feel shame to do so, and sometimes simply don’t have the words to ask for help. Those wanting to support can feel lost in what to do, even in what to say, to show we care. I’ve often worried I would say the wrong thing.

There are resources we can access to help us support each other. I have a strong belief in the role of peer support and was inspired by the work done by Student Minds. We’ve taken this thinking into our workplace and believe that training as many employees as we can is the best way to create a more open culture of employee peer support. This year, we have an additional 80 training places, which means by April 2020 around 20% of our employees will be trained in Mental Health First Aid. This is important because the workplace is where the first sign of a mental illness may show up, so building awareness and giving as many employees as possible the ability to recognise the signs is a powerful force of support.

Circle of support

When an employee experiences mental illness, we take urgent action and create a circle of support; this is often met with sheer relief by all of those involved in the care of that person. The line manager, our company doctor, the employee’s doctor or psychiatrist, HR and often a relative, family member or friend all work together to find a course of action to support that person in the workplace.  

We try to go beyond what’s legally required for reasonable adjustments to the workplace and start by working out the best way for an employee to be at work. We’re still learning how to do this, and we may have to start again if we don’t get it right or the situation changes, but we’re committed to ensuring every employee feels supported, no matter what life throws at them.

Design for Life

As a developer of real estate, we can play a unique role in improving mental health and helping prevent illness at a strategic level through good design of the places we build, positive management of those places and community engagement. British Land’s Design for Life research shows that better designed cities could improve mental wellbeing and reduce reliance on Government services, leading to an estimated £15.3 billion boost to the economy and society by 2050. 

Take Paddington Central for example, which felt isolated and stark a few years ago but we’ve invested £10m to transform it into a great place to go, opening the canal area, creating walks, planting greenery and introducing communal areas and seating to change the ambience. There are many outdoor events around the amphitheatre where people sit, meet and relax and we’ve worked hard to make it a vibrant, healthy and safe community space. 

We’re also encouraging change in the wider industry. Our CEO, Chris Grigg, is speaking at a mental health awareness event in June at Paddington Central, the 2019 John O’Halloran Symposium. This is organised by LionHeart’s John O’Halloran Initiative, supported by the British Property Federation and hosted by British Land.

What I hope for …

Finally, I’m so glad that the taboos around mental health in the workplace are starting to break down. It’s amazing to be part of a company leading the way on this change. I would hope that people who have a mental illness would be able to do what we all do and go to work every day without worrying about what other people think and feel that it is safe to let someone know.  

One of my colleagues recently saw a person who was in deep distress outside the Tube. Someone stopped to help them and calmly reassured them they would take them to the place they were trying to get to, as the person had become disorientated and highly anxious. That passer-by simply phoned work to say, “I’m going to be a little bit late today because I’m helping somebody”. I hope we can all do this one day.