In recent times, more and more attention is given to the importance of mental health in the workplace. We now know what is at stake when we don’t create safe, sound working environments. In Australia, mental health compensation claims annually cost $145.9 million and the resulting absenteeism costs a further $4.7 billion.
We conducted a Q&A interview with Suzie Lewis, Managing Director at Transform for Value, around business transformation, strategic organisational change, and the importance of inclusion and wellbeing within an organisation.
Could you introduce yourself and what you do?
Are great leaders born or made? Some would argue that only those born with certain personality traits grow up to be leaders. Others argue that leadership skills are developed as one grows, through practice and education. Most likely, both factors play a significant role in how someone turns out.
I attended the most recent DisruptHR event in London, which always has the most amazing speakers, and was encouraged to hear the talk by Antony Sloan, HR Director of Legal.
Engaging employees is one of the most critical components of building successful businesses, yet how to achieve it remains elusive. Some approaches focus on the reasons for change and appeal to employees critical thinking. Yet without also incorporating a ‘why’ to change, that is the emotional connection to the work, employee engagement is less.
Recently we did a straw poll of delegates at the CIPD conference and the results showed that Wellbeing was the number one priority going forward for many organisations.
We have an expectation that people should understand us.
Understand our perspective, our reasoning and our expectations from other people.
The problem with this is that we rarely know ourselves.
We don’t often know what we want out of life. We don’t know what makes us happy. And we rarely know why we behave in certain ways.
If you disagree, can you answer the questions above?
Mental health at work should matter to all of us. It shouldn’t be seen as something that stops when we leave our home to go to work. It, unfortunately, does not work like that, because our circumstances are comprised of every aspect of our lives (work, family, society). Apparently, it is still somewhat taboo to talk about mental health despite the fact that it is being addressed more and more. Maybe this is because it might reflect our own drawbacks or, even worse, because it could compromise our future as employees if we dare mention anything related to it at work.