Improving mental health awareness across our business

You may have seen that it was Mental Health Awareness Week last week. While it’s important to raise awareness through campaigning, the reality is that ‘Mental Health Awareness Week’ is actually every week.

Phil Matis, Churchill’s Regional Manager for North East and Yorkshire, discusses the importance of mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, as well as current initiatives across our business that look to change the way we approach mental health:

“Look around you, how many people are in the room? One in four adults are affected by mental health challenges at some point in their life (1 in 6.8 within the workplace itself). While many people believe work has a stabilising influence, it’s important not to forget that pressurised environments can also lead to negative contributing factors. The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey completed by NHS Digital suggests that women in full-time employment are twice as likely to have a common mental health problem than men in full-time employment (19.8% vs 10.9%).

With this in mind, Churchill places a huge emphasis on the mental health and wellbeing of its employees and takes its ‘time to change’ pledge very seriously. However, it’s not just a commitment to change how we think about mental health, but also a commitment to change the way we act on mental health. We all need to champion this approach and strive to make a difference, no matter how it may be.

Within the North East and Yorkshire region, we have begun to tackle this from the ground up, looking at everything from nutrition, team dynamics, relationships and training and development. We have also recently announced our new local partnership with the North East-based training company Orangebox. After completing its flagship ‘Dynamic Deliveries’ course (which is a must for anyone wanting to improve their communication skills), we are now partnering in employability programmes, commercial and funded training to develop our teams across the area. This programme is kicking off with a fully funded Level 2 Accredited Distance Learning Package on Mental Health for the whole North East and Yorkshire management team.

After recently speaking with Simon Corbett, the CEO of Orangebox, he added: ‘We’re really excited and looking forward to supporting Churchill with a variety of our services and products. We pride ourselves on delivering outstanding training and I personally enjoyed delivering our extremely popular effective communications course (Dynamic Deliveries) to the team. What better way to start our offering of fully funded Level 2 distance courses than our mental health awareness course! We offer over 36 accredited funded courses that are of huge benefit to both our working and personal lives. I’m really looking forward to working with Churchill and developing this already fantastic relationship.’

The completion of this course will give our teams the ability to better understand mental health problems in the workplace, how to help themselves and how to help others. Ultimately, we all have the ability to change the narrative, for ourselves as individuals and those around us. It really is ‘time to change’.”