A conversation with Amy Hedley

Amy is an Employment Team Leader at Solent Mind, working really closely with NHS Talking Therapies, to support people struggling with their mental health in the workplace, and businesses who want to support their staff.

She talks to Hayley Cook about the work she does, and offers some top tips for individuals and businesses.

So tell me what does your service offer?

So I work for the employment team at Solent Mind and we provide employment support to patients that are accessing Talking Therapies.

There is a strong link between mental health and work.

So we will work with people to look at their practical skills, and support them with addressing whatever sort of mental health needs that they have in the workplace.

But we can help people to either find work, we will help people with job retention, so if they’re experiencing a problem in the workplace, if their mental health is impacting on their work – or their work is impacting their mental health, we can support that person and we can also support their employer in some cases if it’s needed.

We can also provide return to work support, so if somebody’s signed off sick then we can work with them on a phased return to work plan, and that kind of thing.

It’s so important isn’t it that we look after our mental health. Why is it really important in the workplace?

It’s important because you as an employer, you need to get the best out of your staff so you want to encourage your staff to obviously look after their wellbeing so that they can perform for you, they get job satisfaction, that helps with your retention.

It also helps that they can deliver the service that you deliver. A happy workforce and that they have a good work-life balance and they form health habits in workplace that they can then take outside of work with them as well.

What sort of thing do you offer then? What will people get out of it, of coming to your service?

So depending on the patient or client situation, if they are somebody that’s been out of work for a long period of time, maybe due to sickness or for whatever reason, we can then help them, give them the skills that they need to find work.

So we will work with them on creating the CV, we can look at their job goals and transferable skills, application forms, preparing for interviews, we offer a range of workshops as well as one-to-one support.

If they are employed and they’re having a problem in the workplace then we can work with them and identify what those problems are so we use different tools like a strain audit or a stress risk assessment to identify those things and we can really help them to have that conversation with their line manager which will then help them to stay at work.

Also the job retention side of it as well, so sometimes we might need to mediate if there is a problem at work and we can help with wellness action plans, disclosing the mental health to help them to stay at work, and feel good while they’re there.

So you with an employee, and you can also work with an employer as well?

Yes, absolutely.

How can people access your service then?

So people need to be accessing treatment within Talking Therapies, and all they need to do is simply ask their therapist for a referral into my team.

But to access Talking Therapies, you don’t need a GP referral – you can refer yourself online through the Talking Therapies Portsmouth website.

And if you’re not accessing Talking Therapies, what other support is available out there?

So we run an employment drop-in and during the drop-in, we can help with light-touch support.

It could be something to do with your CV it could be help to prepare for an interview or we could be giving you some advice on sort of reasonable adjustments returning to work.

If there’s a workplace problem how can you address that, or we might signpost you to a different organisation who are best placed to help.

What one piece of advice would you give to an employee who might be struggling with their mental health at work?

Always encourage people to be open and to ask for help. I appreciate its really scary to do that and sometimes there is a lot of stigma involved with mental health, especially in the workplace unfortunately, but quite often I think what people don’t realise is that employees have a duty of care to look after their staff so they do need to consider things like putting in place workplace adjustments.

I think the other thing that people tend to forget is that, or don’t realise, is that a lot of workplace adjustments for people that have got mental health conditions often don’t cost anything. So it could be that if somebody is experience anxiety, they might need to just move desks and work in a slightly quieter area. Or it could that they need to be encouraged to take their breaks or maybe take extra breaks.

You could implement things like flexible working patterns so if somebody taking medication for example and it makes them feel tired or drowsy at a certain point perhaps they could start a little bit later during the day and finish a bit later or take one less break or something like that, whatever’s going to work for that person.

We’d also encourage people to use things like wellness action plans because that can really help to sit down, have a conversation with your manager, sit down, work out what your triggers are, what support would you like from your manager. If they notice what these triggers are and then they can support you in the right way.

From an employer’s point of view, if you’re somebody as a manager or somebody who runs their own business, and you think that you’ve got a staff member – or you know, because they’ve disclosed it – who is struggling with their mental health, what can employers do?

I think it all starts with the smaller things like creating a really safe environment for people and a supportive environment where they feel that they can reach out.

Reduce that stigma, make wellbeing part of your every day.

So it could be as simple as having a wellbeing check in as the first thing that you do in your one-to-one.

Also, encouraging people to use their employee assistance programmes.

The other thing that they can do as well is to promote talking therapy services like mine, so what will then happen is that the clinicians can work with that person to provide the mental health support.

So they will work with them on coping strategies and manage ways that they can manage their wellbeing and they can then refer that person into my team and we’ll work with them giving them the practical skills and support to remain in work.