When it comes to looking after mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, Kate Figgins and Lindsey Rayner of HumanEx are two women you want in your corner.
Mental illness is a growing global crisis. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Burden of Disease study estimate that almost 800,000 people die from suicide every year. That’s one person every 40 seconds. And these statistics are pre-Covid, so one can only assume that they’re higher now. In New Zealand, The Health Promotion Agency (HPA) estimates that one in five people will suffer from medium to high levels of mental distress – a statistic that’s trending upwards.
These frightening patterns are the driving force behind Kate and Lindsey’s desire to change the landscape in New Zealand around the issue of mental health. Two years ago, the dynamic duo founded HumanEx with the goal to make sure people feel safe, comfortable, confident, and happy in the workplace – whether in small or medium sized businesses, large corporates, or non-profits.
“We want everyone in life to find their baseline of happiness,” says Lindsey. To do this, the pair started educating people within the workplace through workshops and courses to improve people’s knowledge and literacy around mental health and wellbeing, while also teaching them practical skills concerning looking after themselves and supporting others. “Education within the workplace will hopefully infiltrate into the community and people’s homes through conversations around the dinner table and the like,” adds Lindsey.
Kate and Lindsey believe people are feeling overwhelmed more than ever. Social media and the rate technology is developing is a large cause of this, along with information overload and, of course, the effect of the recent pandemic. “People are inundated with information, workloads and responsibilities far greater than generations before us,” says Kate. “We’re all constantly multi-tasking and that’s very difficult to sustain for long periods of time. Social media also creates a sense of ‘trying to keep up with the Joneses’, which is very stressful.”
There’s also no longer a clear demarcation between our personal and work lives, especially with working from home. “We can no longer expect people to compartmentalise their work and personal lives,” says Kate. “I’m not saying people should spend the whole day at work talking about their problems, but boundaries need to be set to enable comfortable conversations. There must be acceptance and understanding from organisations that the lines between work and home are blurred.”
HumanEx operates around prevention and intervention, rather than being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. They’re not about putting fruit bowls into workplaces or handing out gym membership but taking a deeper dive into what’s happening within organisations. They look at the administrative and strategic side of an organisation and work out what policies and processes they have in place for their employees’ mental health and wellbeing, and their job designs and workloads. “Creating psychological safety in the workplace must come from the top,” says Lindsey. “You can’t expect people in your organisation to be vulnerable if leaders aren’t being so. This means bosses must have real candour, setting an example by having bold and brave conversations with employees.”
The aim is to create a culture where employees feel confident and comfortable having a voice, to disagree if necessary and bring their whole self to the workplace.
“Those are the skills we’re teaching,” says Lindsey, “so that people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and giving feedback. For most people this doesn’t always come naturally.”
The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research recently released data around the difference between crisis and post-crisis interventions and early intervention programmes around mental health. It was discovered that services like EAP (employee assistance programmes) counselling give a three-to-one return while in the early intervention space, which HumanEx operates in, the return was as high as 12-to-one. “We’re trying to teach people the signs and symptoms of mental health struggles. The sooner you can make changes, the sooner you’ll get back to your baseline mental wellness,” says Lindsey. It’s common for people to carry on and struggle for months, or even years, with their mental health before reaching out. For as long as someone struggles, it can take up to that same amount of time to get back to their baseline of happiness. “That’s why we’re so passionate about educating and empowering people with the right tools and skills, so that we can reduce the time people spend feeling unhappy,” says Lindsey.
The aim is to create a culture where employees feel confident and comfortable having a voice, to disagree if necessary and bring their whole self to the workplace.
Out of the 15 programmes that HumanEx offers organisations, one of the most fundamental is the two-day Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) course. The internationally-acclaimed, evidence-based training programme empowers and equips individuals with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to support co-workers, friends or family members experiencing mental health problems. As an accredited provider of the MHFA New Zealand curriculum, HumanEx’s mission is to have a trained and certified mental health first aider in every organisation in New Zealand. “By 2030, our focus is to get 400,000 people in New Zealand trained in mental health first aid in the workplace,” says Kate. “The idea being that people will then also take the skills home.”
HumanEx also offers this course to the public. Kate and Lindsey aim to help break down the stigma currently surrounding the words ‘mental health’ to ensure parity between physical first aid and mental first aid in the workplace.
“We hope that in years to come, just as workplace physical first aiders are mandatory, mental health first aiders will be too,” says Kate. “It’s frightening that people can easily ring their boss and say they need a sick day for a physical ailment, but can’t bring themselves to admit feeling burnt out, struggling emotionally, or just in need of some time to themselves.”
“That’s the stigma that we need to shift,” adds Lindsay. “We want the term ‘sick day’ to apply to any reason you may need to feel better to be happy and productive in the workplace – and life in general.”
Mental Health Awareness week is 26 September – 2 October. HumanEx will donate $30 to Movember for every person who books a HumanEX course in September or October.
Visit humanex.co.nz.
