In it for the long haul: supporting employee health and wellbeing

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good afternoon everybody i'm going to get us started i'm katie jacobs from the cipd
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and i'd like to welcome you to our penultimate coronavirus webinar for 2020.
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uh now those of you who've been with us through from the beginning i might remember that i did our very
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first coronavirus webinar i hosted it from this lovely blue sofa in april and did i still think that
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we would be doing it in december um no to be honest i didn't but here we are and it's relevant i
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mentioned that today because we're discussing the health and well-being impact of being very much in it for the long
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haul and while every day brings really encouraging news about vaccines
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the government has still recommended that those who can work from home until april 2021
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and uncertainty remains over how long we're going to be living in the shadow of the coronavirus what impact does this
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have on both our mental and our physical health and how can employers help to mitigate that impact that's what we're going to
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be discussing this afternoon and joining me i have an esteemed panel of experts i'm joined by rachel suff rachel is
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senior policy advisor employment relations at the cipd and our expert on all things health and well-being
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professor neil greenberg professor of defense mental health at king's college london and dr joe
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yarka director of affinity health at work thank you all very much for joining us this afternoon i'm just going to do the
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housekeeping notes as ever this session is being recorded you will be able to access it later on
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demand you'll be able to find it on the cipd website you will also be able to download all the slides
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so everything will be available from later today or from tomorrow if you would like to submit a question
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during the session and please do can i ask you to use the q a tab which you can see at the bottom of your screen
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if you want to ask a question to the panel use the q a tab but if you want to ham chat among
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yourselves make any nice points introduce each other do a bit of networking then do use the chat function that's
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always really great to see people connecting in there remember that the cipd corona virus hub
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is there for you as a resource and that we are adding things to it all the time and remember that for legal
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advice cipd members can call our hr inform helpline which is available 24 7 and you'll be
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able to get an individual response on any of your trickiest legal issues and i also want to flag given the topic
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of this webinar our well-being helpline that's available for members in uk and ireland working with health assured we can now
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provide cipd members with free help and support via sessions with qualified therapists which you can access online and over the
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phone and health and short have also recently launched a new app which is available for you as well
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the my healthy advantage app provides an enhanced set of well-being tools designed to improve
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your mental and physical health that you can access anytime anywhere and i think we'll give you some more info
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about that and where you can find it at the end of the session so on with our topic for this afternoon
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as i mentioned at the start we have been in this for nine long months now and i don't know about you but for me
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winter and those nights drawing in ever earlier hasn't made living undercover restrictions any easier
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and as i look outside of my window now it is pouring with rain and very gray so it all feels
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rather depressing people are dealing with a range of issues from anxiety to isolation
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loss of income concern over the threat of redundancy some people are dealing with heavier workloads than ever before and feeling
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burnt out they're not so much working from homes they are living at work and all of this is triggering or
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exacerbating mental health issues and for some who caught the coronavirus they're living in the shadow of love
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covid sufferers can experience including fatigue brain fog breathlessness and pain long
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after their initial diagnosis they might be unable to work for months which poses a major long-term challenge
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for both employers and employees so there's a lot of issues there for individuals and by extension the people
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profession to have to deal with during the session our panel is going to offer practical advice and guidance
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around maintaining resilience and around how to support employees who may be struggling we will
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also discuss how to manage long-term sickness absence and provide effective assistance and support for return to work and beyond
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so rachel neil and then joe will each present and then we're going to take your questions but please do get your
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questions in throughout so i can keep an eye on them and make sure to ask us the most relevant ones
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but that's it from me for now i'm going to hand over to rachel who's going to kick us off with some context
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thank you katie really glad you could all join us today could i have the first slide
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please thank you danielle well i i think you introduced that topic really well
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um katie in it for the long haul i think really captures how a lot of us are feeling about the current phase
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of this crisis it's so uplifting to hear about news of the vaccines um the first
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one is making its way to us now but we don't know what the timelines
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are for rolling that out across the whole population and we are still in it for the long haul
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there's a light at the end of the tunnel but we are still i think in that tunnel and many many months now into this
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crisis it's really clear that it's not only a physical threat to our health but also
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a mental health threat as well at the very least many are feeling very worn
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down by the ongoing situation and organizations really need to start thinking now if they
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haven't already about the longer term support that they are going to provide for people where it's
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needed first of all there's a lot of unknowns about the longer term impact of the disease itself on people
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you've mentioned long covered and it's clear that a certain proportion
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of people who've had covered not necessarily badly nonetheless they're not recovering
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or not recovering fully this has prompted the nhs to set up a task force
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and invest millions in a network of long covered clinics so the medical profession is still
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developing an under an understanding of this condition but it's clearly a complex one
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it's clear there's a wide range of different ongoing symptoms as you said katie many people can't work
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for several months or can't work for full capacity at full capacity of course it's a major challenge for
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those individuals themselves and i know some people affected as well but also for employers in terms
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of what is the appropriate kind of support for managing what is in effect a complex
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chronic ongoing health condition and not just a bit of post-viral fatigue
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and it's clear that the challenges as well from from long covered that there are rather wider
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impacts in terms of people's mental health as well that mental health charities like mind
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are warning us haven't peaked yet and can potentially carry on for some people
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after the pandemic next slide please now we've been regularly surveying
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employers but also employees as well about their own experience of the situation and how
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they feel about it as well this is the most recent results and we
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asked people at work as a result of covert 19
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are the following better or worse off on the left hand side you can see that
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pie chart represents how people feel about their physical health on the right hand side
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it's about their mental health and in both cases almost half said no change
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but almost half well 40 percent in the case of physical health 45
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in the case of mental health said it had got worse since the pandemic so
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that's not unexpected is it but i think this does bring home that
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people's mental health has been affected now i want to put a caveat here because this
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doesn't mean that everyone who said that their mental health had got worse now has a diagnosed mental
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health condition by any stretch i think we need to remember that we can't all feel great all the time in
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our mental health it's normal for it to fluctuate almost on it on a daily basis from from
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good to poor and so on but the fact remains that the challenges to many people's mental
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health are very real some groups in particular will be more affected and will have developed symptoms of
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mental mental health conditions but it is a complex area and i know neil is going to come in
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and talk about that in more depth because we do need an evidence-based under understanding could i move on to the
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next slide now we also asked people and and this was a real
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leap out finding for me as a result of coving 19 are your social connections at work
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better or worse off this is the pie chart on the left and you can see that around half again
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said no change but 42 said that there was and again
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this isn't a surprise but for me it's so it's concerning because i think
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we gained so much from those positive relationships that peer support that we get from working to be really beneficial
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for our well-being it's not surprising that this is the finding because so many of us now
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are working on our own at home but this is an important area i think for organizations to focus on
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going forward for the longer term and also in terms of financial security
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just over a third 36 said that was worse off as well and of course
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we're only at the beginning of the economic crisis we saw the chancellor's announcements last week and
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we're going to see a lot of unemployment next year that will affect many people's
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uh level of income security even if they haven't lost their job themselves so
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these are two areas that i really think we need to pay attention to but just to reflect on those four pie
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charts i also want to say there's always two ways of looking at findings uh
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like this and these were a snapshot of how people were feeling but i think the fact that
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half did say no change that is encouraging as well and i think
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it does show that a lot of people have found ways to cope with the ongoing situation and we
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shouldn't forget that as human beings we are adaptable in the face of adversity i think the key
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point for organizations is that we make sure that
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we are supporting those individuals who do need it in the right way at the right time with
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that in mind if we could have the next slide thank you with that in mind i think
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in terms of that longer term approach to supporting people's health and well-being flexibility is going to be a really
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important principle so that we can tailor that support to individual need long-term
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health conditions whether it is a mental health condition or a chronic uh condition like long covid one
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condition doesn't affect everybody in the same way so we can't have a blanket approach
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for example in supporting people who are experiencing long covid it really does mean having that really
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bespoke case-by-case approach and discussion and and how and having that conversation
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with the individual as well because they're going to be in the best place to judge
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how their condition affects their interaction with work and what support
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they need to carry on working if they can carry on working of course and
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that could mean a phased return to work adjusting hours but also adjusting
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duties where that's needed as well and i think it's all very
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well i'm sure hr are aware of this but often it's it's managers that are having those
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conversations on a one-to-one level with with their teams and they need to really understand
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how for example those long-term health conditions and so on can be fluctuating
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and how support needs to be flexed and revisited over time
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as well and how they can have supportive conversations for example around return to work and i know joe's is going
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to be looking at this in a bit more detail as well also i just
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wanted a flag as well if you do have access to occupational health advice often
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it's only when long-term sick leave has become a problem that referrals are made to occupational health but
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organizations i think could really benefit from tapping into that more expert medical
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support at an earlier stage to get to get advice as well next slide please
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my final slide really is just picking up that theme about how important good people management
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is on a day-to-day basis to supporting people we know that first of all
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the quality of that relationship that somebody has with their line manager can be really
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really beneficial as part of that peer support and so on for people's well-being
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now we also know that there isn't enough investment in this area and we also know
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that with the increased pressures on people's health at the moment so in tandem with
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that has the pressure on line managers and the level of responsibility to support people in their teams many of
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them will be dealing with a lot of complexity in their personal lives as well as in their work lives as well
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so more and more as well line managers are likely to be the only link that
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people have with the organization especially if people are working predominantly or completely at home
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and they will be that first port of call for people most likely if they've got concerns
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about their their health or a return to the the workplace if that's needed
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but also it's managers that are the ones that are going to be keeping in touch most likely with people if they are off
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sick and how they go about that is really important and also in terms of the return to work process
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and i've mentioned that that there's that gap between the expectation online managers to support employees
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with with health and well-being and and the gap in terms of the investment
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in terms of training ongoing support guidance mentoring and just
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all that sort of organizational framework and culture that means that they can go
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about that role in the right way and have the right kind of behavior to show empathy and compassion and so on
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now of course we're not expecting managers to be counsellors or act as medical
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experts in fact that's partly why they need the training and the awareness of what their
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role is because they could be too easily sucked into situations where they feel they are giving they are
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strain into giving advice where they're really not qualified or equipped
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to do so so they need to know what the limitations of their role is as well they also need to know where
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uh they can make the most difference and partly that is being able to refer and
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signpost to helpful policies and support that the organization has
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also if somebody needs to be referred to occupational health or or a gp
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and so on and part of that a lot of that will take place within the context hopefully of a
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sensitive supportive one-to-one with with that individual and that means having relationships that are
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built on trust really important so we have if we could have the next
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slide this is the final slide and to help organizations
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skill up line managers in this whole area we've got a whole range of guidance and
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support and and some of it um is is set out here and there's there's links so i would urge you to go they're
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all they're all free to download these resources on our website and we also launched this
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week a whole new suite of line manager guidance in this area so do visit our website and make use of it
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thank you thank you so much rachel for that um for that overview a few people
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asking for the for the data from our latest employee and working live survey so i think we need to update that page but we will
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share it with people as soon as possible i'm going to hand over to neil now who's going to um
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talk to us a little bit more about organizational resilience and uh i think dive into some of that kind of more
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medical complexity that rachel was talking about i'm sure with the likeness of touch right now great yeah absolutely
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thank you very much for inviting me uh and pleasure to be here um just to say uh um we pump out most of
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the data and papers that we do on twitter so if you're interested in twitter and new data if you
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feel like following me please do that's great next slide please thank you and just to say i'm a
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psychiatrist i served in the military for lots of years um but just over the last um sort of ten
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years i've been doing lots of academic research looking at organizations and over the last year i've been doing a lot of work particularly with nhs
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england and public health england in response to the kobe crisis next slide please
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um we know these data so i won't spend too much long on them but basically it's making the point that mental health at work is really important
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next slide please and impacts a lot of people i think there's a the graph at the bottom is particularly important
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here this is from the labor force survey that you might know and what that shows is year upon year
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this is self-reported anxiety and depression and you can see even before kobe there was sort of an uptick in the
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in the proportions and numbers of people who are reporting mental health difficulties at work um next slide please um we talk a lot
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about absenteeism but we mustn't forget tears and next slide please which all we know makes a really big difference to
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industry and this isn't particularly important in safety critical work and of course there's actually quite a lot of safety
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critical roles particularly now where we're all having to pay more attention to safety physical safety particularly due to
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corona um and certainly if you're in a safety critical role then mental health isn't just a sort of nice to have we
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should do um if you don't get that right you can have some really dire consequences next slide please um these are all the
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different sources of data um papers so if you want any of the papers that i talk about there will be available when
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these slides will be available so you get to click and make use of those links next slide please
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um so during the last um ten months or so it seems like forever doesn't it um you know we've been exposed to lots of
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different traumas um actually to be f and stressors to be fair these sorts of stressors are
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actually in the workplace whether covey's here or not um you know we've got trauma a lot at the moment to do with sort of death and
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dying and and difficult decisions um but but actually there's many occupations that
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are predictably trauma exposed it's not just the emergency services you know social workers health healthcare workers
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media professionals and the like we know workload and shift patterns makes a difference really good data from
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the early part of the pandemic in china showing that actually healthcare workers who worked four or six hour shifts had
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substantially better mental health than health workers who work 12-hour shifts so actually you know that definitely
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does make a difference home life stresses particularly lately many of us spending much more at home
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and although people might be at work you don't know whether their spouse or partner might have lost their job have financial
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difficulties your problems with kids and of course believe me unfortunately for all too many and then there's this difficulty of
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what's called moral injury next slide please a moral injury is the situation where your moral ethical code
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has been challenged and this can occur either because you did things that you shouldn't have done or you saw things
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happen that really shouldn't have happened and you didn't act or you saw other people not act and you didn't intervene
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or you feel betrayed you know that your organization or your employer or your colleagues you know have let you down and really they shouldn't
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although moral injury is not an illness by itself it's important because actually what people do is they
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uh develop a lot of shame anger and guilt related to this and that predisposes them and makes them uh actually much more
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likely to to have mental health difficulties next slide please so what's happened to the general uh
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mental health of the general population i'm just going to show you a few slides you know realize that time is
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tight just to give you a sort of inkling for what the data shows us from these some really big studies with
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many uh tens of thousands of people in the next slide please so this is looking at anxiety in the
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general population just to orientate you with these graphs uh this uses a scale called the gad7 you
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don't need to worry about it it measures anxiety symptoms it goes from 0 to 21. and the red dot you can see is what the
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normal level of anxiety symptoms are in the population and what you can see from from lockdown you know this is back
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in march is the scores you know zoomed up and they gradually went down over time not quite
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returning to baseline and there's two studies there which basically show the same sort of picture so anxiety levels are up but gradually
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coming down and we don't have data yet on the second lockdown next slide please
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this is uh looking with males and females and showing that actually uh females tend to have high level of
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anxiety even beforehand and those uh but the actual pattern of change is pretty similar no matter what
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gender uh you are next slide please this is looking at depression again
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similar sort of picture the red dot is the baseline and you can see that the level of depression is high just for your orientation if you
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were using this scale clinically and this is not a clinical measure and this is here at the moment it's using to look at the population
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then a score of 10 or more would indicate um depression you know if you want to see your gp for instance so you can see
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here although the overall scale levels in the general population isn't um at a clinical level although it's
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definitely raised and generally coming down next slide please um public health
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england have looked at this and tried to look about which groups are more at risk than others i won't go through all of those you can
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have the slides but it's worth looking at the disproportionately affected groups because there definitely are groups out there you know young
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women people with children people who weren't in employment we also know that there's groups such as black asian and minority and ethnic um
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and also people who've had coronavirus so that actually those symptoms i was showing you earlier on are not just
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um randomly distributed there are certain groups that are definitely higher at more risk um next slide please
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so given all of that given that actually mental health problems and symptoms particularly have have increased
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you know what should we do to try and help people uh in the workplace next slide please so before people get
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involved in in doing challenging work um it's really important you prepare them properly
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so we strongly suggest that actually if you've got a particularly difficult task you don't just put people into it you ask them to kind of reflect on that task
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having explained what it is and and to see whether they think they're ready for it and actually if they don't they're not they're not ready for it then then
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that's okay you know that they you shouldn't be pushing people to go into it i put that little um but not and that
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but not means there is no role for people like me or for complex psychological screening
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processes to try and determine whether people are fit enough to do a job by all means ask them to
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check themselves what do you think here's the information but don't be using scales and questionnaires and psychologists to try
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and predict who's going to have problems and who's not because we don't know how how effective that is but all the
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evidence we have suggests it's pretty ineffective that study there was a seven-year follow-up study of police officers in
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australia they used a complex comprehensive mental health assessment and they found it predicted absolutely
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nothing over seven years and they used that at baseline when people came into the police force
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so really important when you give people information you don't sugarcoat it you don't say oh this task will be okay you know just get on with it
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people need to have enough information to make frank decisions and i think that that should be done you
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know frankly and then people can decide whether it's right or wrong for them nice term here which is psychological
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ppe which is trying to give people their psychological tools to try and cope with the
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this hasn't got to be complex and one of the simplest ways is to do something to do something called a wellness
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recovery action plan which says before people get involved in difficult tasks what they should be doing is thinking
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about the things that normally keep them psychologically safe music you listen to places you go people you speak to
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and the like and actually you make a list of those things make a plan before you become distressed and then when you become
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distressed you can turn back to that plan and use one of those things on that list because when you're distressed normally you find it very difficult to try and
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work out what to do to get better so make a wellness recovery action plan beforehand and most importantly
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make sure people are properly trained for their job lots of evidence that actually people who feel that they're out of
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their depth or not able to do the job they've been asked to do are much more likely to have mental health difficulties next slide please
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um how to sustain people um well what we know is that um in the workplace and actually
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generally the thing that really keeps us going is interesting to see rachel's data early on is is social support
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we know social support is really important so what i suggest one way to do this particularly at the
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moment when we're not at work is to buddy people up is to say actually part of your job today is to check in with each other actually have active
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conversations uh keep a a sort of watchful eye and if people have got a difficulty chat about it and
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do i'm the supervisor come and tell me if we've got a problem really really important role for supervisors though so the evidence is
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that supervisors need to feel confident to have what we call a psychologically shabby savvy chat
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and that can be whatever people have difficulties or at the end of a shift or the end of a particular piece of work
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we did some work with nhs england and we've been providing this short one-hour uh training called react uh
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as an active listening skills package and what we show is before the training course um um about less less than half of them
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people felt um sort of that they were confident to support their colleagues after the training this is one hour training not
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not very complex um over 85 percent felt confident so actually a short bite-sized piece of
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confidence training uh to sort of boast boosts people's confidence so that they can feel able to speak about mental health
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can make a really big difference big role also for peer support and there's lots of peer support packages out there
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um you know mental health first aid trauma risk management straw you know psychological first aid what this tells
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us is if you put into the workplace people who and colleagues feel that they are able to
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speak to who have got the right sort of skills and who importantly are supervised that actually they can make a big
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difference we've done lots of work on the trim system which is using the military and lots of other organizations like
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emergency services and healthcare and what we find is actually this is a really effective package
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and people who have um um been using trim are three times more likely to go forward
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and seek mental health support and also importantly there's less chance of them going off long-term sick
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and then the last of the sort of prince about how to sustain people is to use these um these techniques called pies which is nothing about
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eating eating i can tell you surprise is a a set of approaches that can help people who are
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acutely distressed recover and and get back to or stay at work the first principle is proximity
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and that says if you've got someone who's having a problem what you don't do is say i'll take time off i'll come back when you're ready
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you do is you support them in the workplace you reduce their pressure you increase their support and keep them
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at work as much as you can immediately says that if someone's having a problem don't let them go gradually downhill and
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when you have a chat with them and they say they're fine you know say really you really are because actually you know people say
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fine when they don't really mean fine so immediacy says nip it in the bud expectancy says you know what when
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when we're in the middle of a pandemic it's quite usual to have some symptoms it doesn't mean you're ill it doesn't mean that uh you may need to go and seek
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health care at this point let's support you let's work out what to do the expectancy also means that if things don't get better then we will get you to
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go and get the right sort of help and simplicity means that simple things make a big difference to people's psychological health
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if you've got someone who's worried about a particular process or particular job rather than seeing a psychological health expert give them the training and
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mentoring and supervision to do that job because that will reduce their anxiety and stress next slide please and then when you come
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to recover either at the end of the pandemic whatever that might be or the end of a particular um difficult task make sure you say a
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proper thank you it might surprise you that actually there's good evidence that a proper thank you actually can protect mental health
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get people back to work slowly they need some time off and make sure supervisors once again have proactive
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discussions to find out how people are cope with the task but also sensitively what's going on at home you won't know about bereavement or
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financial issues or other difficulties unless you ask about them and that's really important because you can't deal with them if you don't know
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their present i spoke about moral injury early on the way to get over that is to try and make sure that every now
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and again particularly when people are doing morally challenging tasks that you do some reflection
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and that means you get together as a group and talk not just about the process but about the impact and how hard it was and how we didn't
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always have the right answers and what you're trying to do is to create what we call a meaningful narrative that's a story that doesn't end up with
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the individual the boss being the the perpetrator or the victim it ends up with the you know what this was really
30:40
tough but in spite of that we did our best and actually we made a difference and without that sort of reflection and
30:46
that meaning making people can end up believing versions of their story which can lead them to eventually become
30:52
unwell keep an eye on people and if unfortunately they do need help make sure they get forward to
30:57
evidence-based care and enough treatment sessions and i know some of the eaps out there you know tend to provide five or six sessions
31:03
which is not a treatment course uh so if they need treatment make sure they get to the right sort of treatment
31:09
last slide please um so my conclusion to what i've said uh and my principles are don't over
31:14
medicalize normal distress make sure you adopt a nip it in the bud approach build team support
31:20
as a priority which is particularly reliant on having psychologically savvy supervisors who feel confident to talk
31:26
about mental health and don't need a lot of training to get them there those pies approach make a big uh
31:32
difference for people who are distressed make sure you say a proper thank you phase the return to work and the time for reflection and if
31:38
people do need care keep an eye on them and get them to the right sort of care um to help them thank you that's my
31:45
last name so much neil that was uh that's brilliant so much information there but remember you can download these slides so we did race through them
31:51
pretty quickly if you want to look at them a bit more in depth then um uh do have a um have a look on the cfd website
31:57
later and you'll be able to download them um a reminder to please put your questions in the q a box and so i can pick them up rather
32:03
than in the chat um we've got a couple coming in but um we'd love to see some more so i'm going to hand over to joe
32:09
and while joe is speaking a little bit more about getting people back to um to work and particularly the impact of long covid
32:15
i hope that some of you will have a think about some burning questions you have to ask that we can take after joe's presentation thanks joe
32:22
great thank you so much and it's it's really fascinating to hear about the work that both rachel and
32:28
neil have been doing and through the work that we've been doing both in my role at affinity and at birkbeck
32:33
um it's fascinating to see how many organizations are taking excellent steps to make um
32:41
tangible solutions available to their staff through this difficult time i think so many companies we've seen
32:46
have really stepped up the well-being provision um for their staff and putting in place some of those
32:51
things that that neil was talking about there and i've put this picture of this escalator with the light at the end
32:58
which is really i think what we see through so many of the stories that we hear um when we're conducting research
33:04
particularly in relation to to return to work and particularly when we're looking at people with chronic conditions which actually is very much
33:11
what we're seeing in the range of long covered where you can see where you want to get to you
33:17
know that there are these steps but you can't quite get to them and you can't quite see them and so on the next slide i just wanted
33:24
to set out what what i'll cover very briefly and and signposting you to lots of different resources that you can go and
33:30
um access but setting the scene for the context of supporting return to work
33:35
and looking at what we can do to support people back in and those of you listening will have
33:41
various processes and practices in place and um some of them will be working and
33:47
i'm sure that some of you will be thinking how do i help my line managers really take action and and talk to their
33:52
employees to make these policies move into into practice and support our returners
33:58
so we'll be looking at the basic principles getting our line managers to support that return and also looking a little bit about work
34:04
adjustments and what we can do to build an igloo to help people and think about what they can do as
34:10
individuals but also group and line manager and organizational practices that can really help
34:15
and so on the next slide um i've got a picture of of what we often see at the moment pre-k
34:22
i'm sorry a pre-covered what return to work looked like so pre-covert return to work
34:29
was difficult to manage many organizations struggle with absence management when we have talked to people through
34:35
our research we've we've spoken to hundreds of hundreds of individuals about their return to work journeys
34:41
and been in a really privileged position to understand what works um for them and and listen to that but
34:46
also to hear really open and honest um stories of what doesn't work and what has gone
34:52
wrong through that return to work process and this little picture just shows often
34:57
what happens from a line manager in an employee perspective so the employee might be at home
35:02
completely clouded with a range of different experiences many of them are going to be
35:08
new to them um that they maybe don't recognize can't articulate and then from the line manager
35:15
perspective it can look very strange it can look as if they're maybe just making mistakes as
35:20
neil mentioned it can look like they're disengaged and maybe they're looking for a new job maybe actually they want to go move
35:25
organizations and do something completely different and from a line manager perspective it
35:31
can be very difficult to know what best to do what can i say how can i address this
35:36
without overstepping the mark or maybe making things worse and when we think now and returning
35:42
postcoded we've got all of those complex issues that we had before but also this really diverse situation
35:50
where some people have been continuing to work for many months in the office and whereas others will be returning in
35:57
very different ways as we move through the next few months so if we think of a pre-covered scenario
36:04
an individual with ill health will be maybe one returning into a team that has had good
36:10
resources being well structured not had too much change over the last few months and now somebody returning to work is
36:17
going to be returning into their state of flux and into a state of challenge so we have people returning perhaps from
36:24
clovid and experiencing long covered as neil mentioned there has been this shift in in mental health and
36:30
some of them the mind research suggests that people who haven't previously experienced conditions
36:37
are now experiencing mental health so and that's something to consider but also
36:42
this whole wrap of some people have been redeployed and are now going back into altered jobs some
36:47
people have been working at home some people have been furloughed and perhaps haven't had good conversation a
36:53
good connection with their enviro their work environment all through that period and some people are returning to new
36:59
jobs having been made redundant and so this return is even more challenging
37:05
and so on the next slide um i just want to focus for a moment on
37:10
long covered and a lot of the research around this is just emerging and
37:16
it's not yet really fully understood what those experiences are and how they cluster and how long
37:22
they're going going to to pan out for people but what we do know is that there are varied post viral
37:29
symptoms um and people report that they fluctuate in
37:35
over time so it can feel like you're getting better only to be flawed when you've taken that
37:40
one step forward and these concerns could be psychological they could be
37:45
musculoskeletal so feeling lots of pains and aches not able to walk to the end of the road when once
37:51
you would have been on a 10k run and respiratory conditions where they're they're reporting that they're they're
37:57
short of breath things that like walking up the stairs can can can be very difficult but also can cause
38:04
panic um because they're experiencing that shortness of breath and also this deep fatigue and what we
38:11
can see here is that there's lots of stuff that we can draw from from the research and what we know in the past
38:17
to help inform uh return to work strategies because we know within each of these different
38:23
conditions um as they come together with long covered we can draw on that past research
38:30
and to thinking about this we need to support people who are returning particularly from long covered but
38:35
in all manner of ways to support them to return effectively into these depleted and and in struggle
38:41
environments and that puts a real extra pressure on the line manager as we've noticed
38:46
so on the next slide um we've got some key things to focus on so
38:53
the key principles to get things right and this was from a project that we did for the dwp
38:58
interviewing people across conditions and these basics are things that often are not
39:03
in place um even though in policy we would expect them to translate the lived experience of people returning
39:10
to work is often they're not communicated at with when they're off work they don't have
39:15
those social connections when they're off work so we need to talk early and we need to we need to talk now
39:21
if we want people to feel valued and and supported on their return we need to plan and prepare and think
39:28
about what work might look like as we return and have a conversation not necessarily
39:33
an interview and the last thing you want when you're feeling vulnerable is an interview and have a conversation about what's
39:39
going to work and and how we can move forward and then take one step at a time and so
39:45
often we hear people going back into full 100 capacity jobs and and that's often when they then relapse
39:52
and this process of monitoring and reviewing is so important and i think as we as we move on we've
39:58
got to recognize everybody's journey is different and through that we need to be kind and patient with ourselves
40:04
and and with each other and so on the next slide i've got um some resources around line manager
40:10
support so for the uh for probably about the last 16 years we've been looking at what are the line manager behaviors
40:17
what knowledge do they need to support other people in a sustainable way so um first of all we did some some work
40:24
which rachel um supported right from the beginning looking at line manager behaviors to prevent and reduce work stress and then
40:31
we also looked at the competencies that line managers need to return to work and what is it that a
40:37
line manager can do and show their employee as they return and those frameworks are really
40:44
important because they can be quick views that managers can use to just check in and say am i doing
40:49
these things or could i be adding to my portfolio or do i need development in a different area
40:55
to really make sure that i'm doing all i can as a manager to support that employee back what we've
41:01
also seen is um that as managers are being asked to to manage flexible and blended
41:08
systems and blended work that puts a real pressure on them we did a flexible work
41:13
intervention for lend lease and what we found was the employees really benefited from this flexible work
41:19
but the managers were saying i've got no tools i've got no no resources no computer software to manage this very
41:25
complex split shift system that people are on and and so equipping managers with both
41:30
the systems and the tools and the time to manage blended work as people all return
41:36
is going to be absolutely vital and then at the other other level
41:41
thinking about this fluctuation that rachel mentioned and having compassionate systems in place that
41:46
managers can use faithfully and not have to skirt around
41:51
to really make sure that they're they're looking after their employee often what we hear is line managers are
41:58
perhaps not logging absence in the right way because they know that somebody with a fluctuating condition if they
42:04
have one more absence they're likely to get a disciplinary conversation and so thinking about how our absence
42:10
management systems work when we know we have such a
42:15
volume of fluctuating conditions and is really important for us to consider and you can see at the bottom there the
42:22
link to the new line manager resources that that rachel mentioned which our colleague emma donaldson fielder has been
42:28
leading on but it has lots of links to these these different resources and also um interactive things that your managers
42:36
can go through and get a self report as well so on the next slide
42:42
um we need to support our managers but we also need to think about what work adjustments do we want to promote
42:48
and how do we enable a conversation around that we did some work with acas to look at
42:53
what is the evidence for work adjustments which ones are effective particularly when it comes to mental health and we found that there were
43:00
a number of different classifications so if we look at our work schedule our roles and responsibilities
43:06
work environment policy and also additional support and very rarely redeployment used um
43:13
in terms of the evidence that we saw but what we could see is there's anecdotal evidence and
43:19
there's lots of descriptive evidence that um individuals receiving these adjustments think that they're
43:24
they're helpful but actually in terms of evidence over time there's much less clarity and so any
43:30
organizations that are implementing interventions and want to track that we'd love to love to
43:36
to speak to you to know what the data is out there but really we want to be looking at multi-component interventions
43:42
encouraging disclosure offering supervisors support but also co-worker support because this
43:49
focus on relationships and as both neil and rachel said the social relationships if they're not there at the beginning accessing work
43:55
adjustments returning to work is all much harder and this brings us on to the last slide which looks at our
44:02
um igloo model sorry just one bag was to to suggest that um we need to
44:08
think about everybody's role in this um one of my slides disappeared no worries
44:15
we'll go go on to the last one and our igloo model suggests that what
44:20
we need to do is we need to think about what an individual needs to do to support themselves so they need to be equipped
44:26
with the knowledge to support and sustain their mental health to manage their boundaries to self-care
44:32
but also we need our group our teams our line managers and our organizations to have a
44:38
significant role in this because nobody can do it on their own we need all these things in place
44:44
and we all have these individual unique return to work needs so that in itself is a is a challenge
44:52
and so sharing good practice and um contributing to the research is really really valuable in that so
44:59
that will help us understand what works for whom and under what circumstances
45:05
so on the next page i've got a number of different resources that um some of them link into cipd resources
45:11
but also at acas and on our affinity pages so please do dip in all of the
45:18
the work that we produce is free to access as well so lots of things for you to to use and
45:23
download and use with your managers thank you so much joe and again loads
45:29
and loads of great resources in there i think this has been an incredibly resource heavy well that sounds negative i mean in a positive way
45:35
um whether there's loads of stuff you for you to access and i know my colleagues are putting some stuff in the chat there as well um we're gonna i'm going to
45:42
questions we've got about 10 15 minutes um for some questions so thank you for putting those in um first one i'm gonna ask is um is
45:48
about line managers so somebody's asked we find the managers themselves under pressure and they don't have the time
45:54
to undertake training or skill up any suggestions on how to tackle this uh rachel any initial thoughts on that
46:00
one yes and i'm glad that this question came through because i think it's a really
46:06
common issue in a lot of organizations and we see line managers so often being squeezed
46:12
middle they've got all the operational demands on them and then the people management role and
46:18
they really are are squeezed between those conflicting demands and i don't think there's any easy answer
46:25
apart from the organization has to imbuing those managers the importance of the people management role
46:32
because it's often seen as an add-on and they really need to be operating in their people management
46:38
role in an organization that takes health and well-being seriously and and managers really need
46:44
to understand how actually if they support employee health and well-being it's going to make
46:49
their job easier so they need to see the point in attending training and the
46:55
training shouldn't be a one-off event anyway it needs to be ongoing and as joe has
47:00
uh has set out it's very much about how they behave as well and the relationships
47:06
that that they have so they need to see a point in attending that training but also
47:11
i think it's making the guidance and so on it available to them in a very practical
47:17
easy accessible way because having those kind of psychological savvy conversations that neil has mentioned
47:24
well there are checklists that you can have to make you confident in in that area as well so
47:31
they need to see that there's a point to doing it thank you neil you wanted to come in
47:37
yeah just very briefly appreciating that managers are sometimes you know feel too busy and fully subscribed to the points that
47:43
rachel said because actually it's an important task another way of doing this of course is to use uh trained peer supporters within
47:49
your team so what a manager can do is if they haven't got the time themselves necessarily to have those conversations even though they
47:54
they know they need to happen they could say well listen um you know sandra pete over here you know would you
48:00
be able to go and do some of this stuff for me and come to me and give me the sort of the distillate of what someone said so that still makes
48:07
sure that actually those supportive conversations are happening even if the line manager themselves isn't actually doing them um because i
48:13
think their responsibilities make sure they're done ideally do them yourselves but but not just to let them go because
48:18
no one's got time and joe yeah gonna say one of the things that we've been doing which seems to have been
48:24
really well received by managers is to combine online resources um so
48:30
10-minute webinars that are accessible anytime but with facilitated discussion where
48:36
managers can come and have an opportunity to just go this is hard and what do i do so it's a handheld um
48:43
route through but giving them that space that doesn't feel like they need to go out and find more
48:49
solutions but they they have that space for discussion that's something that some of the quite
48:54
a few of the hr leaders that i work with have been doing is bringing kind of having those forums for line managers just come and connect with each
49:00
other um because obviously it can be quite lonely and when we're working at home it's harder to to find those opportunities um got a
49:07
specific question on on supporting people with long covert so esther's asked how can we best support and signpost those as long
49:13
covered it appears they're not currently eligible for any disability or other benefits and may not be able to return to work
49:18
full-time for some months if at all um joe can i ask you to come in on any more advice on that
49:25
i think the the statutory sick pay and and the legal implications of the long-term element i can't answer on
49:32
but what we do see is actually when i think often from an hr hat we think
49:38
about um does it fall within the dda or does it not and the reality of conversations that go
49:45
on with individuals and and their line managers don't really take any of those sorts of things into
49:50
into account it's about what can we do now and what we know is if people get back to work the quicker they get back
49:56
to work within reason and managing their condition the more likely they are to stay and work in the long term
50:02
and so thinking about a more flexible return where an individual really thinks through what
50:07
is it that they can do now could they do something from home could they work on short-term projects or
50:12
or internal projects that don't have that client delivery for example um so that they can work at their
50:18
capacity and it also allows them to be honest and open about when they're feeling unwell
50:23
and they need to take that time out and and so i think it's it's every case is unique but the absolute basic principles
50:30
of of return to work apply thank you rachel do we have a copd view
50:37
on anything kind of long covered related i know it's pretty emergent still wow it's a really tough one isn't it and
50:44
i think on the one on the one hand it's trying to make sure that um
50:49
employees are getting access to the medical support that they need uh there are
50:54
these new uh long covered i think there's about 40 clinics that have been set up around the
51:00
country because i know several people are experiencing long covered and some have been getting
51:05
really really good support through the nhs and so on and but actually even the medical
51:11
profession is still learning about it and the support hasn't necessarily readily been there so
51:17
i think that's that's really important side of it but also
51:23
no we don't know if it is a disability there's a lot of discussion about whether it will be classed as a disability or some of the
51:29
impacts of long covid um will be classed as a disability but
51:35
really it they are going to be dependent people in that situation on the kind of support
51:40
that you can provide in terms of statutory sick pay which is for six months a lot of organizations top that up with
51:47
occupational sick paces they find that there's the medical there's the health side of it and then there's the financial support as well
51:53
so any support that could be provided through your um employee assistance program as well
51:59
if you have got occupational health so it's just exploring all those avenues but it will make a tremendous difference to that person
52:05
knowing that their employer is supporting them because they are in a really difficult situation
52:12
thank you um neil you talked a lot about kind of evidence-based approaches tess has asked how do we get
52:17
more buy-in for more evidence-based preventative approaches yeah it's a really good
52:23
question because sometimes you can just launch into something think it's gonna help so i i think actually doing a proper you
52:28
know high quality trial can be pretty complex i get that but actually doing a simple evaluation of anything that you do
52:35
actually is not complex and actually if you're evaluating something and you do it anonymously um actually you don't even need ethical
52:41
approval as long as you're not asking questions that are going to identify individual people so for instance that managerial training
52:47
that i mentioned the react training which is this one hour training package you know we we got people to fill in a
52:52
very basic questionnaire which you could do on something like survey monkey or equivalent beforehand and then we follow people up one month
52:59
later you know by and we've got sort of a 60 response rate um and so actually doing something simple
53:05
yourself that isn't complex i i think is is pretty achievable you know taking that then putting it into
53:10
you know doing a proper trial i agree is more complex but if you don't evaluate and importantly you don't evaluate just
53:16
at the end of a training course because at the end of a training course if the instructor's nice and they've had a nice day or you know
53:21
that that's okay you have to do something you know a month two months three months later because what you really are after is not
53:27
just was the training nice is what what's the impact what difference did that make um so i think
53:32
yes yes to big trials but actually simple evaluations i think are really quite achievable
53:38
thank you joe i was going to say absolutely agreed and i also think that as a profession
53:43
commissioning work um if you're asking about what evaluation has been done and what evidence there is that this
53:50
works i think that will push the whole agenda forward because often i find that our
53:55
clients don't want to evaluate um and so we would love to do that for
54:00
every training course and look at it in different ways so i think if as a profession we we constantly ask what evidence is there
54:07
for this and what outcomes are you expecting and how are you measuring that it will help to increase that
54:13
that agenda as well obviously being evidence-based is one of our core values at the heart of the cipd profession map
54:19
so that is what we would like to see within the profession um rachel matthews asked how do you
54:25
encourage staff back to the office when they have adapted to working from home and have found that beneficial to their
54:30
well-being and is it an either or should we be encouraging people back and you will need to unmute yourself
54:38
that's a really good question and i think a lot of organizations will be finding them in
54:43
this situation people a lot of people have got used to working from home and have found that yes they've perhaps
54:50
got a bit more time and they're saving money and they can do um some activities
54:56
that they enjoy they can get a better work-life balance it really really depends on the individual person
55:03
whether it's a benefit or not and i think it means looking at first of all their role is
55:08
it's something that the organization could support uh more permanent long-term homework in
55:15
also having a really sort of sensitive open conversation with that person are
55:21
there underlying concerns actually about returning to a workplace because i think a lot of people
55:26
at the moment at least will will still have concerns about traveling commuting go go into
55:33
a workplace environment so is it really necessary for the organization to have that person
55:39
in the office you know it really does mean just taking all those kind of factors into account and you
55:47
know could their job be changed to you know would it be really good for their well-being to to be at home for full-time i we know
55:54
from our research with employers that they have quite a lot of concern about people working on maths at home
56:02
all the time it's not necessary panacea for everybody's health and wellbeing but
56:07
it means accommodating people's uh sort of needs and circumstances as far
56:13
as far as you can um but also the needs of the business you might need those roles to be done
56:19
in the office so every situation on it on its own merits really and have that
56:24
conversation thank you quite a long question next i'm just going to truncate and get the
56:31
the meat about which is how could you um have you got any advice on how line managers can support people and
56:37
kind of get them to open up about their concerns and how they're feeling so perhaps you suspect that somebody's struggling but they're not
56:43
telling you openly um joe any advice on encouraging people to open up it is an
56:49
incredibly difficult one and even harder when when it's over over a remote setting my
56:55
position is always to think about what is it that you need to do your your job well and so
57:01
when we've had experience of of talking to line managers that find talking about mental health difficult or
57:08
employees who don't want to disclose whether that's cancer treatment or and chronic pain
57:13
it's thinking about okay there's a lot going on for you and that's evident and this is what i see
57:18
in the work that you're doing and being very encouraging them to be very specific about what they might need
57:25
and and what they're finding difficult and how they could work better and so using things like the management
57:31
standards could be a great framework for that and the management standards for work stress thinking okay how are your work
57:37
demands how do you feel that you're getting enough support is there anything that we could do to make your role clearer
57:43
that could then help you um and that often leads people to open up a little bit more
57:49
without it being a direct question again i'm thinking something's going on at home and that's translating into your work
57:55
and because really our our remit is around how are you presenting at work and and are you okay
58:01
in that context so and focusing on on the specifics there we find is really helpful
58:09
yeah and so i think one of the things you can do is obviously if you're worried about an employee you're worried for a reason you know you
58:16
see them crying you see them distracted their work's not their usual standard there's something that's led to that concern so what you can do is to use
58:23
that as a lever for starting a conversation you know something along the lines of i hope you don't mind
58:28
um but i i have noticed that blah blah blah whatever that is i just wonder is everything okay so to
58:35
use what it is as your start point and do it sensitively not with the i you know why'd you do it but as in i'm
58:41
worried about you and that that can lead on to a positive conversation again going back to that managerial
58:47
training that we talked about you know those sorts of things are pretty simple to have a few tools and you're about to
58:52
sort of learn over over a short package but i would start off with why is it that you're you're worried and and to
58:58
reflect that sensory back to the person i'm just gonna ask one very quick one
59:04
and we'll have to wrap up um what is your opinion on the provision of access to company doctors so is it something that organizations
59:10
should be providing rachel i think well some larger organizations
59:15
uh did have occupation you know do have occupational um doctors through their occupational
59:22
health service and also nurses and the whole range of occupational health profession professionals um and
59:29
and i think yes if you can provide that yes definitely definitely because the
59:34
occupational health doctors and so on will have a really really good understanding of
59:41
jobs and the work environment so i think that can be a real a real benefit
59:47
whereas if uh you go to your gp and you have a 10-minute consultation
59:52
and obviously a gp is a really important um gateway pathway to other services
59:58
obviously but you know it can be a longer conversation to understand
1:00:04
um how your job is affecting your health and what duties and work you might be
1:00:10
fit to do so i i think yes if you can provide that
1:00:16
it's a good thing thank you i'm afraid i'm going to have to finish there because we are on uh bang on time if i finish very
1:00:23
quickly uh thank you very much to neil jo and rachel thank you everyone for watching thank you for getting your
1:00:29
questions in i'm sorry if we didn't have time to answer them all um a reminder that you will be able to uh download the slides and you'll be
1:00:36
able to watch this webinar again should you so you wish because it will be available on demand we will be back next week with our final
1:00:42
webinar of 2020 where we're going to be looking at managing conflict so thanks very much for watching have a
1:00:47
lovely afternoon and we will see you next time
1:00:54
bye you