On October 10th each year, social media fills with images marking World Mental Health Day, with friends and followers telling each other just how important mental health is. And this is a good thing – increasing awareness is a vital step in everyone better understanding how to look after their own mental health. But, like most things, actions speak louder than words. Mental illness does not discriminate. It can affect anyone from any walk of life, background, gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality and we all need to be prepared for that. Unfortunately, access to treatment isn’t as equal, and that is why we do our best as an employer to level the playing field for our team.
Here at nDreams, we take mental health seriously. We have several mental health first aiders and mental health champions in the business. And we are committed to all our managers with line management responsibility becoming a mental health champion to equip them with the tools to support their teams. We have a dedicated SharePoint page for Employee Wellbeing where we constantly review and update.
As we review our benefits, mental health is always at the forefront of our minds too. We know that life is complicated, and mental health is as important as physical health. We want our teams to be able to get the support they need as they go through life and the many challenges that are thrown into their paths. We chose a private medical plan that provided an extra layer of mental health support to make sure it was sufficient for our team’s needs. We recognised not everyone wants to have private medical health insurance, so we backed it up with an additional plan that supports not only our team as individuals, but their families as well. Sometimes living with mental health isn’t about our own mental health but supporting those around us.
We regularly communicate with our team, not so many to spam their mailboxes, but enough to let the team know that we care about them, and they know where to come if they need extra support. All our team matter to us.
Are we doing enough? Maybe not, but it’s a great place to start.