Andrew Howie

From the 604 respondents to Grant Thornton’s latest Business Outlook Tracker survey, around half (47%) intend to increase their investment in mental health support in the coming year. Employer support for mental health has been an increasingly important investment priority for business leaders, with 51% saying they are investing more in their people’s mental health now than they did 12 months ago.

The study found that the pandemic had increased employers’ awareness of the importance of investing in mental health, with half of respondents saying they currently arrange regular mental health check-ins with their people, and train and provide mental health first aiders.

The prevalence of hybrid working is also having a positive effect on general employee wellbeing. Of the businesses surveyed, 310 were adopting a hybrid working approach and most of these businesses (65%) believe it is improving their people’s wellbeing.

Whilst mental health is clearly high on the agenda for business leaders, more support is needed for mid-market employers in developing programmes and policies to do this effectively, with 21% of respondents saying they don’t currently have a clearly articulated mental health strategy.

Andrew Howie, partner and practice leader at Grant Thornton UK LLP in Scotland, said: “We know that healthy people are more likely to have higher functioning cognitive capacity and therefore are better able to respond to stress. At Grant Thornton, our people take pride in delivering outstanding service for clients, and that can be challenging. When people have a high functioning, healthy stress response, challenge can energise performance, often enabling us to perform at our best by helping us to think quickly, solve problems and interact fully.

“However, this balance can easily tip, so we need to be vigilant in looking out for the signs of burnout in ourselves and others, putting effort and conscious action in place to mitigate for that. If we care for our brain in the same way as we care for our physical bodies, it supports us to be more resilient to pressure and change, creating sustainable healthy performance in organisations.

“Here at Grant Thornton, we are creating a culture of living well by investing in psychological, physical and financial health of our people. To highlight the importance of mental health in the workplace in line with Mental Health Awareness week, we’re encouraging all our people managers to complete structured check ins (one to one conversations) about health and wellbeing with their direct reports within the month of May.”