Company Culture

Company culture is rooted in the way employees see themselves, each other and the work they do. People often experience problems with their workload or job role. Occasional struggles with general work-life balance or difficulties with colleagues are expected. It helps when employers can recognise and acknowledge this. Normalising therapy and making it easily accessible aids a positive workplace ethos. 

Therapy has the ability to reduce psychosocial risk because it increases awareness. Therapists can introduce strategies for self-understanding and draw upon their knowledge of workplace stress. They understand that work can be a great source of meaning for many too, a place to be competent, grow and flourish. Work provides stability for individuals, which is good for mental wellbeing, but like everything in life, it requires effort. Building and maintaining a striving corporate culture isn’t easy. It needs the right conditions, investment, action and insight to achieve a high-performance culture. Empathetic employers and managers understand this. They too model healthy working styles. They provide support, encouragement and good resources for their employees, sending the message that mental health matters in every layer of their organisation. They know that wellbeing is more than an app, a perk, an add-on or an occasional awareness day. They honour wellbeing as a science, a psychology, an organisational mindset. 

Covid-19 has meant we’ve all undergone organisational change in some form or another, especially with the adaptions to working from home. There is a lot of talk of “getting back to normal”, but in reality, is this really necessary? Many have enjoyed the benefits that came from it such as reducing commuting and child care costs. Let’s not underestimate how a sudden bereavement, conflict with a manager, recurring cancer, domestic abuse or an unplanned pregnancy can affect a workplace. Anxiety and depression are still responsible for nearly half of all working days lost in Britain costing employers around £45 billion a year. 

The pandemic and other high-profile campaigns brought greater awareness to mental health but organisational change it is still very much a mixed bag. Although there is greater support for employees, especially within larger organisations, there continues to be a real stigma around the words ‘counselling’ and ‘therapy’. There are still wider and deeper culture changes that need to occur for well-regulated and self-aware workplaces. Let us remember that understanding ourselves is good for creativity, it helps us reach our full potential, counselling is good for business. 

How organisational change, whether large or small is managed is an important topic. Workplace culture is symbolised and transmitted through the attitudes and values of the chief executives or founding figures. Beliefs, patterns and behaviours are subtly communicated, permeating throughout. If these aren’t monitored, they can produce negative consequences. Don’t let shame or stigma become a workplace culture. Don’t let people encourage a poor narrative around the value of therapy, or the acceptability of vulnerability. Many people still perceive help as emotional “weakness”. Don’t let fear or judgement prevent people from reaching out either. Many employee assistance programmes linked to medical or insurance organisations involve lengthy referral processes and formal assessments. This can be genuinely intimidating and then ironically often an actual barrier for individuals to engage with mental well-being services. This consideration is an absolute fundamental in how the likes of Mindwork has been specifically designed, in order to avoid such issues and encourage simple and continuous engagement with any workforce. Food for thought we trust…