By Angie Newland @ Angels Admin Support
An email I received recently from an organisation that I subscribe to, called The Stress Management Society, which gave an interesting view on how we look at keeping employees safe and well. The email was about what safeguarding in the workplace is, and why it is important, it was also encouraging training for Mental Health Champions in the workplace. But getting back to the safeguarding part and its relevance to my point, it says –
“Safeguarding in the workplace refers to the measures and practices we put in place to protect our colleagues from harm, harassment, and any form of abuse. It’s about creating a safe and inclusive environment where everyone feels respected, valued, and secure. When we feel this way, we are more likely to work more effectively and thrive in life.”
On reading this I straight away thought of how the FCA would expect this to be what firms are doing under their non-financial misconduct, consumer duty, and EDI responsibilities, but I know that most financial services firms wouldn’t necessarily see the link here. I am a Mental Health First Aider, and those of you that know me will already know that I am always wearing my mental health awareness, EDI, HR hat and that I strive to show financial services firms how important all of these things are, and work with them to have strategies in place.
Unfortunately, I am often met with these comments –
“This is just pink and fluffy stuff, it’s not relevant to the work we do”
“Why do we need to do that, it’s just more work for us?”
“It doesn’t apply to us as we are only a small firm”
“All our employees are fine and know they can talk to us if they need to”
My response to these comments?
Mental Health awareness is important to everybody, because if someone is struggling, they should feel they can talk to a manager or mental health champion about this if they want or need to, and if they can’t they will become shut off, and may just stop coming to work, and eventually be likely to leave the company as they will see the company as being detrimental to their physical and mental health.
Investing time into your employees and your business should be seen as very relevant to what you do, and be part of the firm’s culture, not just a tick box exercise that is being done for the sake of it, or because you have been told you have to do it.
Your responsibilities as an employer means that the health and safety, wellbeing, and safeguarding of employees is most definitely applicable to you, whatever size your firm may be.
And how do you know that your employees are ok? Are you asking them, meeting with them, having regular check ins, what do you have in place to support them? Is this reviewed and adapted/changed/improved where needed?
Ensuring that staff are treated equally, are appreciated, and feel they are included and belong in the firm is important, it reflects your company culture and will have a positive effect on your employee’s mental wellbeing.
Stress is classed as a “risk” to a business, and if you are assessing your risks as the FCA expect you to, you also need to make sure that stress related risk is something that is looked at as seriously as other business risks.
How important do you see the safeguarding, mental health and wellbeing, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion, and belonging of your employees?
If the FCA were to ask to see what you are doing to prevent foreseeable harm to your employees, would you be able to tell them and more importantly show them?
You probably think you don’t need to worry; they won’t be asking you any of this? Well, now might be a good time to rethink that.
If you would like to see how we at Angels Admin Support can assist you with implementing ways to safeguard your employees, improve on mental health and wellbeing, be more Diverse and Inclusive, or help with any of the other things mentioned in relation to this blog, then please do get in touch, we would love to hear from you.
Email: angie@angelsadminsupport.co.uk