Mental health, often a daunting topic, and it can be difficult to know where to begin with a strategy for an organisation. This episode we meet George Bell from Sanctus to tackle the big topic of introducing mental health into the workplace.
Who are Sanctus?
Sanctus, are on a mission to inspire millions of people to work on their mental health. Their big vision is to put the world’s first mental health gym on the high street.
They’re currently focused on bringing Sanctus to the workplace through Sanctus coaching – a safe, impartial, confidential space where employees can work on their mental health with a qualified Sanctus coach.
They work with a range of businesses, from the BBC and Red Bull to Just Eat and Aviva and we felt they would be great to chat to about this big topic and get some tips on how to go about introducing mental health into the workplace and normalising these conversations.
“Nothing can replace real, genuine human connection”
There is a stigma that mental health and talking about it is bad, when in fact everyone has mental health and it should be looked after in the same way as physical health.
George explained that mental health should be worked on proactively before reaching a crisis point and by normalising the conversations in the workplace there can be a perception shift.
We all have mental health, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but working on it regularly and taking time out to understand yourself helps growth both personally and professionally.
“Give people the space, one person opens up and it creates a culture of permission”
George gives advice of how to start the conversations in the workplace to slowly feed into a culture change. It can be a daunting area for HR teams but you can start small and work up to bigger programmes as the trust and openness is built within your organisation.
It was great to meet George and get thinking about how we can make work better by opening up these conversations and normalising mental heath. Listen to the full chat now on your preferred platform – Acast, I-tunes or Spotify.
