14th March 2016

WA Association for Mental Health (WAAMH), with the support of the Mental Health Commission, hosted the inaugural WA Mental Health Conference at Fraser's in Kings Park last week with many well facilitated workshops and seminars one could attend throughout the conference.

The Keynote speakers, presenters and the many delegates I listened to all sent clear messages over the couple of days. When reviewing what I learnt from the conference I came to three conclusions

1) We can talk about real issues extremely well but if collectively we do not start converting words into action, we will continue to make little progress.

2) There is a sense that at the moment we are losing the battle to educate the workforce community about mental health issues in the workplace and

3) Prevention first and action recovery processes second.

The Workplace Wellbeing Symposium was of particular interest to me. It is not until a well respected mental health professional stands before his audience and delivers the realisation that mental health workplace issues have quickly gained momentum and it is now costing Australian businesses billions of dollars each year. Employers and employees need to hear the alarm bells and start taking tiny steps to implement coordinated mentally healthy workplace practices or their business will suffer and may not even survive. I use the term tiny steps because it is a major commitment and acknowledgement for both employers and employees to be proactive in regards to managing their mental health wellbeing and to put aside the stigma attached to it.

To those employers who believe they are providing a mentally healthy friendly workplace environment, congratulations, keep doing it and always look for continuous improvement.

To those employers who are looking at implementing procedures, don’t hold off as time may cost you money.

To those employers who are still in denial that their employee’s do not suffer from mental illness from time to time and it is not costing your business. Do some research and become informed.

Most importantly to employers if you cannot sustain and develop your employee engagement strategies and action plans in relation to mental health, you may do more harm than if you didn’t start them at all. So be mindful as it is your employee’s emotions, hopes and aspirations of their workplace you are working with.

To those employee’s who have employers that look after your holistic wellbeing, embrace it.

To those employee’s who have an employer who is struggling to understand mental health issues, educate them.

Changing the existing culture of workplaces needs to be a joint effort between employer, employee and mental health professionals if we are to build a mentally healthy friendly workforce. Let’s start taking more tiny steps to build our strength to take bigger ones.