Guest blog: Evolving our approach to mental health and wellbeing

02 September 2024

Luke Wilson, Partner at FRP Advisory, explores the work his firm is doing to improve their approach to mental health, and the impact it’s had on the business so far…

We’re all human. We all face challenges. And in my experience, having overcome my own issues and challenges, being open and honest and leading with vulnerability makes people more willing to open up about what they’re going through.

It is this openness that leads to an improved organisational culture, as people feel more comfortable talking about their issues and asking for support to help address and manage them – resulting in the improvement of business performance in the long-term.

This was front of mind at FRP as we looked to review our approach to mental health and wellbeing. As a firm, we’ve grown substantially over the last 14 years, and that growth has brought about changes in how we work, think and act, and in our workforce, which is now larger and more diverse than it has ever been.

Given this, we were very aware of the need for our culture to keep evolving – and a key part of this involved looking at our approach to managing mental health among our staff. Like any firm seeking professional advice, we approached a specialist, Charlie Waller Workplace, part of the Charlie Waller Trust, which works with businesses to implement systems and structures to help them better manage mental health training, awareness and attitudes internally, to see how we could evolve our approach to better help our team and the business more widely.

The Trust has worked with us to develop a firm-wide strategy for improving our approach to mental health, that has been set by our national Steering Committee based on the results of a staff survey. This strategy is being delivered across all our offices in the UK, The Isle of Man and Cyprus through a “Hub System” that will see each office have its own bespoke plan to improve its approach to mental health in line with our nationwide strategy.

From September, Charlie Waller Workplace will begin delivering training for our managers in a number of areas that include psychological safety and stress reduction, as well as reviewing our HR policies and protocols, and exploring how we can improve our employee assistance programme.

This project has been 18 months in the making and will take another year or so to implement to ensure we are getting this right. But we are already seeing the impact – we’ve seen staff opening up about all kinds of issues and challenges they face and I’ve had messages from colleagues that say they’re proud to work for an organisation that takes mental health and mental welfare this seriously.

Of course, there will be a business benefit from doing this – we’ll be more equipped to spot any issues staff have before they become serious and we’ll become more productive as a firm as a result of this work, but it’s about more than that. 

At the very heart of this project is our desire to protect our people and to ensure that we lead by example – progressing our cultural growth at the same pace as our business growth is crucial, and the results we’ve seen already in terms of the feedback from colleagues and the changes in culture show that this was the right decision and the right approach.  

These things take time, motivation and perseverance to deliver, and getting to this point hasn’t been a straightforward process. But we are delivering, and we’ll continue to deliver – and our approach, our culture and our business will continue to evolve as we do so.

Luke Wilson hosts FRP’s Mind.Set podcast, where he interviews individuals who have overcome challenges in their personal and professional lives about their stories and learnings. To listen to it, visit: https://www.frpadvisory.com/mindset-podcast/

For more information about Charlie Waller Workplace, visit: www.charliewallerworkplace.org