Workplace strategy 2 – Increase awareness

This is the second in our series of seven articles to introduce our Roadmap Planner.  The Roadmap Planner offers representations of real-life experiences from workplaces in road transport, Warehousing and Logistics. The stories and strategies in the Planner have been designed to help businesses understand psychological safety and build a Workplace Wellbeing Plan specific to your environment. Having a Workplace Wellbeing Plan means you will be taking steps to meet your duty of care by managing psychosocial hazards at work.

Increasing mental health awareness in the workplace helps to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health. Promoting and talking about mental health normalises help seeking behaviours and helps people feel safe. When people feel they are in a safe environment to do so, they are more likely to speak up and seek help early.

Whether you are a small business or a large company increasing awareness about mental health provides a strong foundation for prevention, protection and support. A person who seeks help early has a better chance of early recovery. Additionally, workplace productivity, morale and safety all benefit when people are aware of how to prioritise their mental health, how and where to seek help and they have an understanding of how to support their co-workers and mates.

So where do you start?  

Try these as your first steps: 

• Read story 2 ‘Narelle – Increase awareness’ in the Healthy Heads Planner
• Talk to people across your business or organisation about awareness raising and discuss the most effective ways of sharing information, i.e. at team meetings, morning teas, posters, electronic communications or in paper form
• Organise a mental health and wellbeing event such as:
  • Hold an R U OK? in Trucks and Sheds event (all the information you need to hold one of these is on our website here R U OK? in Trucks & Sheds – Healthy Heads)
  • A wellbeing morning tea or lunch
  • Share the Healthy Heads Toolbox Talks during regular safety talks
• Encourage staff to download the Healthy Heads App
• Provide all staff with a copy of the Healthy Heads Workforce Handbook
• Provide access to training options for your teams, there are a variety of on-line and face-to-face industry specific training courses listed on the Healthy Heads Website here. These are delivered by expert organisations including Lifeline, Black Dog Institute and Mental Health First Aid Australia.

By completing these first steps you are well on the way to raising awareness and promoting a culture where people will speak up and seek support, are aware of their own mental health signs and symptoms and are also able to support others.  

If you would like further information on our Roadmap Planner please reach out to our Director, Industry Relations and Program Management, Melissa Weller on [email protected]