As a result of the recent pandemic, mental wellbeing has been a prevalent topic within our society over the past year, and businesses have been taking note of the importance of supporting employee mental wellbeing, taking steps to improve the support and resources available to them.

According to CBI’s ‘Seize The Moment’ campaign:

“A healthier nation, built on the foundation of wellbeing, could boost job satisfaction and business performance – and reduce health inequalities across the UK.”

Organisations with foundations in strong employee mental wellbeing support can in turn, benefit by potentially seeing improvements in annual returns, reductions in sickness absences, reductions of health inequalities and an overall better quality of life.

One such business benefiting from implementing strong employee mental wellbeing support is The Safety Letterbox Company. Business News Wales spoke to CEO and Managing Director Alison Orrells, to learn more about the measures Alison’s company took to ensure employees mental health and wellbeing were being supported and to find out how the company has benefited from these actions:

Recognising the benefits of strong mental wellbeing in the workplace, Alison said:

“It’s important to understand that everyone interprets things in different ways, and the transparency about our actions, being able to give reassurance and giving people time to raise any concerns… has allowed us to create a culture and environment whereby people can speak out if they don’t feel great on a particular day.”

When speaking about what measures her own organisation has taken, Alison said:

“20% of our workforce are trained in mental health first aid, which is a really important signal for us, helping us to recognise that it’s (mental health) is not something that should be hidden away and it’s something to be shared so that we can create an environment where people can shine and thrive and feel as though they can come to work in a safe place.”

Alison ended the interview by imploring the government to share and promote mental wellbeing support group links and networks to various business, allowing these businesses to filter down this information through their teams.