Today is National Stress Awareness Day and we have been fortunate at Consilium to have local charity Springfield MIND in to run two sessions on Mental Health Awareness, with a focus on stress.

Many people may ask why we have chosen to focus on stress, the simple reason being the recruitment industry can be stressful.  Stress can lead to a decline or worsen an individual’s mental health and create presenteeism.  Anyone who works within recruitment will know it is full of highs and lows, with targets to meet and there can be an inability to switch off.  I don’t think any of us would be able to say that we haven’t had a stressful day at work.

According to the CIPD’s 2019 well-bring survey the main causes of stress are:

• Workloads/volume of work
• Management style relationships at work
• Non-work factors – relationship or family issues
• Considerable organisational issues or restructuring
• Pressure to meet targets or deadlines
• Non-work factors – personal illness or health issues.

Today our mental health awareness workshop with Springfield MIND was a huge success and everyone was able to reflect on their own mental health and stresses.  We have all come away from it with an aim of how we will improve our mental resilience, advice on wellbeing and sleep and tips on how we can cope with stress. We will all remember MIND’s recent campaign too, “Sometimes we say we’re fine when we are not.  To really find out #ask twice”.

As a business we have reflected over the last year what we can do to support our employee’s wellbeing, with today being the start of many more conversations and sessions surrounding mental health and stress.  We have taken further steps and put in place a mental health and stress policy.  I have also become a trained Mental Health First Aider, and we hope to train further members of staff in the future. 

Going forward into 2020, we intend to focus on MIND’s 5 tips to wellbeing:

• Connect
• Be Active
• Take Notice
• Give to others
• Keep learning

We will keep you all posted on what we are doing, but for now, we have begun the conversation which is the most important part, especially when CV Library’s recent survey found 25.8% of Brits were too afraid to tell their employer they were suffering from poor mental health.