Mental Health Awareness Week

Coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown is having a huge impact on people’s mental well-being. Not only those people who are not working but also those who are.

People are being impacted in a variety of different ways and everyone’s coronavirus journey and experience is going to be very different. Some people may feel very little impact from it whilst others could be gravely impacted.

Supporting the mental health of those around us however is a key consideration for any employer.

As an accountancy firm, our staff have been working tirelessly to support our clients. Many of those clients are frightened about the future of their business and how they are going to cope with the lockdown. We have been supporting, advising, communicating and trying to help our clients businesses to survive and access all the help they can get to try and ensure they still have a business to go back to, whilst some businesses needed support with funding to expand or diversify their business. We have seen and helped with a whole plethora of business with issues, ideas and advice.

This all however has an impact on our staff too. Coronavirus fatigue is becoming a real challenge for everyone.

What have we done to help our staff?

We have provided all our staff and their families with access to a lifestyle and wellbeing platform. This platform provides a range of helpful resources along with 24/7 access to telephone and email advice and counselling on a range of topics including:

• Mental health and wellbeing
• Bereavement
• Relationship
• Financial wellbeing
• Nutrition and diet
• Fitness
• Work/life balance

We have also been ensuring that our furloughed staff are kept up to date on a regular basis, so that they maintain a connection with the business and realise just how valued they are.

In addition to this we are doing our best to make sure staff who are working hard to keep our business going feel appreciated and are being offered the flexibility to manage their work around family circumstances.

We appreciate that everyone’s journey and approach to mental health and wellbeing will be very different, but awareness programmes such as the Mental Health Awareness week help to keep the conversation going.

So #KeepTalking